The romantic character of Miklós Radnóti's love poetry

Abstract

Miklós Radnóti may be best defined as a modern poet whose cultural and psychological roots are deeply embedded in the soil of nineteenth-century Romanticism. He exemplifies the image of an authentic idealist faced by a reality which is simultaneously the source of inspiration and the cause of his obsessive search for an alternative level of being. He himself provides his own definition, based on the identification of the man with the poet. His own nature is poetic and there is nothing else for him to do than to produce verse. The act of being and the act of writing are immediately understood as variants of one unique phenomenon. It is only through poetry that he can come to terms both with himself and with the outer world. There may be existential reasons to account for such an attitude, but needless to say, the historical environment in which he found himself must have presented such a vision as inevitable.