George Gomori (; born 3 April 1934) is a Hungarian-born poet, writer and academic. He has lived in England since 1956, after fleeing Budapest after the Hungarian Revolution, in which he played a pivotal role.George (György) Gömörii: contributor profile, InterLitQ. Retrieved 2013-18-12. He writes poems in Hungarian, many of which have been translated into English and Polish, and other writings across all three languages. He is a regular contributor to British newspaper The Guardian and to The Times Literary Supplement.
Early life and education
Gomori was born in Budapest in 1934.Polishing October: poems by George Gömöri Hungarian Literature Online. Retrieved 3 May 2014. From 1953 to 1956 he studied Hungarian and Polish at Eötvös Loránd University. He took part in the 1956 revolution both as a student organiser and editor of the newspaper Egyetemi ifjúság (University Youth). After the suppression of the revolution he fled to England and continued his studies at the University of Oxford where in 1962 completed a B.Litt. thesis on Polish and Hungarian literature later published as his first book in English (Polish and Hungarian Poetry 1945 to 1956; Oxford, 1966). Between 1958 and 1961 he was member of the Executive of the Hungarian Writers Association Abroad.
Teaching and scholarly career
His first teaching job was at the University of California, Berkeley, after which he researched at Harvard University (1964–65). Having spent four years as researcher and librarian at the University of Birmingham, in 1969 he took up a position at the University of Cambridge teaching Polish and Hungarian literature until his retirement in 2001.Authors: George Gömöri , Hungarian Quarterly. Retrieved 2013-18-12.
In May 2017 he was appointed as Senior Research Associate of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
Literary publications
He has published twelve books of poetry in Hungarian, four in English and one in Polish, and is the author of numerous critical works on Polish and Hungarian literature, the latest of which were Magnetic Poles (London, 2000), and Erdélyi Merítések ("Transylvanian Catches", Cluj-Kolozsvár, 2004). With Clive Wilmer he has translated two books of poems by Miklós Radnóti (1979, 2003), two collections by György Petri (1991, 1999, the second collection shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Translation Prize) and co-edited with George Szirtes a representative anthology of modern Hungarian poetry, The Colonnade of Teeth (Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle, 1996). From 1992 to 2006 he was a member of the Executive of the Association of the Hungarian Language and Culture of Budapest, also serving on the Board of the Hungarian Writers' Association (2001–2004).
Awards and medals
In 1995 he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Republic of Hungary and in 2007 the Commander's Cross of the Republic of Hungary. His literary and scholarly prizes include the Jurzykowski Award (1972), Medal of the Polish Committee of National Education (1992), Salvatore Quasimodo Prize (1993), the Ada Negri Memorial Prize (1995), the Pro Cultura Hungarica (1999) the Lotz Memorial Medal (2006), and the Alföld Prize (2009). He is a member of the Hungarian PEN Club and the Society of Hungarian Studies (London), also of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) of Cracow. In 2001, he was shortlisted alongside his translation partner Clive Wilmer for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for a book of György Petri poems which they translated from Hungarian to English. In 2014 he was awarded the Janus Pannonius prize for Translation of Poetry and the Hídverő ('Bridge Builders') Prize in Székelyudvarhely, Romania.Hungarian Review. Retrieved 2023-06-02.
In 2014 he was made Senator of the University of Szeged in recognition of his scholarly and artistic achievements.The Antonian Newsletter 2015. Retrieved 2017-07-11. In June 2021, he was given the Award of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, for work on Cyprian Norwid.
In October 2023, he was given the János Bárány Award (Ferencváros, 9th District of Budapest).9Tv. Retrieved 2023-28-11.
He was award The Polish Writers Association Abroad's Literary Prize in 2024.
Recent work
Gömöri is a regular contributor to the British press (The Guardian, The Independent) as well as to the American bimonthly World Literature Today. Several essays of his were published in Polish publication Odra Wrocław. He also continues publishing in Hungarian, English and Polish. His reminiscences of Czesław Miłosz were included in Cynthia L. Haven's An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz in 2011.An Invisible Rope Ohio University Press. Retrieved 3 May 2014.
