István Józsa
POET’S BELIEF
A myth-long draft
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„Aki dudás akar lenni,
Pokolra kell annak menni.” "He who wants to be a bagpiper, Must go through hell." |
The poet is a stranger in the world, but never gets estranged from it.
The path of the poet and its creations, his relationship with the everyday life is monitored, followed, analyzed and evaluated, discovered, interpreted, praized, crippled, and stolen, the influences and effects of the work are blessed and cursed by contemporaries, the philosophers, aestheticians, literary men, literary historians, critics and epigons etc. of posterity – in short: everyone who can or rather dares to hang onto it. They follow its path from simplicity, early poems through the complicated, the creations of adult manlyhood to the superlative, noble and clear simplicity, or rather perfection; the theoretical analysis are open to these three, or four stages of the path. Because this distance can be mapped and foreseen by all these methods of analyses.
Within this distance we tend to write, speak, and have a discourse about the stage of perfection of the classics. With good reason, too, as – out of all stages – this gives the possibility to the most approaches, descriptions, analysis, evaluations, discourses, moreover naturally this needs the most. As each poet is unique, he must be a pioneer and build his own road, whereas from the point of view of literary history and aesthethics the metaphisics of this stage is unapprehendable – we quickly become the enemies of metaphisics –; the stage has as many faces as poets who reached it, and its faces vary according to the angle and way of approach. Moreover, the poets are followed by the all-time second-fiddlers, the critics, the hoards of century-long interpretations. From the point of view of art history, the search is complicated further more, that the happy-tragical stage has a dual nature, and that these two characteristics don’t deny each other. Happy, because – looking back – the completeness wanted and built through a whole lifetime has been achieved, but at the same time tragical, or maybe first of all tragical, because the happy stage of perfection is the forerunner of death. Because the achieved perfection is death itself. More precisely the end of the road, where the steps of the creative life reach their goal, and as they reach their goal and fulfil their function, they necessarily die. – Taking all of this into consideration the philosophy of arts must abstract itself to life discussing existential problems, being stable on quick-sand-like ground from the thousand-faces of thousand-faced perfection, from the multitude of analyses. However, or rather because of this it is such a fruitful domain, and if not the only one, but the first one within science, that can help us follow with our attention the poet to the other side, beyond perfection. Heidegger regards the essence of the artistic work as the becoming and functioning as work of the existing truth (das Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit): in his interpretation the truth is not the conformity of the object with the notion, but the unhiddenness of the existent. In his opinion the important work, the constitutional deed, the essential sacrifice is the manifestation of the truth. The essence of poetry is “the founding of truth”, and the three phases of the founding – the “gift offering”, the excess of truth appearing in the work, the “foundation”, and the “beginning” – constitute the main structure of his activity. “Foundation” in the sense that the poet turns his back to the spirit of the age, that the creator precedes his age, and that his work is a gift and a victim at the same time. That there are, could be few words about the fact that all of this comes on the other side, beyond the unfailing rich phase of perfection? On the one hand it is not/not really the research area of what people have known as sciences anymore, but the viewpoint of ontology, art philosophy, philosophical aesthetics, theory of literature and the psichology of creation is needed for IT. On the other hand, it is such an isolated world in the continuity of the great journey, in its ruthless simplicity it seems so complicated from this side, and so simple in its inevitable complicatedness, so few creative minds reach IT, there are very few “artistic messages” here and there, that we can’t keep an account of them, so it remains a complete mistery for us, mainly unknown, and if not completely unknowable, at least for us it remains that. “Life and literature …” And that is how it must remain. As it can only be approached, accessed, discovered and suffered through by just a few creative minds. “An overheated bunch of flowers” (Pilinszky János: Sírfelirat / Epitaph). Because they are the only ones to be destroyed by it. No one’s land.
The remaining few steps are completed in the infinity, as they intensified an emotianal-ethical crisis as a tragic flow of destructively creative processes. The harmony of objective and subjective reasons and characteristics of the creation is ceased, thus resulting in a sense of emptiness that is the core of all kinds of creation. Creation, that the poet tries to finalize with faith. At the end of the creative process (a step-by-step process through poems and mental-phisical modifications and development) the result is the final work, which – characteristically to all poets – somehow achieves completeness, and coming to life, it gets estranged by its creator, and it does not only distance the poet from the poem, but from himself as well. The main result is that the poet’s ego is divided into two, one ego that lives and acts in the poems, and the other one is the phisical ego. The latter cannot obviously be the same as the bodily reality before the manyfold emotianal-ethical crisis process of the individual. As the poet does not stop writing poetry, the proportion between the two egos is inevitably shifted, and as the postmodern Nietzsche’s still valid statement says, the artist stops being an artist, but he himself becomes the work of art. This process, which only becomes tragic when the creator becomes aware of it, unleashes the wish of recreating the creator, and what brings that to life: the tyranny of a sense of hiatus. „Ay, nina terca, / ay, volutad del ser, presencia hostil, / limite frio a nuestro amor.” (Damaso Alonso: Nina) On the road there appears a serious change into the status of the artist who became the art work, which must be dealt with in the frame of the connection between art and life. The phase of perfection, or rather the perfection of his work has long torn the poet from life, it threw him far away and keeps him from its ... imperfection. From its life-giving imperfection. The road, the „status” of the poet is the state of „I am what I think”, the creator already approaches us as a work of art, and speaks out as a man who has found himself in his endless solitude. Who is richer by the experience of hell, whose „level of existance” is higher, and who justly expects to be paid attention to when pronouncing „Me”. Me as a labyrinth. Surrounded by a master that motivates to create, in his eyes with the solitude of the mental universe – „ Agyamban / folyvást magamban?” („in my mind / alone always?” Illyés Gyula: Töredékről töredékre / From fragment to fragment) – the lack of love, the lack of devine light. Hell. „E non dici parole / e nessuno ti parla.” (Cesare Pavese: Di salmastro e di terra) No transcendence, the anguish is very real, adn we have known it ever since king Salamon that the greater the wisdom, the greater the suffering. Steps, poems, steps. And he does this with such artistic pretence, the aim of his road, of his interiorized creative gesture, of his cognition and of his existance will be his