Ottó Orbán, a major figure in contemporary Hungarian poetry and a huge presence on the Hungarian literature scene in general, passed away nearly 20 years ago. A decades-long illness left his body debilitated at a painfully early age, but the disease was incapable of breaking his razor sharp mind and brilliantly multifaceted poetry. He left us too soon, yet he was not unfulfilled. Indeed, he left us a diverse yet coherent body of work, capable of speaking to the widest possible range of readers.
One of the most vital properties of his poetry is that Orbán - just like one of his mentors, Sándor Weöres - was a superb quick-change artist, capable of implementing a wide variety of masks in his communication, ensuring that the voices in his poems also have a strikingly wide register. In addition to his tragic, hymnal, uplifting and abstract poetical voice, you can also detect an ever-present inclination towards the grotesque, a perspective capable of the sub-style of the language of the everyday - the base next to the majestic, near-sordid language next to the sublime, the serious or at times gloomy speech alongside irony and self-deprecation. Or something that is less common in Hungarian poetry: humour, the ability to weave words, demonstrated by his sparkling literary parodies; he was a superb writer in this genre, too, one of the last Hungarians to take the genre seriously.
Ottó Orbán fulfilled an intercultural, intermediary role between the classic modern and postmodern approaches to poetry. His poems are allied with the finest poetry traditions from Hungarian folk poetry and the American beat poets, welding the fecund influence of Ginsberg and Corso to Sándor Weöres's protean poetry. It is also clear that to the very end, Ottó Orbán stuck to the poetical concept that behind diversity and variety lies a 'fixed, radiating core', in an ontological and ethical sense, that tells us that aesthetically speaking, too, our lives are nothing without deeds. This event seeks to draw your attention to this gripping and engaging duality.
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
Creators:
Featuring:
László Gálffi
Emőke Zsigmond
Pál Mácsai
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We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
