Peter Zollman is a respected translator of Hungarian poetry and here he has put together a personal selection, his ‘dream team’ of poets and poems, from the 1800s to the present. Most of the major poets of Hungary seem to be represented: Petõfi, Babits, Kosztolányi, József etc. As a charming coda to the main Hungarian business there is also a rather splendid selection of thirteen pages of other, international — French, German, Latin, Portuguese and Italian — poets that demonstrate Zollman’s quite impeccable grasp of who the really great and interesting poets (in these languages) have been; from Catullus to Pessoa, via Baudelaire, Villon, Brecht and Salvatore Quasimodo, in his selection he doesn’t seem to miss a trick.

An important point to note is that this book is that increasing rarity, a bi-lingual (actually multi-lingual if we consider the ‘extra foreign poets’ added at the end) anthology, something very useful for language learners and for anybody with at least some grasp of both languages. It also adds that very specialised delight of seeing the translator at work and reflecting on the choices he or she makes in this curious and essential task. In his translations Zollman has tried to find an English style more or less appropriate to the time when the poetry was written, an admirable sensitivity that results in a startling variety of language, another diverting feature of an all-round felicitous project.

Man, what is hope?...a horrifying whore,

Who doles out everyone the same embrace.

You waste on her your most precious possession;

Your youth, and then she leaves without a trace!

Sándor Petõfi ‘Hope’ 30

Mother was Kún, Father was Székely, partly,

and half, or maybe, pure Romanian.

from Mother’s lips the food was sweet and hearty,

from Father’s lips the truth was radiant.

They embrace again when I am stirring.

This fills my heart with deep melancholy —

we are all mortal. It’s me, re-occurring.

‘Just wait, we’ll soon be gone!...’ They talk to me.

They call, I know we are now one; this one-ness

has made me strong, for I remember well,

that I am every parent in the boundless

succession to the primal lonely cell.

I am that First, who splits, proliferating

till I become my father and mother,

then father splits and mother, procreating

the multiplying me and none other!

I am the world — the ancient endless story;

clan fighting clan for creed or crazy greed.

I march among the conquerors in glory,

I suffer with the conquered in defeat.

Árpád and Zalán, Werboczi and Dózsa —

Slavs, Mongols, Turks and other variants

in me, we shall redeem the long foreclosure

with gentle future — new Hungarians!

...I want to work. It’s hard for human nature

to make a true confession of the past.

The Danube, which is past present and future,

entwines the waves in tender friendly clasp.

Out of the blood our fathers shed in battles

flows peace, through our remembrance and regard,

creating order in our common matters,

this is our task we know it will be hard.

68-9 Attila József from ‘By the Danube’