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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. + ]4 +
