Garai, Gábor

Born Jan. 27, 1929, in Budapest. Hungarian poet. Member of the Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party since 1957 and of its Central Committee since 1970. The son of a writer.

From 1958 to 1960, Garai was editor of the Európa Publishing House. In 1965 he became secretary of the Union of Hungarian Writers and editor of the newspaper, Élet és irodalom. He has published since 1948. His lyrics (the collections Busy Days, 1956; The Human Rite, 1960; Artists, 1964; and Tuesday, 1966) have an intellectual-philosophical cast; a feeling of civic responsibility and the affirmation of the indissoluble bond between the personality and the socialist collective are their main topics. Garai has translated the works of J. W. Goethe, R. M. Rilke, B. Brecht, V. Nezval, L. N. Martynov, A. A. Voznesenskii, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko into Hungarian. In 1966 he received the Kossuth Prize.