Conversations with Sheryl Sutton
by János Pilinszky
Category: Fiction

In 1973 Hungarian poet Janos Pilinszky was in Paris. He went to Robert Wilson's production of Deafman Glance. In a cafe he met a black artist from Wilson's company, Sheryl Sutton. They met again, once for several hours' conversation. He described this radiant book as the novel of a dialogue: the framework, details and some of the stories told are fictional, but the essentials are true. Sheryl is his muse as he meditates on the place of imagination in his harsh world (a Roman Catholic under communism). But, the Preface says, 'the book is also, most obviously and profoundly, a love-story', enigmatic, intense, going to the heart of Pilinszky's vision, expressing a 'faith in human life which triumphs over all the horrors'.