Solo performance by Gellért Pignitzky

Upon a Pillowed Couch

Here are the most important moments in my life… And my life, the life of an artist that will always be exemplary in every age… An artist’s life is always the imprint of the given age… I loved as much as I could, and I wanted freedom for my nation like the rain sown in a parched field. I had a real life, not ordinary, but true: in which I loved, disappointed, believed, mourned, was angry, trusted, deprived, pampered, worked, traveled, starved, cold, like you or you. I’m a flesh-and-blood person, from a time that was true, in which everyone lived their lives the same as you do now. And of course, the poet’s life is the heartbeat of the age… but of his own age… when freedom meant something different than it does now, when being Hungarian was different than it is now, when being in your twenties was different than it is now, when being in love was also different, being unemployed and going to war was a bit different than now. Looking at my age with nostalgia, I don’t know if it’s worth it. To be Hungarian as we were Hungarians, I don’t know if it is valid today… As a poet today, what can it mean to talk about freedom, Magyar?