cognitive choice, this is how he will send his poetic thoughts – „azonosulni földiekkel” / „becoming identical to humans” (Illyés Gyula: Töredékről töredékre / From fragment to fragment) – to possible human fellows. His work is experienced as a natural reflex, and tries to make it part of the practical side of life. However ... this is already impossible from the other side, because on the one hand he would have to make such compromizes which would stop him being an artist, on the other hand his work is artistic from its roots, he approaches society from art. Yet the boundary between art and life can only be tresspassed in one direction: from life and society. So in the space between integration and assimilation the fact that he wants his work to go beyond the reign of art in the practical forming of life, it can never be torn from its aesthetic roots. Looking at it from this side, his creative action is a quazi-action, because it can only be objectivized in the poetic individuality of art works, it can have a space and result in the created world of art. In the end our creator and his work stand completely alone in front of the distancing, vital, lively and developing reality of life. „Fáj a szívem, a szó kihűl, / De hát kinek is szólanék” – „My heart aches, the word gets cold, / But who could I tell this to” (József Attila: Reménytelenül. Vasszínű égboltban. – Hopelessly. In the iron sky)
On the road, beyond the phase of perfection, being torn from the body of the integrating society, it becomes shockingly obvious that the adequate social role showing the personality is both a necessity and a possibility, as well as that ghe unison of the poetic personality has become impossible. The role blocks and deforms the personality – the inner and outer crisis is thus further deepened. And it is summed up in the following: the main human goal is that You, the individual create yourself into an integral personality, to defend your integrity – becomes impossible. The moral-ethical critical situation of the artist who has become the art work, caused by the devision into two, is impossible to be overcome, the only solution is for the poet to stop being an artist, to stop being himself; whereas his personality crisis is insoluble: there is no alternative. „Maradj fölöslegesnek” („Remain superfluous”) (József Attila: Tudod, hogy nincs bocsánat / You know there is no pardon) – thus the poet who distances himself, because he cannot accept either possible role, each of them being personality-distorting for him. And the poet, the moral and intellectual man can only overcome this situation without alternatives in one way: by not choosing the role and adapting to it, but rather choosing himself. Himself, who he could become if his inner-outer situation made it possible to create himself. „Légy, ami lennél” /”Be who you would like to be” (József Attila: Tudod, hogy nincs bocsánat / You know there is no pardon).
The Poet. He has completely and eternally been torn away from society. Hoewever he tries to have an influence through aesthetical validities on society itself, he speaks to all in the resigned calmness and freedom of not belonging anywhere. On No one’s land. „Az ember végül homokos, / szomorú, vizes síkra ér, / szétnéz merengve és okos / fejével biccent, nem remél” – „Finally, the human reaches / the sandy, sorrowfulm wet plain. / Look around, daydream and nod his / clever head, but he does not hope.” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) These lines, that have been quoted many times, can only be interpreted between perfection and death, on the great road, placed on the stage of No one’s land, this is where they reveal their meaning, where their richness can be estimated, the experimental foundation as well as the objective and subjective reasons of writing the poem become clear in the knowledge of the entire great road. The bounderies of No one’s land only become clear to the poet after he has tresspassed them: the present tense of the poem synthetizes past and future, and the author states it. He is utterly and irreversibly lonely, there is no way back, he is the only prisoner in the prison of endless freedom. „A semmi ágán ül szívem, / kis teste hangtalan vacog, / Köréje gyűlnek szelíden És nézik, nézik a csillagok” – „My heart sits on the branch of nothing, / his noiseless body’s shivering. / Surround himself with stars gently, / who are watching, watching him.” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) In his lonelyness he is solely governed by his decisions – as far as they can govern him –, and he suffers all the consequences of his actions. In a way, he must therefore be infallible, and this fact throws such responsability upon him, „as” endless his freedom is, that he has wanted all his life, and yet this is what causes his gradualdisappearance. The endless freedom, possibility and power to be the only one to govern his choices, which is the highest level of individuality – deprives him exactly from his own individuality. We cannot follow him in his solitude and endless freedom, because the poet in this case is not himself, he is not an individual, but certainty. It is not József Attila and Pilinszky János who wave to us and send poem-messages to us from the other side. The poet does not appear as personality, but as certainty, in his work we are not enriched by the touch of his rich spirit, but we are struck by his certainty and ruthless truth made artistic reality through his sacrifice. Poem-interpretations? The first is ... geocentricity. In the sense that trying to find (possibly) the exact birth „place” of the text in the poem or in all poems on the great road, which is obviously not a line of biographical data. It is an artificial existential experience. It is not to be confused with the poetic state, it is an existential state, within which there may be multiple poetic states. The poem can be interpreted in its entirety starting from viewing this state in its genetic connections. Poem – state. State in which the poet – if we can still rightfully use the term poet – is just the only reference, nothing more: the only reference being the past. And as he does not write his poems anymore, but they write themselves, they bring themselves to the final station, he can do only one thing. To take a look into his past. To make an inventory. (József Attila: Kész a leltár / Inventory closed). The poem governs the person, the fate of the once creative man turned from an individual, a personality into certainty. At this point it becomes clear that the creation is a cognitive pledge, a sacrifice from the beginning (of the road) to the end. This is valid on a poem, on all poems, as well as on the entire human culture. (However, what are the changes in this respect brought by postmodernism, what mutations – nothing more, but mutations appeared on this road, are beyond the spectrum of this text.) The poem regulates how the other ego, the one that lives in poems becomes more and more complete with the last chips of the poet’s life. „Bennem a múlt hull, mint a kő / az űrön által hangtalan. / Ellen a néma kék idő.” – „In me the past falls, as stones / through space, silently. / Opposed to the deaf blue time” (József Attila: Reménytelenül. Vasszínű égboltban. – Hopelessly. In the iron sky) – In the end No one’s land is not beyond time or above time, it is simply (!?) timeless. All the above analized problems – apart from a few marginal aspects – do not belong to a single period, social order etc. Though they typically belong to the 20th century, because on the road, as a result of the authors’ self-reflection, the revelation came to life, that has lit thounsands and thousands of years. But it has had an influence ever since the first flame-drawings and saman chants, even if we haven’t paid attention to them, they have an influence