Elfelejtett tüzek

Curatorial Note

First published in 1973, Elfelejtett tüzek (Forgotten Fires) is the second poetry collection by Károly Bari, one of the major figures of modern Hungarian Roma literature. Written while Bari was still a very young poet, the volume develops a distinctive poetic language in which experiences of poverty, marginalization, family memory, Roma identity, death, and social exclusion intersect with mythic, religious, and folkloric imagery. Poems such as Cigánysor (Gypsy Row), Temetés a cigánysoron (Funeral on the Gypsy Row), Cigánytörvény (Gypsy Law), and the title poem reveal Bari’s engagement with the social world from which he emerged while resisting its reduction to ethnographic representation. The collection occupies an important place in the emergence of Roma-authored literature within twentieth-century Hungarian literary culture and documents an early stage in the development of Bari’s singular poetic voice.