Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by the god Hermes. Homer's Odyssey also uses the hexameter verse throughout his poem.

In classical hexameter, the six feet follow these rules: A foot can be made up of two long syllables (– –), a spondee; or a long and two short syllables, a dactyl (– υ υ). The first four feet can contain either one of them. The fifth is almost always a dactyl, and last must be a spondee. A short syllable (υ) is a syllable with a short vowel and one consonant at the end. A long syllable (–) is a syllable that either has a long vowel, two or more consonants at the end (or a long consonant), or both. However, spaces between words are not counted, so for instance "hat" is normally short, but it is long in "hat throw," due to the "th" in the next word. An example in English is Coleridge's self-describing line:

In the hex | ameter | rises the | fountain's | silvery | column.

Variations of the sequence from line to line, as well as the use of caesura (logical full stops within the line) are essential in avoiding what may otherwise be a monotonous sing-song effect.

Although the rules seem simple, it is hard to use classical hexameter in English, because English is a stress-timed language that condenses vowels and consonants between stressed syllables, while hexameter relies on the regular timing of the phonetic sounds. Languages having the latter properties (i.e., languages that are not stress-timed) are a few minor languages spoken in Africa^{[citation needed]}, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Hungarian.

While the above classical hexameter has never enjoyed much popularity in English, where the standard metre is iambic pentameter, English poems have frequently been written in iambic hexameter. There are numerous examples from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1612) in couplets of iambic hexameter. An example from Drayton (marking the feet):

Nor a|ny o|ther wold | like Cot|swold e|ver sped,

So rich | and fair | a vale | in for | tuning | to wed.

In the 17th century the iambic hexameter, also called alexandrine, was used as a substitution in the heroic couplet, and as one of the types of permissible lines in lyrical stanzas and the Pindaric odes of Cowley and Dryden.

Several attempts were made in the 19th century to naturalise the dactylic hexameter to English, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Arthur Hugh Clough and others, none of them particularly successful. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote many of his poems in six-foot iambic and sprung rhythm lines. In the 20th century a loose ballad-like six-foot line with a strong medial pause was used by William Butler Yeats. The iambic six-foot line has also been used occasionally, and an accentual six-foot line has been used by translators from the Latin and many poets.

In the late 18th century the hexameter was adapted to the Lithuanian language by Kristijonas Donelaitis. His poem "Metai" (The Seasons) is considered the most successful hexameter text in Lithuanian as yet. In the second part of the 20th century hexameter was used in the longest ever poem, Savitri (book), written in English by Sri Aurobindo^{[citation needed]}.

See also[link]

• Dactylic hexameter
• Prosody (Latin)

External links[link]

• Hexametrica, a tutorial on Latin dactylic hexameter at Skidmore College

 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hexameter". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Attila József
Statue of József
Born	(1905-04-11)11 April 1905 Ferencváros, Budapest
Died	3 December 1937(1937-12-03) (aged 32) Balatonszárszó
Nationality	Hungarian
Genres	Poetry
Relative(s)	Father Áron József Mother Borbála Pőcze Elder sisters Eta and Jolán
Influences Gyula Juhász Gyula Illyés
Influenced Jenő Dzsida János Pilinszky László Németh

Attila József (pronounced [ˈɒtːilɒ ˈjoːʒɛf], 11 April 1905 – 3 December 1937) was one of the most important and well-known Hungarian poets of the 20th century.

Biography[link]

The son of Áron József, a soap factory worker of Transylvanian origin from Bánát, and Hungarian peasant girl Borbála Pőcze, he was born in Ferencváros, a poor district of Budapest. He had two elder sisters: Eta and Jolán. His father abandoned the family when he was just three years old. They lived in extreme poverty: the mother could barely support the three children and pay rent for the tiny flat they were living in. Thus the children were cared for by the National Child Protection League and foster parents in the country town of Öcsöd, where he worked on a farm. It was typical of the conditions there that his foster father said "There is no such name as 'Attila'", and therefore called him 'Pista'. The conditions were so bad that he escaped back to his mother in Budapest.