He is also a member of Trinity College, Cambridge and emeritus fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, where for a number of years edited the college newsletter. For over three decades he has been on the editorial board of the American quarterly Books Abroad and its continuation World Literature Today. He is also on the editorial board of Lymbus Budapest and Litteraria Copernicana Toruń.
2014 saw a new book of his poetry published, Rózsalovaglás (Riding with Roses), by Pro Pannonia Publishers and his collected essays on the late Renaissance poet Bálint Balassi (A rejtőzködő Balassi) published in Hungarian by Komp-Press in Romania. His latest poetry collection in English, Polishing October: New and Selected Poems (Shoestring Press) was recently reviewed in World Literature Today.
Family life
He has two daughters from his first marriage, Beata and Anna, and with his second wife Mari has brought up three sons, Daniel, Peter and Ben.
The neo-classical and modernist Hungarian painter and engraver, Jenő Medveczky was his step-father. The Darwinian newsletter, Autumn 2002, p7. Retrieved 21 October 2020
Bibliography
Virág-bizonyság (Evidence of Flowers, poems in Hungarian), London, 1958 Hajnali úton (On a Dawn Road, poems in Hungarian) London, 1963 Borisz Paszternák: Karácsonyi csillag (BP's post-1945 poetry in Hungarian.With Vince Sulyok), Occidental Press, Washington, 1965 Polish and Hungarian Poetry 1945 to 1956,(a study in comparative literature), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966 New Writing of East Europe (Anthology based on the East European number of Tri-Quarterly; edited with Charles Newman), Quadrangle Press, Chicago, 1968 Átváltozások (Metamorphoses, poems in Hungarian and verse translations into Hungarian), London, 1969 Új égtájak (anthology of the 1956 generation of Hungarian poets in exile. Ed with Vilmos Juhász) Occidental Press, Washington, 1969 Attila József: Selected Poems and Texts (tr. John Batki; ed. with James Atlas), Carcanet Press, Cheadle Hulme, 1973 László Nagy: Love of the Scorching Wind. Selected Poems, (partly tr., and ed. with Gyula Kodolányi), OUP, Oxford-New York-Toronto, 1974 Cyprian Norwid (monograph), Twayne, New York, 1974 Levél hanyatló birodalomból (Letter from a Declining Empire, poems in Hungarian) Munich, 1976 Az ismeretlen fa.. Mai lengyel költők (The Unknown Tree. Anthology of Modern Polish poets in Hungarian translation, ed. and tr.), Occidental Press, Washington, 1978 Miklós Radnóti: Forced March. Selected Poems, (ed. and transl. With Clive Wilmer), Carcanet Press, Manchester, 1979 Homage to Mandelstam (multilingual verse anthology, ed. with Richard Burns), LOS, Cambridge, 1981 Nyugtalan koranyár (Restless Early Summer, poems in Hungarian), Occidental Press, Washington, 1984 Polscy poeci o wegierskim pazdzierniku (Polish Poets on the Hungarian October, verse anthology in Polish and partly in Hungarian, ed. and tr.), Polish Cultural Foundation, London, 1986; 2nd, enlarged edition London, 1996 Cyprian Norwid. Poet, thinker, craftsman (essays by different hands, introduced and an essay; ed. with B.Mazur), SSEES-Univ.of London/ Orbis Books, London, 1988 Angol-magyar kapcsolatok a XVI-XVII században (Anglo-Hungarian Contacts in the 15–16th centuries, essays), Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989 Búcsú a romantikától (Farewell to Romanticism- Selected Poems in Hungarian), Magvető, Budapest, 1990 Nyugatról nézve (Seen from the West, essays), Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1990 Erdélyiek és angolok (Transylvanians and Englishmen, essays) Héttorony, Budapest, 1991 György Petri: Night Song of the Personal Shadow. Selected Poems.