now and they will always have. We are moaning that the problems are getting more serious, we are criticizing that the philosophies haven’t been able to solve them. But we haven’t come up with any „solutions” either. There is no solution. The problems rise from the essence of human existance and the creative process, the only way to overcome them is that what the poet does. There is no present and no past, but the future becomes the most important in its last step. For his intellect, the completion of his life is important. For the sake of being active in the common action, of taking an active role in the aesthetic radiation of the creation, of getting back the ability of dissolving in collectivity he can only recreate his other ego, which lives in the artistic works, by giving up his material-bodily ego. We know it from Heidegger and József Attila, Fafka and Borges that at the end of the road death reflecting the Nothing steps into the existance, and the attitude towards death defines the reality or unreality of the poet’s existance. The assumption of death makes him his true self, sets him free, he authentifies his ouvre, turns his own being into the story of existance, and what is most important: he brings to life his other ego. It is decided within the last few steps, until then its opposite is also possible. That by mistaking the last few steps, or simply suddenly stopping, he can turn the edifice of life into ruin. It is a fact that Petőfi Sándor did not hesitate, not even for a second, it doesn’t matter that the only thing that József Attila cannot suffer is the stigma of insanity, or that he can only make a movement either in the state of insanity or in a bitterly sound state – but this is how he saves his own life, this is how he recreates his other ego and is reborn into community. „Íme hát megleltem hazámat.” – „I finally found my home.” (József Attila) ’The poet is alive”, „The poet is among us” we say ... This is a commonplace, thus an axiom, which belongs to everyone, and it states in a comprised, simple way that on the road of the mental poet, the accomplishment is by no way some kind of perfection; the fulfilment, the more ruthless side of creation is yet to follow, between perfection and death the culmination is represented by the death-defying transcendence of No one’s land. Fulfilment in the most real, in the noblest sense of the word, but this kind of of fulfilment is not the end of anything. Because this is the beginning of immortality.
However. It’s a fact that we don’t pay attention to it, moreover, by the end of the century the texts that are mourning the poem, or the status-loss of the written word in general, have become common-places, the many-times apostrophed Reader has no need for the written word, we are living in a period of images again, Gutenberg has slowly died, even McLuhan, we are mainly film consumers. And in our days that is fine. The reader has less and less faith in the written word, the writer cannot believe in his own possibilities anymore. The writer and his world ... The poem, as any artistic creation, is on the one hand the subjective reevaluation of tradition, a heritage of the past reevaluated from the perspective of the present. On the other hand his present, his subjective slice of time, the reevaluated slice of time is not the same as the reader’s, the time of the reader is the past for the creator. There is no common time-experience, a human-shaped frame, tradition, that could offer some security, just the solitary search. „Kard éle csillan.” – „The sword’s edge glistens” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) And through the poet, the reader gets closer to his own world, which is a great result for him, the on the other side invested sacrifice. The created opportunity. To continue one’s life journey. „Én – tudnék még beszélni. / De minek? Megtudván, mi ez: élni” – „I – could speak more. / But why? To know, what it is: to live” sums up Illyés Gyula. (Némulás felé / Getting mute) Illyés’s thoughts are based on his own life-experience in first person, singular – „Én”, „Én ... még” – „I” ... „I ... still” – he forshadows a summary, then the reader. József Attila himself completes the induction from the individual to the general based on his own experiences – „Az ember”, „Az ember végül”, „végül” - „The human”, „The human in the end”, „in the end” –, he does not make a confession (even a poetic one), but he gives a cognitive map (Ulrich Neisser) of the area that can only be discovered and experienced mentally, of the last stage of the creative mind’s development. He presents this to his contemporaries, or – taking into consideration the timelessness of the thought and the aesthetic quality of his poems – to posterity, his work will be a guideline, in the sense that Hans-Georg Gadamer presents it in Truth and method as pre(vious moral and logical)judgement, a begginning according to Heidegger, a sacrifice for others, or rather the expression of the reason of sacrifice. Almási Miklós says that the artitic work is an „anti-world” in the context of its own contemporary society, the mimetic work is built from the pieces of everyday-life, uses them symbolically, and its truth will suggest a philosophy opposite to the everyday philosophy. This is the road from the renessaince to the modern. The creator of the construction uses „imaginary pieces”, however metaphorically he sheds light on the hidden structure of the world. In fact the self-search of humanity is the result of this self-reflection, while its medium is the art. The artist is the soldier sent forward, in the first line. „A világ csak akkor válik megragadható számunkra, ha a művészet felfedezte és bemutatta.” (The world will only be comprihensible for us, if art has discovered and presented it”) „Sőt az ember is csak teremtett másának segítségével képes magába látni, csak a művészi képpel szembesülve képes látni önmagát mint objektív létezőt: lényegéről mindaddig csak homályos leképzelései lehetnek.” („Moreover, the human can only see into himself with the help of his created self, he can only regard himself as an objective creature being faced with the artistic image: until then he can only have blurry ideas about himself”) A művészet tehát „azt jeleníti meg, ami korábban nem volt. Teremti a világot.” So art „shows what has never been before. It creates the world.” (Almási Miklós: Anti-esztétika / Anti-aesthetics). The poet the past. His own past. His conemporaries’ future. So this is a present given with the blood of the poet – and the reader of the end of the 20th century does not need this present? In fact, that is all he needs. If for any reason there were no poets, he would send someone else forward for the same reason, and … he would always find someone, there would always be volunteers. Someone. Anyone. That he, and his work … are not needed? We don’t receive his message – so where is the emphasis in the interaction? The same with the 19th century. In 1848. A war, a world-fire. Then the preparations for new foundations. Cézanne painted protocubist paintings in the 1860’s, long before cubism as stream appeared. In 1945 another world war. Then the manierist postmodernism, which is ironic with itself, with its cowardice, with its defeatism. That the end of the 20th century – looking back at its achievements – is disillusioned? „Tired”? Rather it lost its faith, because it is tired of its faith. In Middle- and Eastern-Europe this coincides with the ugly end of a particular social order, with the collapse of all utopia and reality both in a symbolic and material sense. Looking at this from the perspective of the experience of the harsh everydays, all of this is understandable, moreover acceptable. It is again natural that the reader reacts like this nowadays, and that his dismissive attitude is mainly a matter of the