The Realism of the Soul
Based on the poems and essays of Sándor Csoóri
Edited by Dr Júlia Balogh
About the Production
One of the recurring themes in Sándor Csoóri’s poetry and essays is the place of folk poetry and traditional culture in the modern world. “What is folk poetry?” he asks in his essay Sea and Walnut Leaf, before offering his own definition: “Folk poetry is the ancestral, tradition-rooted poetry of a people.”
The Realism of the Soul grows out of this world of ideas. Csoóri’s poems and essays meet the languages of music, song and folk dance, allowing the literary texts not simply to be recited, but to come to life as part of a multidisciplinary artistic performance.
From questions of folk poetry and tradition, the performance reaches towards the deeper layers of the human soul. It presents Sándor Csoóri’s intellectual legacy not as a closed chapter, but as a living body of thought that continues to raise new questions for contemporary audiences.