(The poetry written by György Petri before the collapse of...)
The poetry written by György Petri before the collapse of Hungary's Communist régime was published by Bloodaxe in 1991 in Night Song of the Personal Shadow: Selected Poems, also translated by George Gömöri and Clive Wilmer. Eternal Monday was a new selection, mostly written since 1989, with a Foreword by Elaine Feinstein.
György Petri was a Hungarian poet, journalist, and translator. He was one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Hungarian poetry and was a distinguished translator from French, German and English. Petri is perhaps best known to foreign readers for his criticism of the Kádár's "goulash communism," a regime that offered superficial liberties.
Background
György Petri was born on December 22, 1943, in Budapest, Hungary. He was a son of Jewish Serbian refugee parents: a book trader and an office worker. After his father's death, he was raised by his mother, grandparents, and aunts. His family origins show the myriad of national colours of historical Hungary: Serbian, Jewish tradesmen, but there also happen to be Bunjevci (Serbian Roman Catholic) peasants among his ancestors, as well as Swabian, Slovakian and Moravian settlers.
Education
György Petri attended Toldy Gimnázium. According to his remembrance, he turned to poetry at 11 or 12. As a teenager, he worked as a journalist and a psychiatric nurse. From the early 1960s, Petri published in such renowned periodicals as Kortárs and Élet és Irodalom. Disillusioned by their style himself, he never let any of those writings be re-issued, and soon he developed the intention to change his career. In 1966-1971, Petri studied at Eötvös Loránd University to study philosophy and Hungarian literature but did not complete his degree. His most inspiring professors were György Márkus, Endre Simon, and György Lukács. Under the influence of Lukács, he claimed to be an Austromarxist, which strongly opposed the official doctrine of the time. It was during the studies that he made important contacts, especially his connection with philosopher Jano Kis, who would greatly influence his work.
In 1974-2000, György Petri was a freelance writer. In 1981-1985, he was an editor of Beszélő newspaper. Petri was one of the editors of Holmi, a literary periodical from 1989, the year of its foundation, to his death in 2000. He was one of the founders of the Digital Literary Academy.
György Petri published his first poem when he was seventeen, but stopped writing a few years later because he thought his poetry was too conventional. He did not resume writing for six years. In 1971, his first collection of poetry was published and was well received. From that time on, he was able to earn enough money on which to have through his writing. Petri's poetry, in his later years, was anything but conventional. He was not a typical Hungarian poet. His use of irony was at odds with the Hungarian romantic tradition, which he considered compromised, and his taste for the raw meat of street language rubbed up against the precise minutiae of political and sexual life in a way that his contemporaries found wholly convincing. Petri is often compared to Thomas Stearns Eliot, a major influence on his work, and Clive Wilmer, the poet who translated his work, compared him to Jonathan Swift for his satirical tone. One of Petri's critics, Géza Fodor, has called him "an anachronistically romantic poet in an anachronistic age." Petri's pessimism derives from the contrast between his radically high ideals and the disappointment of reality. Although he aims to get rid of the personal, his poetry is characterized by a strong, suggestive personality looking at the world from a detached, existential stance but also absorbing it sensually, as his images reveal.
During his lifetime Petri enjoyed a wide readership. He wrote about politics and love with irony and biting honesty, sometimes offending and embarrassing conservatives by writing about political events considered taboo, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Petri's dislike of the conventional language of most of his fellow poets caused his work to be banned in Hungary between 1975 and 1989. He refused to write abstractly, refused to use language that skirted important issues, especially in the political arena. During the years that his writing was banned, when communist leaders controlled Hungary, he relinquished the concept of reaching a large audience and had his work published by an independent illegal press, then passed out copies of his work to friends.
Night Song of the Personal Shadow: Selected Poems, one of two of Petri's collections to be published in English, contains political and love poems, both types written in a tone and temper that have been forged by experiences both public and private. Critics who read both the Hungarian and English versions of Night Song of the Personal Shadow commented on the difficulty in translating Petri, who loved wordplay.