medium. He does not want victims in words, which have been the same for centuries, rather in images, more precisely in films. „According to the perspective of transavantgarde (...) there is no reason to have clearly delimited scientific research fields, because these researches are impersonal, objective, abstract, and they aim at the establishment of a general scheme, model, independent from time, space, tradition or people. Instead the abstract, method-centred, generalizing and anti-history approach, the transavantgarde validates a concrete, personal, image- and history-centred approach.” (Hegyi Lóránd) The Reader also wants to see and follow this „concrete, personal, image- and history-centred”, mediated world, because in the space of the film the distance is reduced, the experience of the now, of the instant becomes important. The creators of popular films rely on these expectations. The distance between the creators and spectators of these films is small, really small, whereas success and feedback are instant. While the distance is a matter of faith – and faith is the strongest at the beginning of centuries, „it can and will be better”, the change of time brings that with itself. Faith is needed, new faith, but from where?, how?, at the beginning of the century there was an Ady, who spoke about „new faiths”, whereas the masters of self-irony chant about ourselves at the end of the century, moreover, if someone has faith in something, they are viewed as having anachronystic way of thinking, as heretics. On the other hand Ridley Scott speaks about how christianity should be discovered again in just a few minutes in Blade Runner, love is being praised by Francis Ford Coppola in Dracula and Frankenstein, he changes the status of monsters, and gives them the possibility od redemption. And that is already new faith, new beginning. „Foundation.” Giving faith a shape is again and invariably poetry. The words of faith, the design of faith, the colours of faith. Because Tarkovszkij – I strongly state – was a poet, a film-poet, and film-poetry has a very strong influence on life; what in the 1960’s was prognozed by Andy Warholm then in the ‘70’s by Herbert Marcuse, today is already a commonplace, e.g. that life imitates art. It imitates film, which on its highest artistic level is beyond complicated, it’s clear poetry, or prose – see Fellini’s works –, or sculpture; “Film is the sculture of time” – says Tarkovszkij with a great poetic image. Researchers of literature are on the lookout, but they cannot be taken seriously, they make a living on this.
Researchers of literature? Approaching the poet, his journey, his poem with methods, supersophisticated methods is the high class of cynism. It is allright that „criticism mediates to the receptors”, moreover they bring more and more people in the team of readers”, but working with vivisection, or putting it bluntly with disecting the living, is more pervert than robbing corpses. However in interpreting the art work, the mapping of the „status” is just some kind of point of departure – „Between the idea / and reality between the motion / and the act / falls the shadow / For Thine is the Kingdom” (T. S. Eliot: The hollow man) -, and the interpretations stop here, eben though this is only the intensive totality of the art work ... This is only the place of departure, we should help ourselves and the receptors forward from this point. That this is not the duty or area of literature? Or still? One thing is for sure, it is not the duty of critism, because that is only second fiddler behind active artists – but it is the duty of literature, in the widest and noblest sense of the word. As the method toils with itself ... First of all the tussle aims at clarifying the status of the method, but it is known that it can only be done with information gatehered on the other side. But ... in the end how can we check the result of our work? Naturally, with another method, a method which checks the method itself ... The same as with poetry, we try to find a way out from the statusless situation of literature. Never has ever been there such chaos as in the super-developed 20th century. Development, peaks, boundaries, the recognition of boundaries, being against boundaries, disappointment, faithlessness, „tired fin-de-siecle”. Everything is the dead-end of rational (spelled with capital R) cognition, or rather the prevision of the end of the dead-end. And the receptor has also gone through his own hell.
There is the sign towards the last part of the dead-end. Language is genial: the complete ruler, and it rules our lives in such a way that it leaves us the possibility of ruling the essential, and the possibility of complete freedom from it. How do we conjugate our everyday-self? I – the first, you – the second, he/she/it – the third. And this is valid for everyone. It is eerie what this sequence suggests – the order of the world! -, but it is even eerier, that we conjugate the world around us with serenity and insensitive negligence. The language rules are proof to that. And who thinks of questioning the rules of the language? However in cut-off situations, in „periods of transitions” we must do that.
I – who, in the sense of renessaince creation, am continuously speaking about myself – am looking for my ancestors at the moment. I – one in many millions. When selecting, interpreting, valuing works, we stand against living creatures, people, among whom there are weak and very strong individuals, it is previously decided on an irrational level according to our art-philosophy knowledge, how we approach them as receptors. So I am looking for the freedom of the method again. „The person is more than what he can know about himself” ... (Karl Jaspers) How, based on what can we relate to them? Mutatis mutandis, the other is initially more than what I can know about him. „You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I am looking for my ancestors.
The work of art is the objectivization of human existance – reasearching works of art I can assess, and interpret the grade of existance of others, and searching for these grades is my most important aim. The researched objectivizationis first of all an object, which becomes an aesthetic object as a result of my reception, of my action. This is how IT is reborn. The receptor’s state of conscience is altered, even if the receptor – naturally – remains the same, even though he can’t be the same, because as a totality of his physical ego and his ego living in the work of art, in its interpretation ... is already objectivization. The objectivization of the existance of the being in the work of art. The process of my cognition started with the interaction, and in this process I don’t reflect on my action, but on the object, let’s say poem that I am analyzing. „I am a receptor”. Paradoxically, I don’t set off on this scout journey from the creator’s side, but I depart from myself, I read the poem, the novel, I seek for my aesthetic pleasure in the work of art, I seek myself in him as well, and ... I pay attention to myself. For example an objectivized being with the name William Shakespeare gives people the pleasure with the talent of a real magician of finding themselves in the „work” for centuries. At those times Shakespeare lives in us, and we all live in him – I state silently on the analogy of creation.We live, exist, do self-examinations in every catharsis both within and outside of the artistic works, and meanwhile we don’t notice what is really happening. We pass away above the works.
We look into the paper from above, and that creates such illusions. I am above, and I consider this to be natural. „Above” – a serious word, because „above” and „beneath” are archetypes, the creation of the world started with the separation of the two, with defining their space and place.
