HUNGARIAN STUDIES 11. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar ... - EPA

40 ZSUZSANNA OZSVÁTHso much in the evil of Cain but more in the fact that Abel had no place tohide. With this re-interpretation of the myth of Cain and Abel, Radnóti shiftshis focus from individual guilt to that of universal violence.If before 1933 he saw guilt as the cause for suffering, hereafter he believedthat evil runs havoc, destroying the innocent. In this state of the world, thereare only two tasks left to the poet: to pursue the good and to battle againstevil. And Radnóti hears the call to save his country - as generations ofHungarian poets have heard before. Now his poems start to make use oforacular power and prophetic language both to evoke the horrors of war andmake manifest his destiny as the speaker of the divine. So the speaker emergesin the poem "Annotations to the Prophet Habakkuk":Cities blazed,thunderstruck;villagesburst in fire!Come to methou severeHabakkuk!Though the blackcinders cool,still the firein my soulwill not slack,and its pangstear like fangs.And my foodand my drinkturn to gall.Head to footblack as sootrage make me all. 23Radnóti 's poetic imagination is driven now by the moral imperative to warnagainst, and save the world from, the impending disaster. He perceives hiscalling as crucial for his country's redemption: he hears the voices of ancestorpoets and feels the measure of the public heartbeat. His style becomes moreand more striking, more like those of the Biblical prophets. He uses two voices,his own and that of the divine whom he evokes, for whom he speaks. With thepassion the Romantics infused in their progeny, with the patriotic obsessionof Petőfi and his poetic legacy, with the urgency of the Old Testament prophet