György Petri
György Petri | |
---|---|
Born | Budapest | December 22, 1943
Died | July 16, 2000 Budapest | (aged 56)
Nationality | Hungarian |
Genre | Poetry |
Notable awards | József Atilla Prize (1990) Kossuth Prize (1996) Lenau Prize (1997) |
Spouse | Sára Kepes, Maya, Mari Papp |
György Petri (22 December 1943 – 16 July 2000) was a Hungarian poet.
Childhood and youth
He was born in 1943 to a multi-ethnic family in Budapest. After his father's death he was raised by his mother, grandparents and aunts. According to his remembrance, he turned to poetry at 11 or 12, and from the early 1960s he 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 intention to change career. During the following years he nursed at a mental clinic as a preliminary exercise for planned psychiatry studies, resigning from which he showed interest in economics and law, but later he decided to be a philosopher. He informally attended philosophy classes at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. In 1966 he finally enrolled at Eötvös Loránd University with a Philosophy and Literature major, without ever graduating. His most inspiring professors were György Márkus, Endre Simon and György Lukács.
Life under the Soviet regime
Under the influence of Lukács, he claimed to be an
Political activity
Between 1981 and 1985 he co-edited
Life in the Third Republic
He was one of the editors of Holmi, a literary periodical from 1989, the year of its foundation, to his death in 2000. By receiving Kossuth prize in 1996 along with Péter Esterházy, he once again became subject to political criticism for alleged disrespect to Christianity.
Death and afterward
From his early youth, Petri suffered in serious nicotine dependency and alcoholism. In 1998, he was diagnosed of cancer at an incurable stage, in which he died two years later. After his death, Petri's oeuvre was re-issued in a four volume collection by Magvető Publishing House under revision by poet Szabolcs Várady, one of his closest friends.
Works
Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" page:
- 1971: Magyarázatok M. számára
- 1974: Körülírt zuhanás
- 1981: Örökhétfő
- 1985: Azt hiszik
- 1989: Valahol megvan
- 1989: Ami kimaradt
- 1990: Valami ismeretlen
- 1992: Sár
- 1999: Amíg lehet
External links
- HUNLIT (Multilingual Literature Database of the Hungarian Book Foundation)
- György Petri at IMDb
- Detailed biography in Hungarian
Sources
- ISBN 978-963-15-4370-4
- Tibor Keresztury: Petri György. Bratislava : Kalligram, 1997. ISBN 978-80-7149-188-0