According to the three dimensions of real space, I can be „above”, but the dimensions of space, of mental space are originally different and they change in a different way. The slogans – „Long live the ...” etc. – have always been put up there, whereas in my ancestors I was beneath, so how could I relate to what was up there? Even if up there is that something, and I was under, I still ... And then the „period of transition”.
I need a new method so that I don’t work based on the theories of Escarpit and his collegues. I must develop a different aesthetic behaviour, the basis of which is my self-knowledge in a hermeneutical sense, and the reltion to it, self-reflection. According to its nature, this is also an irrational approach, two blurry mirror-images are looking for themselves in each other’s eyes, however it is not update of Worringer Einführung-theory, because the decisive element is the attitude towards myself. So let my interpretation and evaluation begin with a methodological self-analysis, with the self-reflection of a creation objectivized into a receptor. The reception – in its controlled being – becomes metareception, and following the path of the poet I already have those universal values that I can apply. However, let me start from a „zero” state of knowledge, let me ignore all kinds of pre(logical, aesthetic, moral)conceptions, that are otherwise of outmost importance in my everyday life. What I feel in this moment, is the basic feeling that will build on the relation between the two objectivized beings. Then I can ennumerate the rest of the information, even where the poet was born, or whether he was a womanizer. I can evaluate the importance of this thought on the one hand in the metaphysics and deconstruction of the poet’s journey, and on the other hand now, during the period of transition. First of all this is a kind of attitude, aesthetic behaviour that can always be expected from everyone, and secondly, I should turn this into a principle. It is absurd, but I have to make an experiment for myself, even if it is a thought experiment: let me try reading a poem, a short story keeping the paper above my head. Let it ... be above. However I don’t advise myself to analyse this way, but the feelings and thoughts that occur this way, should be added to those that were born in the traditional way – and based on this junction I will see myself in a different way.
I must identify at least one particular behaviour against the world, people, society, order of society, politics, arts etc. that I will follow through from the beginning of the century in literature, fine arts and film as well. Jean Luc Godard, Swiss film director, named his work team after Dziga Vertov. I can give the happiness of searching for ancestors and finding continuity to myself in advance, because it is certainthat I have a solid groundation for it, somewhere deep down for now, but it certainly exists. I am not talking about Tarkovszkij-faced hidden and halfway dug out sculptures, even though it is ironic, that whatever the Russians started, they were the first to offer sollutions against it. I, the receptor, have recognized and admitted my ptolemaic disappointment of the work of art, and – following the path of the poet – I am looking for my ancestors, selecting my heritage, the tradition according to this. So one. Let the writers write. Two. I leave the past to hell, and I follow the natural and universal process in which those who are not lively enough, are left out, as they drop behind the „soft” levels of my everyday life, as they get weaker and weaker and perish in the end. This is how nature works. Three. Let the writers write. Four. I, the interpreter, must reflect on myself first against the world, then against the recreated world and against the work of art, and at the same time learning from the example of my recognized or not-recognized ancestors, I have to try to intervene as little as possible in the process that could work more easily, effectively and quickly without me. It would make progress. Five. Let the writers write. Six. As an interpreter, I must control myself – being aware of the fact that my „doing nothing” is creative passivity. Seven. So that all the above could happen, it is also needed that the past should not mingle in any way with my present. It’s my life. Eight. For my excuse, Tarkovszkij was a great poet. Nine. Let the writers write. Ten. Which work proves to be lasting, is something that I can only find out later, and I simply can’t answer why it stays with me, why I live with and in it. Just the same as I can’t answer why it is beautifel. Meanwhile I make bigger-smaller attempts to build it around me with, but naturally I am aware that the main question is ... what I can offer besides myself. „And then (that is the essence of what I have to say) time, which robs palaces, enriches the poems.” (Jorge Luis Borges: Averoes’s search)
And all of this is communicated by artistic cognition to the „pure reason”, to the rational cognition. Our fin-de-siecle world – as an informational mirror-world, moreover mainly as a mediated information-stream – easily and unstoppably floods and digests the human, who was once its creator. Just in the same way as to overrationalized world methodically, naturally methodically turns against itself. Because it disregarded the evidence – that is knowledge by faith – that was written down, rather chopped in stone 6000, or according to the latest archeological findings 9000 years ago – these were the thoughts of the poet during his journey, who built utopias: aesthetic anti-worlds (Almási Miklós), and denied and showed from time to time newer and newer, at the same time timeless truths. I must note that all of this was done without any religious ideology, it is just about the journey of one type of the creative human spirit. All the findings of the 20th century art-history are comprised in the following two lines, eight words: „Aki dudás akar lenni, / Pokolra kell annak menni.” – „Ye, who wants to be a piper, / must go through hell.” The human intellecet has already used its maximum possibilities in the age of myths and legends, in its texts, and generally in its world. What is this comeback, periodical recurrance? Why is this the same thought? Why then? Why again? Why now? Delay ... What is this delay? What is this hiatus? What is there? What isn’t there? So the thought has lived through centuries-thousands of years, and now it is recreated in a modern way. However the modern, even postmodern theories, methods, notions and terms do not seem to be enough to put everything in words.
There is just one thing that seemed to stand time – as it has been timeless for millions of years – and that is, what the Book called it „sin”. A diversion from the devine, natural conception. By: the „sense of guilt”.
So there it is. The poet is in a rush, he must dissolve this sin and sense of guilt, he is the one who „wants to be a piper”. But does the piper really want to be a piper, the writer writer, the poet poet, or ... the instrument inevitably falls on him? Let us be aware of categorical answers. This „Wille zur Macht” (Friedrich Nietzsche) aims at the power of reason, the foundation of truth (Martin Heidegger), and that demands sacrifice, and the creator sacrifices himself. It is again the story of his dying and rebirth, as well of the story of our of our redemption, we put the book down, let’s go, it was good, we have work to do. Redemption in the sense that the creator opens – no, would open the eyes of the receptor, art is cognition based on the principles of faith, it is timeless, because it is timeless as well as time-based; the receptor has faith, or no, belives the discoveres truths, when rational cognition translates them to modern notions. So that is the delay. The hiatus. This is development. During which the poet, creator has only one aim left by the end of the millennium, he must go through hell so that the receptor, who is always in a hurry, is busy, overrationalized, tired, lazy, disappointed, faithless, believe him – rather believe in him. He and the literary researchers must convince the receptor, even if he is preoccupied with literary science or literary critism, not to read the works, but rather live them with empathy. The greatest artists can achieve this absolutely alone, without any help from the critics. Just one example. At the beginning of the fights in Iugoslavia, the patriots started killing each other dressed as Syilvester Stallone’s hero, Rambo ... There it is: the result of going through hell, the work of creators, the work of works – the „poet” – in good cases lots of little Christs, who dedicated their miserable life to make sacrifices. The pledge of going through hell is their sacrifice, rather the reason, sense and aim of their sacrifice. „Due corpos frente a frente / son dos astros que caen / en un cielo vacio.” (Octavio Paz: Due corpos) The method? The life and story of the method is still as it fights with himself in neutral gear.
