Poetry and Fate

The Collected Poems of Károly Bari

Abstract

The study introduces Károly Bari’s oeuvre through his book The Adoption of Immobility: Collected Poems, Prose and Artworks 1966–2018, published in 2019. It uses not only poetics, but also ethnographic, artistic, translation and critical approaches. At the turn of the millennium, the global, Hungarian, and minority Roma culture went through a significant transformation, which is still ongoing. Many of the categories and definitions used to describe this culture are potentially disappearing or have already disappeared. The phenomena and question of the canon has become more nuanced, as well as the definitions of minority-majority cultures and of the world literature. Yet the purified aesthetic forms of Bari’s poetry do not depend on these definitions. This can make the analysis of the works more difficult, but it also offers a chance to create new critical voices and directions.