Mihály Babits
1883–1941
Biography
Mihály Babits (1883–1941) was a Hungarian poet, novelist, essayist, literary historian and translator, and one of the most important writers in Hungary in the first decades of the twentieth century. He was born at Szekszárd and moved with his family to Pécs as a boy. He studied in Budapest, where he later taught. He was one of the leading writers around the influential review Nyugat, which he edited from 1929, and in 1940 he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy.
His early verse was intellectual and formally precise, with a philosophical cast. After the First World War his poetry grew darker and more inward, and it dealt with the misfortunes of his nation and with his own failing health. He was also a prolific translator. His translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, which he began in 1913, is among his most lasting achievements, and he rendered a great deal of other European poetry and prose into Hungarian.
His novels range from A gólyakalifa and Kártyavár to Halálfiai and the anti-utopian Elza pilóta (1933). Timár Virgil fia, the book on this site, appeared in 1922 and offers a way into his fiction alongside the poetry for which he is better known. In 1938 an operation on his throat left him unable to speak, and he died in Budapest in 1941. The poet Miklós Radnóti later wrote a poem on his death.
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Books
Timár Virgil fia
by Mihály Babits
Virgil Timár, a Cistercian priest who teaches at a provincial school, comes to love a gifted pupil as the son he could never have, until the boy's worldly father arrives to claim him. The short novel in three parts is followed by five shorter stories. This book uses the racial…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.