So as the poet approaches the world with faith from the beginning – „Hitem: - vaskenyér, te táplálj -, / s megőrizni téged, ehhez adj erőt / Csikordulj meg számban, ha becsapnak, / s add meg jussomat a kínhoz - mindenekelőtt.” – „My faith: - iron bread, feed me -, / and give me strength to keep you / Squeek in my mouth, if they trick me, / and give me my right to pain – above all.” (Farkas Árpád: Vaskenyéren – On iron bread) -, and the receptor should approach art, art work, the world the same way, one, two, three – road, truth, life. Faith as method? We have turned faith into a literary-critical-methodological cathegory? We have applied (?!) it in a field which is ... strange? No, the first two written words were literature, and justly so on the reason of the universality of faith. Healthy interdisciplinarity is the most solid foundation, moreover the journey of faith from self-generating chaos, from the confusion and deconstruction of world images and perspectives is a real stroke. It is a way-out from our self-created chaos, from one of its most soned-in, rational and only rational way of self-knowledge, that is our East-european heritage. The return to the archetypes. The most important proof of No one’s land. This is a return on a higher levelthis is the road of the creator-recreator, receptor human, a way-out, that has always been there. „And death shall have no dominion.” (Dylan Thomas)
Now looking at József Attila and other poets, I feel that there must be something before the six pronouns, there must be something before the first person singular, there is someone else before „I”. In our everyday – not only literary – relations there is always one of the other five. But someone else, too. But the language – in a genius way – suppresses it. Because I, you, he, we – don’t need any other pronouns. We are good with the existing six. Maybe it’s just me who goes way too far with the search. Maybe ... me. You. He. We, you, they. Becuse all of these are just one. And there is the seventh. Which is One.
The poet is a stranger in the world, but is never estranged from it.
The path of the poet and its creations, his relationship with the everyday life is monitored, followed, analyzed and evaluated, discovered, interpreted, praized, crippled, and stolen, the influences and effects of the work are blessed and cursed by contemporaries, the philosophers, aestheticians, literary men, literary historians, critics and epigons etc. of posterity – in short: everyone who can or rather dares to hang onto it. They follow its path from simplicity, early poems through the complicated, the creations of adult manlyhood to the superlative, noble and clear simplicity, or rather perfection; the theoretical analysis are open to these three, or four stages of the path. Because this distance can be mapped and foreseen by all these methods of analyses.
Within this distance we tend to write, speak, and have a discourse about the stage of perfection of the classics. With good reason, too, as – out of all stages – this gives the possibility to the most approaches, descriptions, analysis, evaluations, discourses, moreover naturally this needs the most. As each poet is unique, he must be a pioneer and build his own road, whereas from the point of view of literary history and aesthethics the metaphisics of this stage is unapprehendable – we quickly become the enemies of metaphisics –; the stage has as many faces as poets who reached it, and its faces vary according to the angle and way of approach. Moreover, the poets are followed by the all-time second-fiddlers, the critics, the hoards of century-long interpretations. From the point of view of art history, the search is complicated further more, that the happy-tragical stage has a dual nature, and that these two characteristics don’t deny each other. Happy, because – looking back – the completeness wanted and built through a whole lifetime has been achieved, but at the same time tragical, or maybe first of all tragical, because the happy stage of perfection is the forerunner of death. Because the achieved perfection is death itself. More precisely the end of the road, where the steps of the creative life reach their goal, and as they reach their goal and fulfil their function, they necessarily die. – Taking all of this into consideration the philosophy of arts must abstract itself to life discussing existential problems, being stable on quick-sand-like ground from the thousand-faces of thousand-faced perfection, from the multitude of analyses. However, or rather because of this it is such a fruitful domain, and if not the only one, but the first one within science, that can help us follow with our attention the poet to the other side, beyond perfection. Heidegger regards the essence of the artistic work as the becoming and functioning as work of the existing truth (das Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit): in his interpretation the truth is not the conformity of the object with the notion, but the unhiddenness of the existent. In his opinion the important work, the constitutional deed, the essential sacrifice is the manifestation of the truth. The essence of poetry is “the founding of truth”, and the three phases of the founding – the “gift offering”, the excess of truth appearing in the work, the “foundation”, and the “beginning” – constitute the main structure of his activity. “Foundation” in the sense that the poet turns his back to the spirit of the age, that the creator precedes his age, and that his work is a gift and a victim at the same time. That there are, could be few words about the fact that all of this comes on the other side, beyond the unfailing rich phase of perfection? On the one hand it is not/not really the research area of what people have known as sciences anymore, but the viewpoint of ontology, art philosophy, philosophical aesthetics, theory of literature and the psichology of creation is needed for IT. On the other hand, it is such an isolated world in the continuity of the great journey, in its ruthless simplicity it seems so complicated from this side, and so simple in its inevitable complicatedness, so few creative minds reach IT, there are very few “artistic messages” here and there, that we can’t keep an account of them, so it remains a complete mistery for us, mainly unknown, and if not completely unknowable, at least for us it remains that. “Life and literature …” And that is how it must remain. As it can only be approached, accessed, discovered and suffered through by just a few creative minds. “An overheated bunch of flowers” (Pilinszky János: Sírfelirat / Epitaph). Because they are the only ones to be destroyed by it. No one’s land.
