Gergő Korsós: Imagine
We continue our series of excerpts from A Bay of Megaphones, the new anthology of young Hungarian poets. Gergő Korsós' poem bristles with irony and sci-fi references, while betraying poignant, human hurt, in Anna Bentley's translation.
Korsós’ oeuvre to date consists of a single volume’s worth of poems. Even on a first reading, it is striking that the majority of these have been inspired by the countless worlds of sci-fi and fantasy: those written about, and those presented in images and in film. In the consciousness of those who consume them, these virtual worlds can come together to form a real fantasy universe, one which is so large, so powerful and complete, that the actual, workaday world seems, by comparison, unsophisticated and less than satisfying. On a first, superficial reading, then, Korsós’ poems, filled as they are with aliens, time warps, and witchcraft, exist within this enormous, shared fantasy universe, and do not look beyond it. They have no need to (just as the bucolic poets and their readers had no need to leave Arcadia).
And yet, we barely find a Korsós poem which is “merely” a fantasy poem, because they continually refer back to our contemporary, everyday society, to our families, our lovers, and our circumstances. Like, for example Prophecy, which, of the poems provided here, seems the purest sci-fi text: the speaker is a space-traveller who is always moving on, but the closing lines of the poem are clearly about human concepts and emotions and about love for the Other, who is left behind. Imagine is like this too: an unsuccessful date is presented in satirical, ironic fashion, but there is also tangible hurt. The two characters talk past each other, trapped in their own fixations (the speaker’s is sci-fi, the girl’s is feminism). While The Pets Set Off does not make use of concrete sci-fi elements, it nevertheless takes place in the kind of fantasy space which tends to be permeated by an apocalyptic, posthuman melancholy (a 21st-century space, if you like); it is a quiet farewell to all that is human.
István Kemény
Imagine,
I met this girl once,
nothing came of it in the end
though it started out really well:
we sat in this place,
I ordered two lagers,
and another and another,
and all of a sudden I found myself
calling her a sweet-lipped milky way girl,
which she objected to,
she wasn’t a doll to be played with, she said,
and anyway.
Then I got started on
the increasingly concerning proliferation
of smuggler colonies on the dark side of the moon.
I was just laying into those
legal paragraphs that are shielding criminals,
without which we’d be able to simply
blast the vermin with plasma guns,
when she suddenly said
did I know how many statues of women there were in Pest,
ones that were not just nudes.
No, I say,
then guess, she says,
25, I say
35, she says,
while there’s a statue of a man for every street.
Then she asked me
to name some women poets,
she bet I knew fewer than male ones.
I came back with, who cares anyway,
then she stood up,
said I wrote men’s stuff,
and walked out.
Translated by Anna Bentley
Öbölnyi megafon – Fiatal magyar költők antológiája / A Bay of Megaphones – Anthology of Young Hungarian Poets contains new poems by young Hungarian poets in Hungarian and in English translation, with essay introductions to each new poet by their mentor, an established Hungarian writer.
Mentees (poems): Soma Kazsimér, Gergő Korsós, Eszter Kósa, Edward Kovács, Zita Kubina, Dávid Locker, Mona Aicha Masri, Dániel Nagy, Anna Ősi, Anett Rékai.
Mentors (essays): János Áfra, Kornélia Deres, Ferenc Gál, János Géczi, Ákos Győrffy, István Kemény, Endre Kukorelly, Katalin Szlukovényi, Krisztina Tóth, András Visky.
Translators: Anna Bentley, Owen Good, Edmond Kulcsár, Ágnes Márton, Austin Wagner.
Photos: Balázs Som, Levente Vigh.
Copies are available in Hungary from the Budapest-based bookshop Írók boltja.
No comments:
Post a Comment