Parti Nagy Lajos: Biography

Lajos Parti Nagy (Szekszárd, 12 October 1953 –)

Kossuth and Attila József Prize-winning poet, playwright, writer, editor, critic. Founding member of the Digital Literature Academy since 1998.

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He is one of the most significant language artists and emblematic figures of contemporary Hungarian literature. The „Postmodern king of poets”, who occupies a decisive place in today’s Hungarian literature as a writer of poetry, prose, and drama, as well as a literary translator.

He was born on 12 October 1953 in Szekszárd. He spent his childhood years in Tolna, Kaposvár, and Székesfehérvár, graduating from high school in 1972. He graduated from the Teacher Training College of Pécs in 1977 with a degree in Hungarian history. He then worked as a librarian, and from 1979 to 1986 he was editor of the literary journal Jelenkor in Pécs. In his interviews, he referred many times to the importance of the city and its intellectual circles in his becoming a writer.

Lajos Parti Nagy started his career as a poet. In 1982 his first book, Angyalstop (Angelstop), was published, and in 1986 his second, entitled Csuklógyakorlat (Wrist Exercise), was published. Already in these early volumes, the author’s receptivity to language games and linguistic humour is evident, and was expressed in the 1990 poetry collection entitled Szódalovaglás (Seltzer Riding). It is in this volume that Lajos Parti Nagy’s original lyricism is presented, characterised by the extreme transformation of language, the use of elements of corrupted language, the twisting of quotations from popular and high culture, and the use of irony and parody. A new conception of authorship is also at work here: the poet is cast in the role of a craftsman who reworks language as if on a cutting board.

In 1990, an unknown author, Jolán Sárbogárdi, published a short novel in Jelenkor entitled The Angel of the Body (A test angyala), with commentary by literature critic Péter Balassa. It soon became clear that under Sárbogárdi’s mask was the prose writer Lajos Parti Nagy. The naive, dilettante tone of the short novel was combined with an overwhelming linguistic humour. It is no coincidence that since the first edition, rewritten in 1997, it has been published many times as a stand-alone volume, and the character of Jolán Sárbogárdi has also been included in the drama Ibusár.

After The Angel of the Body, Parti Nagy was commissioned by the Magyar Napló in September 1990 to write short stories: these were the basis for the collection of short stories No Drums, No Trumpets (Se dobok, se trombiták, 1993), as well as more than half of the rewritten versions of the collection of short stories Waving Balaton (A hullámzó Balaton, 1994). The protagonist of the title story is a prominent representative of a strange sport, a „competition eater”, whose recollections reveal the social and human conditions prevailing in Hungary which belonged to the socialist camp. It is only in the final lines that it becomes clear that the title of the work, „Waving Balaton”, refers not to the lake, but to the famous biscuit, well-known in Hungary, that the protagonist has devoured by the ton. The protagonist, who has grown to an enormous size, swallows them down along with the wrapping paper.

The fourth book of poetry by Parti Nagy, entitled Evening Chalk (Esti kréta, 1995), is a collection of new texts and ones from previous volumes. Among these, „Fox-Object At Dusk” is one of the highlights of Hungarian poetry in the 1990s, a postmodern death poem that incorporates the death motifs of Hungarian literature with nostalgic irony. His next book, Notebook (Notesz) is a fictitious poetry diary of Attila József, interwoven with hidden references to the poet’s oeuvre and his life. The text was inspired by the playful idea of what kind of poetry the ageing József would have written had he not passed away at the age of thirty-two.

In the 1990s, our author published not only books of poetry and short stories, but also a book of two plays entitled Ibusár–Mausoleum(Ibusár–Mauzóleum). The central character in Ibusár, Jolán Sárbogárdi, is a rural railway ticket inspector who tries to write operettas in his spare time. The tragic and comic scenes of ineptitude are followed by extreme emotions, while Jolán Sárbogárdi’s operetta is also written into the play. Mausoleum is set in a tenement house in Pest, in the basement of which the body of a criminal is being secretly burned. This mystery drives the plot, while the inhabitants of the house, all defenceless, fallen, vulnerable people, appear before us. Even with its linguistic humour, Mausoleum is a social drama that takes its audience to the deepest levels of vulnerability. In addition to the works in the 1996 drama collection, Lajos Parti Nagy also wrote two other plays: Gézcsók (1994) which commemorates the last days of Dezső Kosztolányi, and the stage adaptation of Jolán Sárbogárdi: The Angel of the Body (1995).

