Balla Zsófia - Az life two fele

Zsófia Balla - a significant figure in our contemporary poetry - has been present in Hungarian literary life for more than fifty years: from her first volume, A wolák émöszézte, in 1968, to Más Řözdek, in 2016, she described a huge arc, and the poet has appeared with emblematic poems in recent years as well. Our collective volume divides the years of the writer's presence into three stages.
Zsófia Balla's poetry has two roots: after the years and decades of its beginning in Cluj, it becomes universal in the creative period in Hungary, and it begins to take its place among the most beautiful achievements of Hungarian poetry. In our volume, we can once again glimpse the playful world of the early subject poems, the series of emphatically musical motives, the dramatic figures created in the oppressive minority existence, the poems written against the late dictatorial era. After her relocation in 1993, the poet continued to search for the modulations of her voice for a short time, and then, from the second half of the nineties, she again found and deepened the tone that most precisely corresponds to her lyric composition, artistic intentions, and mature poetic taste. In his three most recent volumes, already published in Hungary (The third story, A nyár barlangja, Other holidays), the well-known permanent features of this poetry are strengthened again: his perceptive objective approach, his invigoratingly metaphorical way of speaking, his strong imagery, and his attitude focusing mostly on questions of existence.
Because this is what characterizes Zsófia Balla's poetry: love of life, materialism, tragic consciousness, loyalty to her great motives, but at the same time hidden humor, not infrequently interspersed with self-irony and ironic harmonies. But in the depths of the lines, the reader mainly perceives the light of serenity, the possibilities of the fulfillment of goodness. The oeuvre says: dare to exist without betraying your humanity. To hope despite hope with the redemptive power of art: perhaps this is the essential message of this poetry.

Author: Zsófia Balla