George Faludy (1910–2006)
Author of My Happy Days in Hell
About the Author
Image credit: from Lifeinlegacy.com
Works by George Faludy
A pompeji strázsán 3 copies
Faludy György összegyűjtött versei 2 copies
Faludy tárlata: Limerickek 1 copy
Test és lélek 1 copy
Összegyűjtött versei 1 copy
Emlékkönyv a rőt Bizáncról. Válogatott versek. "Szerzői példány, végleges szöveg (javításokkal)". A… 1 copy
East and West 1 copy
Petronis: Satyricon 1 copy
Ballada a senki fiáról 1 copy
Levelek az utókorhoz 1 copy
Versek 2001 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Faludy, György
- Other names
- Faludy, George
- Birthdate
- 1910-09-22
- Date of death
- 2006-09-01
- Burial location
- Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest, Hungary
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Hungary
- Birthplace
- Budapest, Hungary
- Place of death
- Budapest, Hungary
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Paris, France
Budapest, Hungary
Recsk labor camp, Hungary
Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Education
- University of Vienna
University of Graz
University of Paris - Occupations
- poet
translator
writer - Short biography
- George Faludy (Hungarian: György Faludy) was born to a Jewish family in Budapest.
His parents were Erzsébet Katalin and Joachim Jenő (Chajim) Faludy. His father was a chemist who worked as a teacher in a higher technical school. After graduating from secondary school in 1928, George studied at the Universities of Vienna, Paris, and Graz. He did his military service in 1933-1934.
In 1937, he made an international name for himself when he published a Hungarian translation of the medieval ballads of Francois Villon that became extremely popular but also created controversy. A year later, the Arrow Cross Party, allied with the Nazis, seized power in Hungary and burned Faludy's books. He fled to France, and from there to North Africa and the USA. His sister Livia was among the Jews who were shot and thrown into the Danube. In 1941, Faludy joined the U.S. Army, serving for three years; after World War II ended, he returned to Hungary. In 1947, he published the poems he had written in exile.
When the Communists seized power, Faludy came under suspicion for his ties to the USA. He was arrested in 1949 and sent to forced labor for three years at the notorious prison camp at Recsk. While there, he taught classes on history, philosophy, and literature to his fellow inmates. When the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was crushed by the Soviets, he defected with his family to London. There he published his now-famous memoir My Happy Days In Hell (1962) and edited Irodalmi Újság (Literary Journal), a Hungarian periodical.
Friends in Toronto, Canada urged Faludy to move there in 1967, and he lived in Toronto for the next 20 years. He gave lectures at Bishop University in Quebec, Toronto University, Columbia University in New York, and others. He was world renowned as a major figure of resistance against both Nazism and Communism. After the collapse of Communism, Faludy returned to Hungary, where he was well received. He married his third wife, Fanny Faludy-Kovacs, and translated poetry from around the world, with a specialty in Persian classical poets.
He was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the most prestigious literary award in Hungary, the Kossuth Prize.
Members
Reviews
Pokolbeli napjaim után by Gyorgy Faludy
Folytatódik a kaland, felnő a főhős, de még így is alig lehet követni téren és időn át...
Hihetetlen időutazás a 20. századon és egész Európán keresztül. Sodró lendületű önéletrajz, remek elbeszélő mód, nagy kalandok és apró emberi rezdülések.
What an amazing book! Faludy, a Hungarian poet, is a storyteller, who tells stories whether he is fleeing Hungary in advance of being arrested by the fascist government;escaping from Paris to Montaubon and then to Casablanca ahead of the Naizs; arriving in New York and enlisting in the US Army; returning to Hungary to live uneasily in the Soviet bloc; or arrested and thrown in jail and then sent to a forced-labor camp. I found some of the stories delightful and some absolutely horrifying. Throughout it all, Faludy discourses on philosophy, politics, literature, art, and poetry.
Faludy called this "my happy days in hell," and he maintains an eerily optimistic view of all that befalls him, even when he is being starved almost to death in the forced labor camp. Probably that stood him in good stead. Of course, being a poet, he writes, well, poetically. And he introduces various characters so that the reader feels he knows them too.
I can't itemize all the adventures, good and bad, that he had over the years this book covers, roughly 1938-1953, but I can quote him extensively.
While attempting to take a train to leave Paris.