It is worth mentioning here that Lajos Parti Nagy is a well-known and respected figure in contemporary Hungarian literature as the translator of about twenty dramas from the late 1990s to the present day. For Parti Nagy, a freelance writer living in Budapest since 1986 who also edited the poetry section of Magyar Napló between 1991 and 1993, these plays were important not only for existential reasons, but also because he exported the specific linguistic energies of his works to the field of literary translation. The majority of his dramatic translations are not traditional translations, but rather rewritings of the original texts.

Lajos Parti Nagy’s first and so far only novel is My Hero’s Square (Hősöm tere, 2000), an anti-utopia that reads as a consciously political work in which far-right pigeons take over the power in Budapest. This fact certainly played a role in the considerable critical response to the work, not to mention its somewhat formless, experimental structure. My Hero’s Square was translated by Terézia Mora and published in German in 2005 under the title Meines Helden Platz.

Grafitnesz (2003), a collection of selected and new poems, presents an extremely rich and varied lyrical oeuvre. The reception of the volume also reflected the place of Lajos Parti Nagy in contemporary Hungarian poetry, given that almost unsurpassable statements were made about Grafitnesz, saying that it is the most important poetry collection in Hungarian literature of both the past and the coming years.

Language becomes the protagonist in almost all of Lajos Parti Nagy’s poems. The uncontrollable elements of language’s functioning, as well as the linguistic slips, breaks, and lapses, control the meanings of the text. These often appear to the reader in ironic, parodic, or comic form. Instead of the sterility of language, the abstract, pure, untouchable substance, the free, playful, frivolous, corrupted meanings are emphasised. It is an idea of a polyphonic, democratic poetic language that transcends hierarchies of language use that is presented in this volume.

In Lajos Parti Nagy, there is a patient and passionate interest in the multiplicity of sounds, accompanied by the courage to experiment with language. One of the most striking signs of this is the author’s receptivity to masked poetic games. In these poetic games, a complex linguistic space emerges from the use of language, both dilettante and archaic. In these texts, Parti Nagy experiments with obsolete forms that have become unwritable: he innovates poetic forms and modes of expression while at the same time reworking, ironising, and parodying them.

Within Grafitnesz, the cycle Excercises in Grayology (Őszológiai gyakorlatok) was published, the poems of which Lajos Parti Nagy hid behind the mask of a certain Endre Dumpf. In these hospital poems, Parti Nagy’s radically reworked and transformed language mask, the corrupted language, meets the corruption of the body, the disease. The way in which the hospital and death are presented through both dilettante and parodic language confronts the reader with the radicalism of Lajos Parti Nagy’s poems: a parody of the scandal of death.

Lajos Parti Nagy’s extremely important place in contemporary Hungarian poetry is reflected in the volume entitled Mintakéve (2004), published on the occasion of the author’s 50th birthday, in which the best of contemporary Hungarian lyric poetry have written a heroic crown of sonnets to his master sonnet. The Frozen Dog’s Leg (A fagyott kutya lába), a collection of short stories, was published in 2006. György Pálfi’s film, Taxidermia (2006) was based on the two short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy and won several major awards in Hungary and at international festivals. The critical reception of the collections of short stories Waving Balaton, The Frozen Dog’s Leg, and The Blind Murmur (A vak murmutér, 2007) confirms the opinion that the author is also at the forefront of contemporary Hungarian literature as a prose writer.

His latest volume of new poems, Existencebuffet (Létbüfé), was published in 2017.

To date, Parti Nagy’s works have been the subject of some 300 reviews or studies, and more than 60 interviews or conversations with the author have been published in print. The author has received more than 30 awards.

The biography was written by Zoltán Németh, translated by Benedek Totth and Austin Wagner.