Zwierzęce idylle. O Razglednicach Miklósa Radnótiego

Animal Idylls. On Miklós Radnóti’s RazglednicákThe article presents an interpretation of Miklós Radnóti’s famous poetic cycle, Razglednicák [Postcards] (1944), from the animal perspective. The situation of the poet – a Hungarian Jew and a Catholic, sent to forced labour and then to a death march – is presented in four short pieces, expressly referring to the idyllic aesthetics. The dominant elements of the poem’s landscape are profiles of animals. By means of the poem, a flock of sheep and an ox become live emblems of the human condition in two states: the idyllic, timeless continuance and the inevitable death, which brings biological exhaustion to an end. The sheep and the ox also represent different types of presence – the sheep seem to function in an intact scenery, almost perfectly resembling the poet’s previous pieces devoted to animals, in which the animal embodies the untouched world, coexists with the landscape, and is continuance without a name. In Radnóti, the animal is a subjectified creature that exists on an equal basis with the human. Key words: Miklós Radnóti, Hungarian literature, forced labour, idyll, animals, Razglednicák [Postcards], Bori Notesz [Camp Notebook]