The remaining few steps are completed in the infinity, as they intensified an emotianal-ethical crisis as a tragic flow of destructively creative processes. The harmony of objective and subjective reasons and characteristics of the creation is ceased, thus resulting in a sense of emptiness that is the core of all kinds of creation. Creation, that the poet tries to finalize with faith. At the end of the creative process (a step-by-step process through poems and mental-phisical modifications and development) the result is the final work, which – characteristically to all poets – somehow achieves completeness, and coming to life, it gets estranged by its creator, and it does not only distance the poet from the poem, but from himself as well. The main result is that the poet’s ego is divided into two, one ego that lives and acts in the poems, and the other one is the phisical ego. The latter cannot obviously be the same as the bodily reality before the manyfold emotianal-ethical crisis process of the individual. As the poet does not stop writing poetry, the proportion between the two egos is inevitably shifted, and as the postmodern Nietzsche’s still valid statement says, the artist stops being an artist, but he himself becomes the work of art. This process, which only becomes tragic when the creator becomes aware of it, unleashes the wish of recreating the creator, and what brings that to life: the tyranny of a sense of hiatus. „Ay, nina terca, / ay, volutad del ser, presencia hostil, / limite frio a nuestro amor.” (Damaso Alonso: Nina) On the road there appears a serious change into the status of the artist who became the art work, which must be dealt with in the frame of the connection between art and life. The phase of perfection, or rather the perfection of his work has long torn the poet from life, it threw him far away and keeps him from its ... imperfection. From its life-giving imperfection. The road, the „status” of the poet is the state of „I am what I think”, the creator already approaches us as a work of art, and speaks out as a man who has found himself in his endless solitude. Who is richer by the experience of hell, whose „level of existance” is higher, and who justly expects to be paid attention to when pronouncing „Me”. Me as a labyrinth. Surrounded by a master that motivates to create, in his eyes with the solitude of the mental universe – „ Agyamban / folyvást magamban?” („in my mind / alone always?” Illyés Gyula: Töredékről töredékre / From fragment to fragment) – the lack of love, the lack of devine light. Hell. „E non dici parole / e nessuno ti parla.” (Cesare Pavese: Di salmastro e di terra) No transcendence, the anguish is very real, adn we have known it ever since king Salamon that the greater the wisdom, the greater the suffering. Steps, poems, steps. And he does this with such artistic pretence, the aim of his road, of his interiorized creative gesture, of his cognition and of his existance will be his cognitive choice, this is how he will send his poetic thoughts – „azonosulni földiekkel” / „becoming identical to humans” (Illyés Gyula: Töredékről töredékre / From fragment to fragment) – to possible human fellows. His work is experienced as a natural reflex, and tries to make it part of the practical side of life. However ... this is already impossible from the other side, because on the one hand he would have to make such compromizes which would stop him being an artist, on the other hand his work is artistic from its roots, he approaches society from art. Yet the boundary between art and life can only be tresspassed in one direction: from life and society. So in the space between integration and assimilation the fact that he wants his work to go beyond the reign of art in the practical forming of life, it can never be torn from its aesthetic roots. Looking at it from this side, his creative action is a quazi-action, because it can only be objectivized in the poetic individuality of art works, it can have a space and result in the created world of art. In the end our creator and his work stand completely alone in front of the distancing, vital, lively and developing reality of life. „Fáj a szívem, a szó kihűl, / De hát kinek is szólanék” – „My heart aches, the word gets cold, / But who could I tell this to” (József Attila: Reménytelenül. Vasszínű égboltban. – Hopelessly. In the iron sky)
On the road, beyond the phase of perfection, being torn from the body of the integrating society, it becomes shockingly obvious that the adequate social role showing the personality is both a necessity and a possibility, as well as that ghe unison of the poetic personality has become impossible. The role blocks and deforms the personality – the inner and outer crisis is thus further deepened. And it is summed up in the following: the main human goal is that You, the individual create yourself into an integral personality, to defend your integrity – becomes impossible. The moral-ethical critical situation of the artist who has become the art work, caused by the devision into two, is impossible to be overcome, the only solution is for the poet to stop being an artist, to stop being himself; whereas his personality crisis is insoluble: there is no alternative. „Maradj fölöslegesnek” („Remain superfluous”) (József Attila: Tudod, hogy nincs bocsánat / You know there is no pardon) – thus the poet who distances himself, because he cannot accept either possible role, each of them being personality-distorting for him. And the poet, the moral and intellectual man can only overcome this situation without alternatives in one way: by not choosing the role and adapting to it, but rather choosing himself. Himself, who he could become if his inner-outer situation made it possible to create himself. „Légy, ami lennél” /”Be who you would like to be” (József Attila: Tudod, hogy nincs bocsánat / You know there is no pardon).