In 1999, the second collection of Petri's poems was published in English. Eternal Monday: New & Selected Poems contains some of the poems from the first collection plus thirty-six new ones, many of them written earlier than the poems in Night Song of the Personal Shadow. The tone of the whole collection shows how the poet's outlook has changed, as the majority of Petri's earlier poems were more personal and less political. One of Petri's recurring themes was that of death. Some of the best poems were inspired by funerals of writers; and when contemplating the possibility of his own death, Petri grew philosophically. Uncertain of the time he has left, he speaks in his poems in a settled and simplified voice, concentrating on what is existentially significant. Eating, drinking, recipes, walks, massages, and love: the often diary-like texts take into account the facts with the simplicity of conversation yet with black humour as well.
(The poetry written by György Petri before the collapse of...)
1999
Politics
By 1981, György Petri's political disgust was occupying center-stage. When he submitted the third collection for publication, he was told that the book could only be printed if he cut 30 poems from it. He refused. In 1982, the book was illegally published in samizdat. It had become Petri's main purpose to expose the dishonesty of János Kádár's "liberalism" by pushing official tolerance to its limit and deny himself the prestige and privilege reserved for officially successful writers. He also made himself a target for police surveillance. The political commitment in his poetry seemed to Petri "a moral obligation," and its logical consequence was his involvement in the so-called democratic opposition.
In 1981-1985, Petri co-edited Beszélő, the illegal paper of the Democratic Opposition, and became involved in their anti-regime activities. He was a member of SZETA (Fund for the Support of the Poor, an illegal non-governmental organization that drew governmental attention by advocating the mere existence of poverty) from which a liberal party, Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Free Democrats) was formed in 1988. During the 1994 elections, Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége nominated him for Member of Parliament, but in the same year, he had to express his disgust of the party's collaboration with its old enemies, the Socialists, by quitting the party. Besides, his delight was always in anarchy and dissent, and with the departure of communism, he lost his "favorite toy" - as he said in one of his poems.
Views
Sexuality is often the glass through which György Petri discloses the nature of freedom in his poetry. The same is true of death. As the final limit on freedom, death is evoked by Petri with a morbid physicality and black humor that recall the medieval world. His view of sex is more ambivalent. It focuses on the bleakness of the human condition: the temporary nature of our attachments, failures of communication, the mutability of the body, our ultimate loneliness. But it is also an instance and emblem of personal freedom: an activity pursued its own sake, necessarily private, which no authority has the power to control.
Quotations:
"I don't consider myself an "engaged" artist, in the original sense of the word. Politics plays just as important a part in my life as women, good cigarettes, alcohol, and my private passion, cooking. Politics is a determining factor of my life."
Personality
According to Clive Wilmer, a poet, critic, and literary journalist, György Petri was charming, witty, considerate, and courteous. There was a vitality to his swarthy features, and his talk was often wonderfully terse and acerbic. Petri tended to depict himself as a dissipated and world-weary bohemian, resigned to the narrow limits of human life.
Physical Characteristics:
From his early youth, Petri suffered in serious nicotine dependency and alcoholism. When, in the summer of 1998, György Petri learned that he had cancer of the larynx, he had an enemy grander than the state. His respect for that enemy, and his cool awareness of his responsibility for the grip it had on him, produced poetry of memorable courage and clarity.
Quotes from others about the person
András Forgách, a close friend of György Petri, wrote: "I'm never satisfied when Petri is named a political poet. There's no question that Petri ever expressed desires and goals, or wrote "Hang all the Kings!," like Sándor Petőfi, it would never have crossed his mind. He was as much of an observer in politics as he was in the pub, in the kitchen, in the garden, in the matters of his own body until the very end."
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Jano Kis, György Márkus, György Lukács
Connections
György Petri was married twice. His first wife was Sara Kepes, with whom he had one daughter. His second wife was Mária Nagy, with whom he had one son. György Petri's life partner was Mária Pap.