The Embassy of Hungary in Athens and Vakxikon Publications hold a poetry evening with selected poems from the Anthology of Young Hungarian Poets, on Monday, September 5th, 7:00 p.m., at Enastron Book Cafe, Solonos 101. Poems will be read by Weiner Sennyey Tibor, Izsó Zita and Bék Timur, who are coming to Greece on the occasion of their participation in the Patras Poetry Festival.
On the occasion of their presence in Athens, the anthologist and poet of the Anthology of Young Hungarian Poets (Vakxikon Publications), Weiner Sennyey Tibor, the poet Bék Timur and the poetess Izsó Ζita give us this interview full of poetry.
Interview to Angeliki Dimopoulou
How do you feel that you can now address the Greek readership through the “Anthology of Young Hungarian Poets”?
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: It was a great honour to be part of this anthology. I am really grateful that a collection of Hungarian poems was published in Greek language. It was a pleasure to have been appointed to select Hungarian poets and help editing this volume. I was chosen to write a preface to the anthology where I expressed my thoughts about this: “From this collection of poetry people can find out more about us than from the news, from a last minute holiday or how they judge us based on our football. Now Greek readers can do something for us, Hungarian poets. You can take our poems to the seaside and read them to the sea while we will read your Greek poems in our forests.”
Bék Timur: I think my poems can be interesting for the Greek readership, especially because I often allude to Greek philosophy and use mythological characters in new context. My first volume’s title is Asterion which is – according to Argentinean philosopher Jorge Luis Borges – the name of the minotaur. Generally I don’t believe that poems can be translated, because they are so attached to the language that the result of the translation can only be a new poem strongly inspired by the original. But if we think about it, this is also the case if we keep the language. Someone writes down a few words and an other person reads them, but the exact same words have different meanings, different representations in the reader’s mind than in the author’s. The poems we read are not the ones that have been written. So it was never about delivering a message perfectly and faithfully, but to inspire. And I am truly honoured to be able to inspire not just Hungarian but Greek people from now on. It is, for real, a privilege.
Izsó Ζita: In the past few days I took part in the Patras World Poetry Festival, and I was totally amazed at how much Greek people like poetry and how much they appreciate it. Unfortunately the contemporary Greek literature is not well translated into Hungarian – I’m working as an editor of an international literary magazine called 1749.hu, so I will try to change it -, but thanks to this festival I had the possibility to get to know many interesting younger and older authors as well (among others living legends like Titos Patrikios). According to my impressions the Greek contemporary poetry scene is very interesting and colorful, and it’s really an honor if the Greek readers are interested in the Hungarian literature too and find something interesting in it. (And I believe that translations are very important because the literatures of different countries can influence and inspire each other). By the way, Greece is one of my favourite countries, I have been here many times, and when I can, I come back (few years ago I tried to live in Thessaloniki). I think it’s because Greek people always look at me as if they would know me and that makes me feel at home. So it was one of my biggest dreams to be translated into Greek and be able to touch the Greek people and readers.
How did poetry come into your life? What would you say you give and what do you get from it?
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: I have been writing poems since I was ten years old, so for thirty-one years. To me poetry has always been a natural self reflection, self therapy. I realized that I can also heal others with the poems, I can heal the whole world. Heal through expression of words. Of course poetry is not merely expression of words, it is more than that. I also experienced what it feels like to be part of the “great conversation” through reading, in which contemporary and not contemporary poets take part, this is what we call literature. This literature is nothing else but the “great conversation” of the spirit of mankind. In this process poets create such ideas like “self” and “people of a country”, “nation”, “world”, “freedom”, “democracy” and so on. These words sooner or later would become popular with the rest of society, the entire human race would start using them as part of their natural vocabulary no matter how abstract they might sound first. Poets give these abstract expressions to people wrapped up in stories and feelings and after a while the people will start to understand that these belong to them, these are about their lives. Of course in the meantime poets also penetrate the soul too, not only the mind. From the pressure of the deepest suffering and pain they can extract wonderful diamonds. Once in an interview I asked a poet who was a hundred years old: “What are poets for?”. She replied: “Poets are to tell others what they will not even accept from themselves.”
Bék Timur: I am thankful for my father for a lots of things. Two of these in particular are patience and poetry. This is actually a really lucky combination, because both reading and creating poems require immeasurable patience. When I was in elementary school he used to show me the works of his favourite poets, and later, when I was in high school, we often discussed what I had to read for literature lessons and we tried to find a deeper, personal meaning between the lines. This was the time I found out that poems can be much more precise models of reality than scientific formulas without – by nature – trying to be exact. Language is a wonder and words are really useful tools, but they are obtuse if we have to speak about essential things. But sharpened into poetry they can make miracles.
Izsó Ζita: I think thanks to poetry I was able to learn to speak, because without this I’m not really able to express myself. It’s been like that since I was a child (I started to write when I was 12). So for me poetry is a way of seeing and interpreting the world around me. And I think this is also very important in a wider context: because if we can’t talk about our feelings and traumas, if we are not able to find a right language for it, it will make us sick. As a very well-known Hungarian psychiatrist – called András Feldmár – said: you processed your trauma in the moment when you are able to talk about it and everyone is crying around you, but not you (anymore). And through the language of poetry, you can talk about even the most difficult things in a very sensitive and understandable way. It was the most important thing what poetry gave me in my life.
