The Kossuth Prize-winner passed away at home on Friday. Fanny Faludy-Kovacs, his wife, said he would be buried on 9 September at 4pm in the Fiumei Ut Cemetory.
Gyorgy Faludy was known for volumes of poetry like Autumn Trio, My Joyful days in Hell, Prison Verse, the 200 Sonnets, Erotic Poems and Notes on the Margins of Illnes. He died just days before the launch of his latest volume. This latest book is a continuation of My Joyful Days in Hell and After My Days in Hell.
Gyorgy Faludy was born in Budapest on 22 September 1910. In 1938, recognising that the country was turning toward Fascism, he left for France. When that country was invaded by the Germans, he fled to Morocco before sailing to the United States in 1941.
He returned to Hungary after World War II. He was arrested on trumped up charges in 1950 and sent to the labour camp in Recsk. He was released when the camp was shut down in 1953.
He went back into exile after the 1956 uprising. He lived in London, Florence and Malta, before moving to Toronto. After the regime change in 1989, he returned to Hungary.
In 1991, the poet was made a member of the Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary. In 1993 he was made an honorary citizen of Budapest. He was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1994, a Pulitzer Memorial Prize in 1998 and he won a Golden Pen in 2000.
"He achieved and understood everything, and he wrote it all as verse. He lived everywhere, met everyone and was driven away from everywhere. He did not love everyone, and he could not always be in his own country. Now he is among us, we are near him. 100 years of solitude, 100 years of companionship. He needs only to be taken down from the shelf. This we will attempt," wrote the organisers of his 95th birthday celebrations in their invitation last year.
The Canadian embassy in Budapest also announced yesterday that a Gyorgy Faludy memorial park would be established in Torono. The new park, which will be designed by the architect Scott Torrence, will be in Faludy's "chosen homeland", opposite his old house.
Gyorgy Faludy lived and worked in Toronto for 20 years from 1966. He became a Canadian citizen in 1976. Two years later, the University of Toronto, where he taught regularly, awarded him an honorary doctorate.
The Ministry for Education and Culture said in a statement that Gyorgy Faludy's death was an irreplaceable loss for Hungarian society and for Hungarian and international literature. According to the statement, "Gyorgy Faludy lived through, suffered and enjoyed almost the entire 20th century. He was there for that eras most important events, and he was able to accompany us into the threshold of the 21st century with his critical insights."