His mother died in 1919, aged only 43. After this, he was looked after by Ödön Makai, his brother-in-law, who was relatively wealthy and could pay for his education in a good secondary school. Later he applied to the University of Szeged – his dream was to become a secondary school teacher – but he was soon turned out when a man named Antal Horger determined he was unfit for teaching because of a provocative poem he had written (With All My Heart).

From this point on, he tried to support himself from the little money he earned by publishing his poems. He started showing signs of schizophrenia, and was treated by psychiatrists (now he probably would be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder). He never married and only had a small number of affairs, but frequently fell in love with the women who were treating him.

He died on 3 December 1937, aged 32, at Balatonszárszó, where he was staying at the house of his sister and brother-in-law. Crawling through the railway tracks, he was crushed by a starting train. There is a memorial to him not far from the spot where he died. The most widely accepted view is that he committed suicide, but some experts say that his death was by accident.^[1]

Poetry[link]

Statue of József near the University of Szeged

Attila József is the best known of the modern Hungarian poets internationally. His poems have been translated into many languages and he is taught in world literature classes around the globe. Hailed during the communist era of the 1950s as Hungary's great "proletarian poet", his life, personality, and works are now being re-evaluated with the current celebrations of the centenary of his birth.^[2]

His first volume of poetry was A szépség koldusa (1922) (The beauty's beggar); at that time he was 17 and still in school. József studied privately for a year, and then entered the University of Szeged in 1924 to study Hungarian and French literature. With the help of a maecenas, Lajos Hatvany, he acquired a good education in Austria (1925) and Paris (1926–27), where he studied French literature and discovered the work of François Villon, the famous poet and thief from the 15th-century.

In 1925 József published his second collection of poems, Nem én kiáltok (It's not me who shouts). He was expelled from the university because of a revolutionary poem, Tiszta szívvel (With clear heart). With his manuscripts he traveled to Vienna, where he made a living by selling newspapers and cleaning dormitories, and then to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne. During this period he read Hegel and Karl Marx, whose call for revolution appealed to him.

József's works were praised by such internationally known Hungarian researchers and critics as Béla Balázs and György Lukács. In 1927 several French magazines published József's poems.

József's third collection of poems, Nincsen apám se anyám (1929) (I have nor father nor mother), showed the influence of French surrealism and Hungarian poets Endre Ady, Gyula Juhász and Lajos Kassák. The next year József joined the illegal Communist Party of Hungary (KMP). Döntsd a tőkét (Blow down the block/capital) (1931) was confiscated by the public prosecutor and in 1931 József's essay Literature and Socialism (Irodalom és szocializmus) led to indictment. However, not long afterward, he left the Communist Party.

Külvárosi éj (Night in the outskirts), a mature collection of poems appeared in 1932. His most famous love poem, Óda (Ode), from 1933 took the reader for a journey around and inside the body of the beloved woman. József's last two books were Medvetánc (1934) (Bear dance) and Nagyon fáj (1936) (It hurts very much). With these works he gained a wide critical attention. Ideologically he had started to advocate humane socialism and alliance with all democratic forces. Only a few are aware of the fact that it was Attila József who first formulated the ars poetica of transrealism in his 1937 poem Welcome to Thomas Mann.^[3] József's political essays were later included in Volume 3. of his Collected Works (1958).^[4]

Publications[link]

Memorial to Attila József in Balatonszárszó

Original works[link]

• A szépség koldusa ("Beggar of Beauty"), 1922
• Nem én kiáltok ("That's Not Me Shouting"), 1925
• Nincsen apám se anyám ("Fatherless and Motherless"), 1929
• Döntsd a tőkét, ne siránkozz ("Chop at the Roots" or "Knock Down the Capital"), 1931
• Külvárosi éj ("Night in the Slums"), 1932
• Medvetánc ("Bear Dance"), 1934
• Nagyon fáj ("It Hurts a Lot"), 1936

Published posthumously[link]

• Collected verse and selected writings, 1938
• Collected verse and translations, 1940
• Collected works, 1958
• Collected works, 1967
• József Attila: Selected Poems and Texts, 1973 (introduction by G. Gömöri)

English translations[link]