Are there any particular issues that you would say influence your own and contemporary Hungarian poetry in general?
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: My first volume of poetry was published in 2005 with the title: “Reestablishing the connection with nature”. These days as a gardener and beekeeper I can say that this choice of title must have been no coincidence. One of my most important topics is still rethinking our connection with nature. Another poetry book of mine was titled: “Pihik”. The pihi is a special species of birds that have only one wing so they are creeps, weirdos, who can only fly if they stick with each other as then and only then do they have two wings that enables them to fly. This is how I see today’s humankind, and myself as part of it, of course.
Bék Timur: My main subject is time as the tragedy of man (just like in the world famous play by Madách Imre), and entropy. I also deal with great philosophical clichés like ‘why do we live?’, ‘is there a higher power?’, ‘is life determined?’ and so on, even though I know I can’t say anything new about them. We can always explore old ideas in new clothing. Lately I’m interested in the relationship between nature and humanity, and the cruelty and rigidity of post-modern society.
Izsó Ζita: I think the most important thing is that we can write about everything, from the most ordinary topics to the most important social issues. Everything can be inspiring, and it gives us freedom. (It also means that you are able to find value in even the simplest things around you, and you are able to be grateful for everything, and this attitude is very important in the everyday life too. So I think poetry also teaches me how to live). For me its also important to write about socially important topics, but also be able to find poetry around us, in the smallest moments of the everyday life.
What role can/would you like poetry to play today?
Weiner Sennyey Tibor: Since I also write essays, short stories and dramas too I can see what we can accomplish in each genre. When I write an essay about beekeeping to a beekeper magazine about the art of beekeeping then I try to expand the mental horizon but I also do my best not only to communicate data but also to provide a way of thinking, create an ethos too. When I wrote my dramas about Sappho or Diogenes I did my best to create characters that would mesmerize the audience while showing them who these people had been. When I write a short story for a sci-fi magazine then I try to break the boundaries of imagination, to write about something that is yet difficult to imagine. The Book of Sand from Jorge Luis Borges is a good example for this. In it he wrote about the internet as he imagined it 40 years before it was invented. And when I write poetry I am absolutely free, I am totally in the moment, I absorb in it whether it’s a good or a bad one. I have no intentions when I write poetry only to be in the moment, be in the poem. It depends on a lot of things what would come out of a poem. These days I write and as I write I will see if it will be a free verse or one in strict metre or rhyme scheme, rhytmical or not. Form will adjust to the content as I write. Very often I carry a poem within me for days then I go to sleep and dream of it and when I get up I’d scribble it down as if I was a diver who found something in the depth of the ancient sees of the collective subconscious and brought it up to the surface of the conscious mind. Of course poetry is celebration. It is the big moment of life when we can be present. A really good poem can bring the reader into the absolute present moment and make them understand that they live right now and that everything is happening right now and there’s nowhere to run away from this. All poets have their own methods. I cannot expect them to write like I do but true poetry is easily recognized if it brings you to the present moment when you read it. True poetry is first felt and only later understood. I think it has always been the role of poetry, this is not something new. When Homer’s songs were listened to, the audience was in the war of Troy. When they read Dante, they were there in the circles of hell. When they read Walt Whitman, they were on the open road. We must enter the present moment, we must be present, no matter what that poem is about.
Bék Timur: The role it always played: reflecting to reality in an artistic form. Nowadays, when our impact on life on Earth is bigger than ever, our responsibility has grown, so mankind is in need of self-reflection. Maybe more than ever.
Izsó Ζita: I think the more languages we speak, the more things we can talk about, and poetry is also one the many existing languages and it’s available for everyone, and that’s the reason why it’s very good to know and use it.
Weiner Sennyey Tibor – (1981): Poet, writer, editor in chief of DRÓT. He graduated as a philologist from the University of Szeged. He collected and published the works of Ferenc Békássy. He has several volumes of short stories, short novels, collections of essays and four poetry books. His latest book, the twelfth in the line is an essay collection about Béla Hamvas, it came out in 2019. He lives in Szentendre, Hungary. When he is not writing and editing he is a passionate gardener, beekeeper and slow walker.
Bék Timur – (1997): Timur was born in the winter of 1997 in Szászvár. At the moment he studies Hungarian language, media, pedagogy and listens to Pink Floyd in the University of Szeged. His writings were published by several Hungarian periodicals. His biggest fear is perhaps oblivion. His first volume came out in 2019 and won him an award straight away.
Zita Izsó – (1986): Poet, translator, playwrite, editor of books, periodicals and radio programmes. Her first play which she wrote together with her sibling, won her first prize of the drama competition of the Hungarian Radio. Her first volume of poetry came out in 2012 and won her a Gérecz Attila prize. In 2013 she won a Móricz Zsigmond Literary Scholarship and in 2015 a Babits Mihály Literary Translator’s Scholarship. She is managing a blog called ‘Pesti nő’ (‘The Budapest Lady’) together with Máté Bach and in the spring of 2017 they published an interview collection from the materials of this (Pesti nő, Athenaeum Kiadó). Her poems have been translated to English, Czech, Arabic, German, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish, Serbian and Turkish. Her third volume of poetry was published in 2018.