"This relatively rapid progress was due to the determination of Lorsy, who pushed forward like a tank. When Bandi had warned him indignantly to keep his head, the historian replied that his head was in the right place: whatever, Bandi might think, it was the duty of every humanist to proceed with the maximal brutality in order to save himself, because in saving himself, he was saving the idea of humanism." p. 65
After leaving Morocco for the USA
"The African euphoria, the picaresque life, was now over. My year of happiness in Morocco had fed on innumerable sources; the most important of which was that had, at last, found my one and only, made-to-measure environment, the environment that fitted my character like a glove. This was true of the desert where, between the two concave lenses of heaven and earth, on a stage without scenery, I stood in the birthplace of dualist religions and was compelled to ponder at length, though without result, on the great questions of life and death, being and not being, good and evil -- something I had always yearned for without having found the time for it amidst the duties, occupations and even pleasures of everyday life. But it was also true of the desert's opposite, the marketplace of Marrakesh, the busy squares of Tangier, the tohu-bohu of the tea houses after midnight where life was a medley of knifings, love-making, funerals, bargaining, quarrels, gossip, the strange exhibitionism of a world in which the beggars on the street corners conversed like philosophers and philosophers copulated in the street like dogs. It was true of my Arab friends, first of all Amar, but also of the robber prince Sidi Mohammed and the Sudanese merchants with the donkey, the storyteller in the marketplace and the slipper-maker from whom, after hours of anecdotizing, I bought a pair of sandals." p. 193
Anticipating his arrest in Hungary
". . . while I was thinking that it didn't matter at all if they hung me in a ragged shirt, while it mattered a great deal that my last dinner should be all a last dinner should be." p. 283
in the early days of the forced labor camp
"It soon became clear to me that I owed both my physical and spiritual resistance chiefly to this way of behaving, which was partly yogi-like, partly monkish and partly schizophrenic. . . . My day-dreams embraced the widest variety of subjects, some themes returned every hour, others I carefully avoided; the problems of my captivity and future, for instance, and memories from my past life. Mostly I restricted myself to the intensive but cool observation of the surrounding flora . . ." p. 376
In the later days of the forced labor camp
"I insisted on conversation in order to preserve a certain degree of human dignity while we were slowly starving to death; Egri, on the other hand, believed that our conversation would save us from starving to death." o, 432
Obviously, Faludy survived the forced labor camp, but barely. Relief came after Stalin died in 1953, and the camp eventually closed.
As I said at the beginning, this is a remarkable book -- for the events it describes, but even more for the emphasis on dignity and humanism, and its digressions which form an integral part of the memoir.… (more)
Faludy called this "my happy days in hell," and he maintains an eerily optimistic view of all that befalls him, even when he is being starved almost to death in the forced labor camp. Probably that stood him in good stead. Of course, being a poet, he writes, well, poetically. And he introduces various characters so that the reader feels he knows them too.
I can't itemize all the adventures, good and bad, that he had over the years this book covers, roughly 1938-1953, but I can quote him extensively.
While attempting to take a train to leave Paris.
"This relatively rapid progress was due to the determination of Lorsy, who pushed forward like a tank. When Bandi had warned him indignantly to keep his head, the historian replied that his head was in the right place: whatever, Bandi might think, it was the duty of every humanist to proceed with the maximal brutality in order to save himself, because in saving himself, he was saving the idea of humanism." p. 65
After leaving Morocco for the USA
"The African euphoria, the picaresque life, was now over. My year of happiness in Morocco had fed on innumerable sources; the most important of which was that had, at last, found my one and only, made-to-measure environment, the environment that fitted my character like a glove. This was true of the desert where, between the two concave lenses of heaven and earth, on a stage without scenery, I stood in the birthplace of dualist religions and was compelled to ponder at length, though without result, on the great questions of life and death, being and not being, good and evil -- something I had always yearned for without having found the time for it amidst the duties, occupations and even pleasures of everyday life. But it was also true of the desert's opposite, the marketplace of Marrakesh, the busy squares of Tangier, the tohu-bohu of the tea houses after midnight where life was a medley of knifings, love-making, funerals, bargaining, quarrels, gossip, the strange exhibitionism of a world in which the beggars on the street corners conversed like philosophers and philosophers copulated in the street like dogs. It was true of my Arab friends, first of all Amar, but also of the robber prince Sidi Mohammed and the Sudanese merchants with the donkey, the storyteller in the marketplace and the slipper-maker from whom, after hours of anecdotizing, I bought a pair of sandals." p. 193
Anticipating his arrest in Hungary
". . . while I was thinking that it didn't matter at all if they hung me in a ragged shirt, while it mattered a great deal that my last dinner should be all a last dinner should be." p. 283
in the early days of the forced labor camp
"It soon became clear to me that I owed both my physical and spiritual resistance chiefly to this way of behaving, which was partly yogi-like, partly monkish and partly schizophrenic. . . . My day-dreams embraced the widest variety of subjects, some themes returned every hour, others I carefully avoided; the problems of my captivity and future, for instance, and memories from my past life. Mostly I restricted myself to the intensive but cool observation of the surrounding flora . . ." p. 376
In the later days of the forced labor camp
"I insisted on conversation in order to preserve a certain degree of human dignity while we were slowly starving to death; Egri, on the other hand, believed that our conversation would save us from starving to death." o, 432
Obviously, Faludy survived the forced labor camp, but barely. Relief came after Stalin died in 1953, and the camp eventually closed.
As I said at the beginning, this is a remarkable book -- for the events it describes, but even more for the emphasis on dignity and humanism, and its digressions which form an integral part of the memoir.… (more)
6 
rebeccanyc | 4 other reviews | May 3, 2016 |
rebeccanyc | 4 other reviews | May 3, 2016 | 
In the Concord, his final book, "...he made his last and most modest plea: 'Tolerate one another'."
Great book! :)
Great book! :)
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