• Perched on Nothing's Branch, 1987 (translated by Peter Hargitai)
• Winter Night: selected poems of Attila József, 1997 (translated by John Batki)^[4]
• The Iron-Blue Vault: selected poems, translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsvath and Frederick Turner, Bloodaxe Books, 2000 ISBN 1-85224-503-4
• Attila József: Sixty Poems, translated by Edwin Morgan, Edinburgh: Mariscat, 2001 [1]
• A Transparent Lion: selected poems of Attila József; translated by Michael Castro and Gabor G. Gyukics, Los Angeles, CA: Green Integer 149, 2006 ISBN 1-933382-50-3

Tributes[link]

• Exhibition of paintings "Je ne crie pas"/"Nem Kiáltok...!" ("I do not shriek") by Thibault Boutherin, a tribute to Attila's poem "Nem én kiáltok" ("No Shriek of Mine") and dedicated to SGG, in the Karolyi Foundation^[5] in Féhervárcsurgó (Hungary) August/November 2007.
• American band The Party^[6] recorded a country-folk version of Peter Hargitai's English translation of "Tiszta szivvel" ("With All My Heart") in 2004.

Notes[link]

Exhibition of paintings "Je ne crie pas"/"Nem Kiáltok...!" ("I do not shriek") by Thibault Boutherin, a tribute to Attila's poem "Nem én kiáltok" ("No Shriek of Mine") and dedicated to SGG, in the Karolyi Foundation[5] in Féhervárcsurgó (Hungary) August/November 2007. American band The Party[6] recorded a country-folk version of Peter Hargitai's English translation of "Tiszta szivvel" ("Clean With My Heart") in 2004.

External links[link]

• Winter Night: Selected Poems reviewed
• Meeting Attila József
• General Introduction
• Tableau - 2005 in the homepage of Laszlo Forizs
• Five poems of Attila József translated by László Fórizs
• Selected Poems in English (1)
• Selected Poems in English (2)
• Poems in English
• Attila József at Find-A-Grave
• Five poems

Zoltán Latinovits (Budapest, September 9, 1931 – Balatonszemes, June 4, 1976) was a Hungarian actor, arguably the most significant one of the twentieth century.

Early life[link]

His mother divorced his father Oskar Latinovits in 1941 and married István Frenreisz, a doctor, with whom she had two more children (István, who became an actor under the name István Bujtor, and musician Károly). He began his school career in 1937, when he was enrolled to the Damjanich Street Primary School in Budapest, and graduated with excellent results in 1949 at the Szent Imre Gimnázium (St. Emery Secondary School). He became a carpenter and worked for a bridge building firm. He was substitute basketball player for Haladás SE from 1951, and was also a good sailor. From 1952 he studied at the Technical University of Budapest and became involved in a drama group. He became a civil engineer in 1956.

Acting career[link]

He started his professional acting career after various stints in student and amateur productions.

1956-1959. Debrecen, Csokonai Theatre.

1959-1961. Miskolc, National Theatre.

1961-1962. Debrecen, Csokonai Theatre.

1962-1966. Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre). One of his most successful roles performed there was Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in 1963, playing with Éva Ruttkai, his later wife.

1966-1968. Thália Theatre.

1969-1971. Vígszinház.

19671-1976. Veszprém, Petőfi Theatre, where he was able to realise his long time dream of being able to direct.

One of the best performer of the poetry of Attila József, Gyula Illyés and Endre Ady.

Film career[link]

Performed in numerous films from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. One of the most famous is Szindbád (1971), based on the short stories by Gyula Krúdy and directed by Zoltán Huszárik.

His death[link]

Latinovits was run over by a train at the station of Balatonszemes near Lake Balaton in 1976. Though the official statements talked of suicide, it never became fully clear whether he had jumped deliberately in front of the train or whether his death was an accident.^[1] His death immediately became a romanticized legend, also due to the similarities with the suicide of poet Attila József, of whose poems Latinovits had been one of the foremost interpreters.

Selected filmography[link]

• The Man of Gold (1962)
• The Pendragon Legend (1974)

Published books[link]

1973. Ködszurkáló (Skywriter) 1985. Emlékszem a röpülés boldogságára (collected works)

Prizes[link]

(1966) – Jászai Mari prize (1970) – Balázs Béla prize (1975) – Significant artist (1989) – Kossuth prize (posth.)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Zoltán Latinovits at the Internet Movie Database
• Latinovits Zoltán at PORT.hu