Oldal 93 [93]
VALERE NOVARINA AND JANOS PILINSZKY OR THE POETIC THEATER OF UNSELFING RITUAL
the Hungarian reader’s mind, since his oeuvre from 1963 onwards becomes
interwoven with Weil’s world of thought. In the author’s image — which, from
his Szalkak [Splinters] onward, dominates his poems, and which corresponds
with the metaphor of the quill in Simone Weil — it is not so much the aspect
of subjection, or rather the Platonic sense of mania, which is emphasized, but
its stillness, not only the influence on the present of the Passion as praesens
perfectum perpetuum but the stationary center of a constantly repeating Pas¬
sion in which it stands. Or, rather, the act of writing in space and not bounded
in time. In this sense, the artist is a medium (like the Sheryl of Beszélgetések
[Conversations]). I quote Pilinszky’s poems in the original Hungarian and in
the English translations of Ted Hughes.
Intelem
Ne a lelekzetvetelt. A zihaläst.
Ne a näszasztalt., A lehullö
maradekot, hideg ärnyakat.
Ne a mozdulatot. A kapkodäst.
Arra figyelj, amire városod,
az örök város máig is figyel:
tornyaival, tetőivel,
élő és halott polgáraival.
Akkor talán még napjaidban
hírül adhatod azt, miről
16
Exhortation
Not the respiration. Ihe gasping.
Not the wedding table. The falling
scraps, the chill, the shadows.
Not the gesture. Not the hysteria.
The silence of the hook is what you must note.
Record
what your city, the everlasting city
has watched,
with its towers, its roofs,
its living and dead citizens,
to this very hour.
Then you may make known,
perhaps, even in your day,
what is alone
worthy the annunciation,
Scribe, then perhaps you will not have passed in vain."
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