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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 Passion 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." +9] +