(Tr.and ed. with Clive Wilmer)Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 1991 As if...Three Hungarian Poets (Verse anthology ed. by George Szirtes; poems of Győző Ferencz, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and George Gömöri), The Cheltenham Festival, Cheltenham, 1991 Angol és skót utazók a régi Magyarországon, 1541–1737 (English and Scottish Travellers in the Hungary of the Past, 1541–1737, ed. and translated), Argumentum, Budapest, 1994 George Gömöri: My Manifold City.Selected Poems (Tr. from the Hungarian with Clive Wilmer, also by Tony Connor and George Szirtes), The Alba Press, Cambridge, 1996, 2nd ed. printed in Budapest, 1996 The Colonnade of Teeth. Modern Hungarian Poetry, ed. and introduced with George Szirtes, notes by George Gömöri, Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 1996 Egy szigetlakó feljegyzéseiből (From the Notebook of an Islander, essays, reviews), Cserépfalvi, Budapest, 1996 Őszi magánbeszéd. Versek 1945–1996, (Autumn Monologue, Poems in Hungarian), Szivárvány; Chicago-Budapest, 1997 Zbigniew Herbert: Az izlés hatalma (a selection translated from Herbert's poems into Hungarian), Orpheus, Budapest, 1998 A bujdosó Balassitól a meggyászolt Zrínyi Miklósig, (From the Exiled Balassi to the Mourned Nicholas Zrínyi, essays on literary and cultural history), Argumentum, Budapest, 1999 The Life and Poetry of Miklós Radnóti, ed. with Clive Wilmer (essays by different hands) East European Monographs, Boulder, Co., 1999, distributed by Columbia University Press György Petri: Eternal Monday. New and Selected Poems, tr. with Clive Wilmer, Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 1999 Jőjj el, szabadság...Irások a huszadik századi magyar költészetről (Come, Freedom! Essays on Twentieth-Century Hungarian Poetry), Nyelv és Lélek Könyvek, Anyanyelvi Konferencia, Budapest, 1999 Váltott hangokon. Szerepversek és újabb versek (On Different Voices, Poems), Kortárs kiadó, Budapest, 2000 Magnetic Poles, (essays on Polish and Comparative Literature), Polish Cultural Foundation, London, 2000 Czeslaw Milosz: Ahogy elkészül a világ.Versek (Poems tr. into Hungarian by Cz.Milosz: How the World is Made, selected and translated), AB-ART, Bratislava, 2001 Clive Wilmer: Végtelen változatok.Versek (Infinite Variations, Hungarian tr. of poems by C.Wilmer, with Anna T. Szabó), JATE Press, Szeged, 2002 Miklós Radnóti, Forced March. Selected Poems, 2nd, extended ed., tr. with Clive Wilmer, Enitharmon Press, London, 2003 A tél illata. Versek (The Fragrance of Winter. Poems), Ister, Budapest, 2003 Dylemat królika doswiadczalnego.Wybór wierszy (The Guinea Pig's Dilemma.Poems tr. into Polish, tr. by Feliks Netz), Biblioteka Slaska, Katowice, 2003 Erdélyi merítések. Tanulmányok és írások (Transylvanian Catches.Essays and Writings), Komp-Press, Ariadné, Cluj-Kolozsvár, 2004 Magyarországi diákok angol és skót egyetemeken 1526–1789.Hungarian Students in England and Scotland 1526–1789, Egyetemi Könyvtár, Budapest, 2005 (Database: Magyar diákok egyetemjárása az újkorban, 14.) Versek Marinak – Poems for Mari, (bilingual selection of poems), PONT kiadó, Budapest, 2006 Az én forradalmam. Emlékezések és írások az 1956-os forradalomról (My Revolution. Reminiscences and Writings about the 1956 Hungarian revolution), PONT kiadó, Budapest, 2006 Ez, és nem más (Válogatott és ujabb versek)(This One and Noone Else, Poems selected by Tibor Zalán), Argumentum, Budapest, 2007 Polishing October (New and Selected Poems), tr. Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri, Shoestring Press, 2008, 80 pp. A száműzetés kertje (Ujabb versek), with the photos of Kaiser Ottó, Komp-Press, Cluj-Napoca, 2009 Kulturánk követei a régi Európában, Tanulmányok, Editio Princeps, Piliscsaba, 2009, 215 pp. and illustrations.