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MAXIMILIANO GREGORIO-CERNADAS
But the screw could be turned again with this poem, because when Borges
talked about “the first poet of Hungary”, we still don’t know his identity. There
are many theories about it, whether it refers to Pannonius, Balassi or Petőfi,
but any of them is conclusive enough. Even his wife, Maria Kodama, told me
some months ago, when she visited us for her first time in Budapest, that
she has no idea about it, but following her husband’s mischievous mind, she
concluded that most probably Borges was talking about a generic Hungarian
poet and that he did not give a precise identity on purpose.
For many academics, the mysterious “first poet of Hungary” was Pannonius,
in which case, the screw could be turned once again, since this medieval
humanist is an icon of Central European identity discussions: Hungarians,
Croatians, Bosnians and Slavonians claim him as well.
His own name alludes to an ancient region, named Pannonia by the Romans,
which encompassed diverse territories and cultures that today cover seven
countries: Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia
and Austria. The evidence is that the famous humanist Pannonius was born
in Slavonia, from a Croatian father and a Bosnian mother, was bishop in
Hungary, ruled as governor in Slavonia and died in Croatia. That means that
we are dealing with a man with a multiple identity. It is then no surprise that
Borges would have chosen him for this poem. Wouldn't it be a magnificent
allegory that in this poem, by exploiting the rich identity of Pannonius and
the poetic identity of Borges, one arrow flies threading together the common
identity concerns about the complex ways of being Argentine and Hungarian?
This poem, apparently archaic and bilateral since it refers to ancient and
medieval as Argentine and Hungarian subjects and figures, alludes to a
very contemporary and universal issue which consists of how to reconcile
the inevitable tension that people suffer nowadays, torn apart between the
forces of local identity and the overwhelming global influences. Who could
avoid this dilemma without risking being locked up in an anachronistic life
or opening themselves so far as to live a tasteless life?
The dilemma between being a forgotten arrow inside a quiver or flying like
the arrow of Elea’s Archer, which acquires a new identity in each moment of its
flight, is not an exclusively contemporary experience. The already mentioned
Pannonius wouldn’t have been who he was if he had not lived his humanist
education in the north of Italy. But it must be recognized that our present
tends to open up to everyone these kinds ofidentity adventure. The increasing
forced migrations and free travels which characterize our time have set out
increasingly extreme challenges to the identity question.
At the same time a peculiar phenomenon is growing, which is the
expanding edges of identity self-construction: increasingly people have more
possibilities of traveling physically or mentally, to search for other identities
and to decide freely to be someone different to who they were.
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