Ferenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy (7 April 1893 – 22 June 1915) was a Hungarian poet who was killed in World War I.

Biography

Ferenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy was born to Istvan Békássy and Emma Bezeredj in the family mansion at Zsennye in Vas County, western Hungary. He and his five siblings were sent to

Bedales School Bedales School is a co-educational, boarding and day independent school in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conven ...

for a progressive English education. After six years at Bedales, in 1911 he entered

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

as a

pensioner A pensioner is a person who receives a pension, most commonly because of retirement from the workforce. This is a term typically used in the United Kingdom (along with OAP, initialism of old-age pensioner), Ireland and Australia where someone of p ...

to read History. At

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

his friends included

James Strachey James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of ''The Standar ...

E. L. Grant Watson Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson (14 June 1885 – 21 May 1970) was a writer and biologist. Among some 40 books and many essays and short stories he wrote six 'Australian' novels and several scientific-philosophical works that challenge Darwinism, o ...

, and especially

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

, who went to stay with him in Hungary during the summer of 1913. He was elected a member of the

Cambridge Apostles The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...

, the semi-secret debating club. He and Rupert Brooke courted the same woman,

Noël Olivier Hon. Noël Olivier Richards (25 December 1892 – 11 April 1969) was an English medical doctor. She was born on Christmas Day 1892, hence her name, as the daughter of Sydney Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier and Margaret Cox. A cousin was the actor Si ...

, whom Békássy had known from Bedales. He wrote poetry in both Hungarian and in English. Some of his English poems appeared in a Cambridge anthology in 1913. The Hungarian poems were only published posthumously. When war was imminent, with the assistance of Keynes, he returned to

Austro-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

to enlist. He served in a Hussar unit and four days after arriving on the Eastern Front, he was killed in action against the Russians in Bukovina on 22 June 1915. His body was brought back to the family estate for burial. BekassyF at Kings

In a side chapel at

King's College Chapel King's College Chapel is the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, King's College in the University of Cambridge. It is considered one of the finest examples of late Perpendicular Gothic English architecture and features the world's largest fan ...

there is a plaque commemorating members of the college killed serving in the Great War, including Rupert Brooke. Carved into the stone of another wall there is a single name, that of Békássy. Keynes had asked the college to include him among those commemorated but another of the Fellows of King's, who had lost a son in the war, objected to the name of someone who had died fighting the Allies being listed with the other fallen. A collection of his poems in English, edited by F. L. Lucas, was published in 1925 by

Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek Λέων ("lion") through the Latin '' L ...

and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...

.John H. Willis, ''Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917–41'', p. 141

Works

*Ferenc Bekassy
''Adriatica and other poems''
a selection, with preface (Hogarth Press, 1925) *''Békássy Ferenc egybegyűjtött írásai''; edited by Tibor Weiner Sennyey (Budapest, 2010)

References

Bibliography

''The Alien in the Chapel: Ferenc Békássy, Rupert Brooke's Unknown Rival'' by

George Gömöri George Gomori may refer to: * György Gömöri (1904–1957), Hungarian-American physician and histochemist * George Gomori (born 1934), Hungarian-born poet, writer and academic {{hndis, Gomori, George ...

& Mari Gömöri (2016) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bekassy, Ferenc 1893 births 1915 deaths People from Vas County Hungarian male poets People educated at Bedales School Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Austro-Hungarian military personnel killed in World War I 20th-century Hungarian poets 20th-century Hungarian male writers