Language/Literature paper by Köves, Margit
University of Delhi, India

Amrita Sher-Gil's Self-portrait in Poetry (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Amrita Sher-Gil was one of the chief figures and shapers of modernism in India. Her paintings, her articles, her letters, her style – as one can see in the photographs mostly taken by her father, Umra Singh Sher-Gil all contributed to her becoming an iconic figure during her life-time. Her „ferocity of mind and sharpness of tongue” that prompted Salman Rushdie to depict one of his most successful protagonists, Aurora Zogoiby were well-known. Vivan Sundaram’s two volume Amrita Sher-Gil, a Self-Portrait in letters&writing contains all her existing diaries, letters and writings. She was multilingual, her letters were written in Hungarian, French and English. The paper takes up her Hungarian pieces, specially her thirty one line poem, a piece of confessional poetry. This genre has been considered as a marginal genre of life-writing. Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest, in 1913, her mother was Hungarian and she wrote her diary and tales in Hungarian. It is clear from her childhood diaries and notes that she was influences a great deal by Hungarian poetry, specially ballads. Endre Ady’s poetry (1977-1919) was quoted and discussed by her in many letters, she called his collection of poetry „my bible”. The poem to be discussed in the paper is a collage, an intertextual piece where her own lines are fitted in and integrated with Ady’s lines. The poem presents Sher-Gil’s multiple identities against the background of Paris and urban Hungary similarly to the multiple presence of identities and locations in her paintings.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr.Margit Köves came to India in 1983 to teach Hungarian in Delhi University. She edited collections of Hungarian prose and poetry in Hindi and translated works by Hungarian authors jointly with Indian poets and translators. She has been working on Indian and Hungarian Cultural Encounters in the work of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, Ervin Baktay and Amrita Sher-Gil, and the work of the new generation of Hungarian writers, for example László Krasznahorkai, János Háy, Gábor Lanczkor and Roland Orcsik. She is teaching Hungarian in the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies.