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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-beyondexistence. 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. * 339 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 339 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:27
