HUNGARIAN STUDIES 2. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [1986]

Emery George: Textual Problems of Miklós Radnóti's Bor Notebook

TEXTUAL PROBLEMS OF MIKLÓS RADNÓTI'S BOR NOTEBOOK EMERY GEORGE Department of German, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor For those seriously interested in the poetry of Miklós Radnóti, one of the most important literary events of the postwar period was surely the publication in facsimile of the poet's Bori notesz (Bor Notebook).l The Serbian exercise book, in sextodecimo, into which the deported poet wrote his last poems, testifies to a man of such courage, a poet of such abiding faith in moral intelligence and craftsmanship, that the facsimile could only have exerted deep emotional appeal on all who have been privileged to view it. In his preface to the printed booklet accompanying the facsimile Gyula Ortutay (1910-1978), the distinguished ethnologist and Radnóti's close friend, interprets the Notebook's emotional and moral significance in exactly this light: ... a kis szerb iskolásfüzet költeményeinek facsimile kiadása nem filológiai részletek közlésére sarkall. Nem a füzet külső formájának, méreteinek leírása a célom, s még az se, hogy milyen "olvasati" problémáink voltak eleinte: Lager Heidemann vagy Heidenau-e a helyes olvasat, s a többi efféle filológiai kérdés, aminek a maga helyén értelme, súlya van. De nekem az abdai tömegsír s ez a kis füzet más példázatot mondott, más kérdéseket adott föl. .. . Mire tanít ez a kis füzet? A haza szemérmes szeretetére. Mikor már szinte mindenből kitagadta a hivatalos haza, mikor prédának dobta oda, akkor is magához ölelte a haza, az otthon elérhetetlennek tűnő képeit éberen s álomban is ... . (.. .the facsimile edition of the poems in the little Serbian school copybook does not spur me on to publication of philological details. My purpose is not to describe the notebook's external form or its dimensions, nor indeed the sort of problems in "readings" we experienced at the beginning; whether the correct reading is Lager Heidemann or Heidenau, and all the remaining textcritical problems of this nature, which in their proper place carry meaning and weight. No—to me the mass grave at Abda and this little notebook narrated another parable, put different questions. ... What does this little notebook teach us? Non-demonstrative love of country. At a time when the official fatherland excluded him from practically everything, when it tossed him as prey, even then he embraced the seemingly unattainable pictures of homeland and home, in waking as well as in dream ... .2) Ortutay is right—in viewing the moral and social lessons of the Bor Notebook in what those last heroic poems express. He is also wrong—in separating textual study from this course of lessons, in assigning philological investigations their "proper place" and failing to note the central role that textual study plays, and should be allowed to play, Hungarian Studies 2/1 (1986) Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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