[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
Struggle for Life
Brother, it seems, you have been beaten.
As Law decrees and Precept goes -
Your corpse is sniffed round by hyenas
And circled by the hungry crows.
It's not the pack who were the stronger,
Smaller beasts beat you to tatters -
And who fights now over your carcass:
Jackdaw? Jackal? Hardly matters.
Your fist when it was time to use it
Always stopped halfway in the air -
Was it charity? Weakness? May be.
Fear? Pride? Modesty? I don't care.
Or mere disgust, perhaps. So be it.
Good. Amen. I accept the terms.
I prefer that worms should eat me
Rather than I should feed on worms.
(Translated by Peter Zollman)
Next day I paid a visit to the slaughter-house, in the mistaken belief
that I should write an article about it. An ox was about to be pole-axed.
It slink unwillingly along the wall, lowing softly, but offering no
resistance. When the butcher stood up in front of it with his legs wide
apart and raised the pole-axe, it lowered its eyes, as if ashamed of
his intention. Quickly, however, it seemed to resign itself to fulfill
the contract entered into with man. It had renounced the last years
of life in return for spending the early ones, without a care or struggle,
on the sweet pastures. When the pole-axe fell it collapsed with a soft
thud, like a row of coats from which the clothes-rail is withdrawn.
I felt depressed on leaving and did not write the article, nor could
I eat my lunch.
(From A Journey Round My Skull, translated by Vernon Duckworth Baker)
"Karinthy was a magnificent parodist and a ruthless but never pompous
social critic. His poetry was a mixture of carefully polished, effectively
classicist and broadly-rolling, Whitmanesque verse."
(Adam Makkai)
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
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