George Gömöri

Ted Hughes: Hungarian
Connections

Letters of Ted Hughes, Selected and edited by Christopher Reid, London, Faber and Faber, 2007, 756 pp.
Ted Hughes: Selected Translations, edited by Daniel Weissbort, London, Faber and Faber, 2006, 232 pp.

 

Ted Hughes was probably the most important English poet of the second half of the twentieth century. Though he was not awarded the Nobel Prize (which went to poets whose work was more accessible), his verse collection Birthday Letters (1998) became an unexpected best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. During the past two years his publishers Faber & Faber have brought out two collections of his writings which help towards a better understanding of Hughes's poetry. The Poet Laureate remained a powerful lyrical voice to his death, and these present selections of his letters as well as (published and unpublished) translations show the wide range of his interests and the intensity of his diverse preoccupations.

[...]

It seems that at one point Hughes was genuinely interested in reading and possibly translating József. He wrote to Myers in early 1956: "I am as interested in the Attila enterprise as you are" (p. 34). Although this interest never materialised in the form of his own translations, later, on more than one occasion, he praised Myers's versions. This early interest in modern Hungarian poetry reappeared a decade later, when Hughes with Daniel Weissbort decided to launch the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation in which they promoted several Hungarian poets.

[...]

 

George Gömöri
is a Hungarian poet, translator and essayist who left Hungary in 1956.
For over thirty years he taught Polish and Hungarian at the University of Cambridge.
He is Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College.