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ABSTRACTS
that Pilinszky considered poetic and to demonstrate its survival in Attila
Vidnyänszky’s performance of Crime and Punishment in St. Petersburg. In the
play, which is performed in Russian, one can observe the interweaving of poetry
and liturgy, which is also characteristic of Pilinszky’s theatrical vision, and through
this the (stage) space of metaphors referring to transcendence. In Vidnyänszky’s
work, the metaphor itself becomes a liturgical event: it evokes the Christian story
while at the same time offering the possibility of breaking through the mental space
of the subject. The metaphor of Christ in the performance becomes a central figure
through which the characters enter the textual space of the Scripture and participate
in the events of Christ by creating this possibility for the spectators. In the operation
of the metaphor, the revived murder situation can be interpreted as a continuation
of Pilinszky’s poem “The Assassination”: “It happened though I did not commit it,
/ and it did not happen though I did.”
MELINDA SEBOK
The aesthetics of silence in Janos Pilinszky’s art
When Ferenc Szabo - in his Napfogyatkozas — kereszténység és modernség [Solar
eclipse — Christianity and Modernity] — analyses the central issues of Christianity
in the intellectual context of modernity, he points out that literature, in its own
discourse, always reinterprets its doubts (originating in its existential experience)
pertaining to God, the transcendent. Though Pilinszky states that “Iam a poet and
Catholic”, he intends to picture the interrupted nature of theological tradition of
interpretation in literature, but the experience expressed in his art is Catholic, as
the Catholic ideology shaped not only his poetry, but also his stagecraft. The horror
of the second world war experience determined his work. Pilinszky’s art is seeking
redemption, his brief works express the passion of mankind even at the risk of
muteness. Pilinszky’s mind was partly influenced by Simone Weil’s philosophy and
Robert Wilson’s drama. When he saw Deafman Glance by Robert Wilson in Paris
in 1971, the static and muted production gave him the impression that it was the
realization of his theatrical ideals. The consequence of Wilson’s effect within a short
period, he wrote four stage plays. Several examples of the poetics of silence can be
noticed in his stage plays such as the lack of communication, the speechlessness,
the muteness, the action without words, the articulate silence or the transcendent
tranquillity.
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