Agnes Nagy’s Poetic Prose translated by Hugh Maxton.

Baskin Mosquito.

From ‘Leaf-Stalks’

“Yet I would not dismiss the nonentities. The things that nearly are
not. Journey of woodbine, ampelopsis on the ancient walls (of garden
and its house), clutch of tendrils and trailing plants, the shuffling of
their minute paws, with pads of suction for terminals of their thread-like
minute fingers, and claws, green zig-zag path of lizards this way and that,
climbing always higher until, until there are masterpieces of space-fillment.
No question of it: indeed we bathe our faces in the roistering fire of
some noted blooms, therby healing up our remoteness. But what of
the props and supports? Candle-stick under the candle’s flame, the stalks,
the vegetable scales, thorny pronged candelabras. And the floating wicks,
nightlights of a provisional kind, shoepolish tins in times of siege..”

Night-Stalks, from ‘Between’ by Agnes Nemes Nagy

In a brief afterword attached to this Volume of Between by Nagy,
Hugh Maxton discusses his approach to collaborative translation, along with a
brief description of the history and political situation in Hungary in terms of
Linguistic revival and conservation. It’s well worth the read, I shall be looking for
an online link to add in here.In my last piece on translation , I alluded to the appalling
translations of Nagy that I found online whilst searching for material by the writer
and In brief to the importance of linguistic heritage, (though I am no expert in the
field ), it’s actually easy enough to identify a terrible translation into English.

The Nagy/Maxton collaboration is a triumph in sensitivity and awareness, thus his
approach to the project is something I would recommend to people who are
interested in the area of disseminating literature either online or in publication.
I also like Gallagher’s translations of Ursu and some scraps of Agren Mc Elroy’s
work on Nelly Sachs, both of whom I have mentioned on Poethead before now.

Between, The Selected Poems of Agnes Nemes Nagy, trans High Maxton,
Corvina Press Budapest, Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1988

Leonard Baskin Woodcuts.

‘Between Earth and Sky’, Agnes Nemes Nagy and Hugh Maxton.

Firstly I am adding in a review that I did a while ago, along
with one or two Nagy poems, I am really leaving this open
ended in terms of discussing Nagy and Maxton’s collaboration
and would hope that it becomes a series on Poetic Prose,
collaboration and translation. Thus I will add in the International
Pen Links at the bottom of this post also.

Agnes Nemes Nagy : Between

“I have no serious doubt,” observed George Szirtes in his Introduction to The Night of Akhenaton, a selection of her poetry, “that Ágnes Nemes Nagy is one of the great indispensable poets of the twentieth century.” Agnes Nemes Nagy (1922-1991) was a Hungarian poet, author, political writer and activist, whose life, as for so many of her generation, was defined by the Second World War, and particularly by the friends she knew who died in Auschwitz. Between by Agnes Nemes Nagy and translated by Hugh Maxton comprises the largest translated collection of Nagy’s work into English, and is published by Dedalus in Dublin and Corvina in Budapest.

Angels are always terrifying in Nagy and often allied to tree and branch symbols. Her imagery in general is often ‘off-centre’; she wrote about the process of writing as “I think it is the duty of the poet to obtain citizenship for an increasing horde of nameless emotions”.

I Carried Statues

“On board ship carried Statues,
Huge faces unrecognised
On board ship carried statues
To stand on the island.
Between nose and ears
Perfect right angle
Otherwise blank.
On board ship carried statues
And so I sank.”

Terraced Landscape is a prose piece which visually describes movement through time through the poem’s 34 separate planes or terraces:

Zero Plane.

“Now nothing is visible.Yet something continues
To sound, in a fragmentary fashion, breaking down,
Swelling. Do you hear it? Up there somewhere,
Towering little domes like the roofing of a city, unknown bells inside”

Zero Plane is the poem’s introduction, while the overall structure is cyclical, so that the white noise at the end of Level 34 seques back to the beginning, Zero Plane. Not all the levels are described, yet all things acquire depth and shape, everyday objects swell and become, they lose their flatness. This reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s ‘I love the thingness of things’, and of how familiar objects become so alien or so intimate to the observer that they acquire a symbolic importance.

The poem ‘Lazarus’ –

‘Round his left shoulder, as he got up slowly
Every day’s Muscle gathered in agony
His death was flayed off him like a gauze
Because second birth has such harsh laws’.

- recalls Leonard Baskin’s Hanged Man’, a lithograph from the Fifties
of the Hanged man from the Tarot deck, an image not only of
torture but also a warning that the poet and artist must consistently engage with the world whatever the cost.

Between is divided into short poems and cycles, two essays and some prose, with Nagy herself contributing the foreword. Hugh Maxton talks of the translation / collaboration process at the back of the book, but between intro and postscript the images and words create, for this reader, visual monuments, portals into a mythos and an often sublime awareness.

Agnes Nemes Nagy, Between, Dedalus Press,
Dublin and Corvina Press , Budapest. Trans, Hugh Maxton

:This is the P.I Review which I have adjusted
in minor terms re the Italics and Bolds.

International Pen , Translation
and Linguistic Rights.

Paul Celan Snippet.

“Poems are also gifts-gifts to the attentive”.

I am unsure of the provenance of the quote above, I found it
within the pages of my constant companion book :

Simone Weill, Thinking Poetically, Joan Dargan, State University of New York Press. 1999

On the recommended reading list:

Alain Bosquet, “Stances Perdue” and “Fathomsuns and Benighted”, by Paul Celan.

A Saturday Woman Poet : Ileana Malancioiu.

Samson’s Hair

Delilah did her job,
Samson’s head lay on her knees
As on a dish
And his hair was cut and his strength
Was gone without his knowledge.

When he woke up and tried to break
The ropes that bound him it was too late,
But the story could not be finished
As long as Samson was still alive.

The world knows only how his strength was taken
But I remember also what came later
And in the immense hall I feel afraid
Standing beside those two golden pillars
As I wait for Samson’s hair to grow.

Ileana came to Dublin and she signed my book!
This poem is taken from After the Raising of Lazarus
trans, Eilean ni Chuilleanain (I don’t have fadas today )
2005 Southward Editions.

: fadas galore in here= bad tech day

St Jordi’s Day : Link on Censorship and Imprimaturs.

A Compass rose for St Jordi's Day

I love this little bit of writing from a very good friend who doesn’t
like censorship and likes to tell stories, so I sent him a rose (image).

Jordi Kills the dragon (again)

Marking the day.

Ethnopoetics.

Translation and Linguistic Rights.