István Vörös was born in
Budapest in 1964. In addition to his jobs as library stacker and worker
at a museum he published his first book of poems, »Só, kenyér« (t:
Salt, bread) in 1988, together with the short story collection
»Innenvilág« (t: The world from here). Following the fall of Communist
rule, he studied Hungarian and Czech, then worked as a lecturer,
completing a doctoral thesis in 1998. He currently teaches at the
Institute for Czech Philology at the Catholic University in Budapest
and also gives creative writing classes.
Vörös is one of the most
celebrated Hungarian poets of his generation. Along with ten
collections of poems he has also written essays, reviews and short
stories. He has been awarded Hungarian and Czech prizes such as the
Füst Milan Prize and recently Prague's Premia Bohemica for his
translations of Czech writers, among them Miroslav Holub, Ivan
Wernisch, Petr Borkovec and Vladimír Holan. His own work has been
translated into several languages, including English, French, Italian,
Slovenian, Slovak, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian and Czech, and has been
featured in anthologies such as »Contemporary Hungarian Poetry« (1997)
and »Budapester Szenen« (1999; t: Budapest scenes). The volume of
poetry »Die leere Grapefruit« (2004; t: The empty grapefruit, after the
epononymous poem »Az üres grapefruit«) has appeared in German,
comprised of a selection from »A darázs tanításai« (2000; t: The
teachings of the wasp) and hitherto unpublished poems. Memorable and
precisely formulated images from everyday life are carried over into a
dreamlike and surreal state, giving the poems an undefined, allegorical
character. His mother baking strudel watched by her grandson, a bicycle
ride with his son or his impressions of New York as a tourist become,
like well-known paintings or poems, the point of departure for
transforming the familiar into something quietly astonishing. So too,
even feelings such as mourning, melancholy and tedium, are led into a
cathartic process of profound change. »A still and concentrated,
dancerlike form which lays out the cavities and perils of humanity in
language devoid of pathos«, witnesses the »Neue Zürcher Zeitung« of
this author, who with »a gentle and casual sense of the profane«
reflects on the inseparability of life and death.
Vörös has been
awarded numerous prizes, among them the Tibor Déry Prize, the Vilenica
Crystal Award, the Attila József Prize and the Hubert Burda Prize. Most
recently published in Hungarian is his collection of poems entitled
»Heidegger, a postahivatalnok« (2004; t: Heidegger, the postalworker),
the poems for children »A hajnali tolvaj« (2004; t: The thief at dawn)
and »Gregorián az erdön« (2005; t: Gregorián in the forest). The author
lives in Budapest and is currently a guest of the German Academic
Exchange Service in Berlin.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Só, kenyér
Eötvös könyvek
Budapest, 1988
Innenvilág
Széphalom
Budapest, 1988
A darázs tanításai
Jelenkor
Pecs, 2000
A kéz öt ujja
Jelenkor
Pecs, 2001
Heidegger, a postahivatalnok
Jelenkor
Pecs, 2003
Die leere Grapefruit
Edition Korrespondenzen
Wien, 2004
[T: Zsuzsanna Gahse]
A hajnali tolvaj
Csimota Könyvkiadó
Budapest, 2004
Gregorián az erdön
Jelenkor
Pecs, 2005 |
