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THE AESTHETICS OF SILENCE IN GYORGY RONAY’s POETRY
“Suffocating silence” serves as a primary motif for Rénay’s later poetry. The
speechlessness of misunderstood words, the fear of the rejection to be heard
are expressed in Prometheus:
You'd make an attempt at words
Every word’s stuck in your throat
I'd speak but my words fall back on me.
Here, human communication fails to connect. The poet’s sources are
mythology and the Bible, and this art has its “human face” painted rich in
meaning “through the web of events in biblical parables.”
It is faith in redemption which connects Ronay to Pilinszky, but while for
Pilinszky silence is predominantlya state of speechlessness bereft of the acoustic
side of the sign, for Gyérgy Ronay’s poetry articulate silence, the signified
nature of sonority is contrasted with its conceptual muteness. The Silence
(A csönd) is a tiny masterpiece full of emotional-spiritual content:
Sometimes there is silence.
Then a rushing vehicle is destroying it again.
Though, you can
preserve it inside.
A flutter.
A whisper.
An unspoken silent word.
The nothing.
The everything.
Pierre Emmanuel, in his theoretical text on art, highlights that “noise
kills inner silence, making contemplation impossible. [...] Art is a struggle
against pollution, an effort to give life to silence.” For Rónay, silence is
the source of art. Only infinite inner silence can bring a human being close
to God. Soothing silence provides his poem Martyrdom (Martirium) with
metaphysical-ontological surplus. A sudden burst of radiance, the pinewoods
emanating “the resin-scent of reconciliation” suggest a certainty-beyond¬
existence. Upon suspecting the transcendental secret, communicative silence
befalls. The unspeakable divine glory, “the resin-scent of reconciliation”
can be sensed only by the soul; so God’s silence becomes more perfect
that human speech. The warning hidden in Ronay’s succinct, seemingly
impersonal poetic utterances is also an existential reality. In Half-sleeps
4 Ferenc Szabö quotes Emmanuel in Szavak forrása csend, (Silence is the Source of Words),
Rome, Ugo Detti Publisher, 1985, 15.
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