Ágnes Nemes Nagy

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Ágnes Nemes Nagy in 1989

Ágnes Nemes Nagy (born January 3, 1922 in Budapest ; † August 23, 1991 there ) was a Hungarian author and translator and an important poet.

Life

Ágnes Nemes Nagy studied Hungarian, Latin and art history at the Péter-Pázmány University and passed the teacher's examination in 1944. In 1944 she married the writer Balázs Lengyel. During the Holocaust, she and Lengyel's mother and siblings were involved in the rescue of two Jewish women.

Memorial plaque in Királyhágó utca
Grave on the Farkasréti temető

After the war ended, she and Lengyel joined the intellectual movement around the literary magazine Újhold (“New Moon”), in which Iván Mándy and János Pilinszky set the tone. Nemes Nagy had published her poems for the first time and received a Rome grant in 1948. After the communist seizure of power, she was banned from publishing in 1949. She resisted the pressure to write in the style of socialist realism . During the Stalinist period she lived partly on scholarships in Rome and Paris, and partly she worked as a teacher. After the Hungarian uprising was put down in 1956 , liberalization was very gradual . In 1958 they divorced Balázs Lengyel, to whom they remained friendly throughout their lives.

She translated poetry and dramas by Jean Racine , Molière and Victor Hugo from French into Hungarian and from German Rainer Maria Rilke , Bertolt Brecht and Friedrich Dürrenmatt , as well as children's books with illustrations by Fritz Baumgarten .

She wrote in bound and free metric and rhyme. She is known as the most important Hungarian poet of the 20th century. Her most important work is the cycle of poems Ekhnaton jegyzeteiből (From the notes of Akhenaten ). She also achieved significant achievements as an essayist .

Nemes Nagy received the Baumgarten Prize in 1948, the Attila József Prize in 1969 and the Kossuth Prize in 1983 . She was named Righteous Among the Nations in 1997 .

Works (selection)

  • Still look: poems . Retouched by Franz Fühmann . Translated from the Hungarian and edited. by Paul Kárpáti . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1986 - Insel-Bücherei 1068
  • Vándorévek . Magvető Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1964 (also contains poems by German authors in Hungarian translation)
  • Easter bunny mum's . Translated from the Hungarian. Christina Kunze. Illustrations by Károly Reich . Leiv, Leipzig 2013
  • The quality of the children's poem , in: Éva T. Aszódi and Vera Thies: Siebenfarbenwelt. Essays on Hungarian children's and youth literature . Der Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 1984, pp. 39–43

literature

  • Ágnes Lehóczky : Poetry, the geometry of the living substance: four essays on Ágnes Nemes Nagy . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
  • Balázs Lengyel: Egy poétikai módszer alakulása . Nemes Nagy Ágnes: Balaton. In: LB: Két sorsforduló. Válogatott esszék. Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 1998, pp. 208-211
  • Balázs Lengyel; Mátyás Domokos : Erkölcs és rémület között: in memoriam Nemes Nagy Ágnes . Budapest: Nap, 1996

Web links

Commons : Ágnes Nemes Nagy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry by the Lengyel family on Yad Vaschem's website (English)
  2. ↑ Ágnes Nemes Nagy on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Nemes Nagy, Ágnes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nagy, Agnes N.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1991
Place of death Budapest