The Poet. He has completely and eternally been torn away from society. Hoewever he tries to have an influence through aesthetical validities on society itself, he speaks to all in the resigned calmness and freedom of not belonging anywhere. On No one’s land. „Az ember végül homokos, / szomorú, vizes síkra ér, / szétnéz merengve és okos / fejével biccent, nem remél” – „Finally, the human reaches / the sandy, sorrowfulm wet plain. / Look around, daydream and nod his / clever head, but he does not hope.” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) These lines, that have been quoted many times, can only be interpreted between perfection and death, on the great road, placed on the stage of No one’s land, this is where they reveal their meaning, where their richness can be estimated, the experimental foundation as well as the objective and subjective reasons of writing the poem become clear in the knowledge of the entire great road. The bounderies of No one’s land only become clear to the poet after he has tresspassed them: the present tense of the poem synthetizes past and future, and the author states it. He is utterly and irreversibly lonely, there is no way back, he is the only prisoner in the prison of endless freedom. „A semmi ágán ül szívem, / kis teste hangtalan vacog, / Köréje gyűlnek szelíden És nézik, nézik a csillagok” – „My heart sits on the branch of nothing, / his noiseless body’s shivering. / Surround himself with stars gently, / who are watching, watching him.” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) In his lonelyness he is solely governed by his decisions – as far as they can govern him –, and he suffers all the consequences of his actions. In a way, he must therefore be infallible, and this fact throws such responsability upon him, „as” endless his freedom is, that he has wanted all his life, and yet this is what causes his gradualdisappearance. The endless freedom, possibility and power to be the only one to govern his choices, which is the highest level of individuality – deprives him exactly from his own individuality. We cannot follow him in his solitude and endless freedom, because the poet in this case is not himself, he is not an individual, but certainty. It is not József Attila and Pilinszky János who wave to us and send poem-messages to us from the other side. The poet does not appear as personality, but as certainty, in his work we are not enriched by the touch of his rich spirit, but we are struck by his certainty and ruthless truth made artistic reality through his sacrifice. Poem-interpretations? The first is ... geocentricity. In the sense that trying to find (possibly) the exact birth „place” of the text in the poem or in all poems on the great road, which is obviously not a line of biographical data. It is an artificial existential experience. It is not to be confused with the poetic state, it is an existential state, within which there may be multiple poetic states. The poem can be interpreted in its entirety starting from viewing this state in its genetic connections. Poem – state. State in which the poet – if we can still rightfully use the term poet – is just the only reference, nothing more: the only reference being the past. And as he does not write his poems anymore, but they write themselves, they bring themselves to the final station, he can do only one thing. To take a look into his past. To make an inventory. (József Attila: Kész a leltár / Inventory closed). The poem governs the person, the fate of the once creative man turned from an individual, a personality into certainty. At this point it becomes clear that the creation is a cognitive pledge, a sacrifice from the beginning (of the road) to the end. This is valid on a poem, on all poems, as well as on the entire human culture. (However, what are the changes in this respect brought by postmodernism, what mutations – nothing more, but mutations appeared on this road, are beyond the spectrum of this text.) The poem regulates how the other ego, the one that lives in poems becomes more and more complete with the last chips of the poet’s life. „Bennem a múlt hull, mint a kő / az űrön által hangtalan. / Ellen a néma kék idő.” – „In me the past falls, as stones / through space, silently. / Opposed to the deaf blue time” (József Attila: Reménytelenül. Vasszínű égboltban. – Hopelessly. In the iron sky) – In the end No one’s land is not beyond time or above time, it is simply (!?) timeless. All the above analized problems – apart from a few marginal aspects – do not belong to a single period, social order etc. Though they typically belong to the 20th century, because on the road, as a result of the authors’ self-reflection, the revelation came to life, that has lit thounsands and thousands of years. But it has had an influence ever since the first flame-drawings and saman chants, even if we haven’t paid attention to them, they have an influence now and they will always have. We are moaning that the problems are getting more serious, we are criticizing that the philosophies haven’t been able to solve them. But we haven’t come up with any „solutions” either. There is no solution. The problems rise from the essence of human existance and the creative process, the only way to overcome them is that what the poet does. There is no present and no past, but the future becomes the most important in its last step. For his intellect, the completion of his life is important. For the sake of being active in the common action, of taking an active role in the aesthetic radiation of the creation, of getting back the ability of dissolving in collectivity he can only recreate his other ego, which lives in the artistic works, by giving up his material-bodily ego. We know it from Heidegger and József Attila, Fafka and Borges that at the end of the road death reflecting the Nothing steps into the existance, and the attitude towards death defines the reality or unreality of the poet’s existance. The assumption of death makes him his true self, sets him free, he authentifies his ouvre, turns his own being into the story of existance, and what is most important: he brings to life his other ego. It is decided within the last few steps, until then its opposite is also possible. That by mistaking the last few steps, or simply suddenly stopping, he can turn the edifice of life into ruin. It is a fact that Petőfi Sándor did not hesitate, not even for a second, it doesn’t matter that the only thing that József Attila cannot suffer is the stigma of insanity, or that he can only make a movement either in the state of insanity or in a bitterly sound state – but this is how he saves his own life, this is how he recreates his other ego and is reborn into community. „Íme hát megleltem hazámat.” – „I finally found my home.” (József Attila) ’The poet is alive”, „The poet is among us” we say ... This is a commonplace, thus an axiom, which belongs to everyone, and it states in a comprised, simple way that on the road of the mental poet, the accomplishment is by no way some kind of perfection; the fulfilment, the more ruthless side of creation is yet to follow, between perfection and death the culmination is represented by the death-defying transcendence of No one’s land. Fulfilment in the most real, in the noblest sense of the word, but this kind of of fulfilment is not the end of anything. Because this is the beginning of immortality.
However. It’s a fact that we don’t pay attention to it, moreover, by the end of the century the texts that are mourning the poem, or the status-loss of the written word in general, have become common-places, the many-times apostrophed Reader has no need for the written word, we are living in a period of images again, Gutenberg has slowly died, even McLuhan, we are mainly film consumers. And in our days that is fine. The reader has less and less faith in the written word, the writer cannot believe in his own possibilities anymore. The writer and his world ... The poem, as any artistic creation, is on the one hand the subjective reevaluation of tradition, a heritage of the past reevaluated from the perspective of the present. On the other hand his present, his subjective slice of time, the reevaluated slice of time is not the same as the reader’s, the time of the reader is the past for the creator. There is no common time-experience, a human-shaped frame, tradition, that could offer some security, just the solitary search. „Kard éle csillan.” – „The sword’s edge glistens” (József Attila: Reménytelenül / Hopelessly) And through the poet, the reader gets closer to his own world, which is a great result for him, the on the other side invested sacrifice. The created opportunity. To continue one’s life journey. „Én – tudnék még beszélni. / De minek? Megtudván, mi ez: élni” – „I – could speak more. / But why? To know, what it is: to live” sums up Illyés Gyula. (Némulás felé / Getting mute) Illyés’s thoughts are based on his own life-experience in first person, singular – „Én”, „Én ... még” – „I” ... „I ... still” – he forshadows a summary, then the reader. József Attila himself completes the induction from the individual to the general based on his own experiences – „Az ember”, „Az ember végül”, „végül” - „The human”, „The human in the end”, „in the end” –, he does not make a confession (even a poetic one), but he gives a cognitive map (Ulrich Neisser) of the area that can only be discovered and experienced mentally, of the last stage of the creative mind’s development. He presents this to his contemporaries, or – taking into consideration the timelessness of the thought and the aesthetic quality of his poems – to posterity, his work will be a guideline, in the sense that Hans-Georg Gadamer presents it in Truth and method as pre(vious moral and logical)judgement, a begginning according to Heidegger, a sacrifice for others, or rather the expression of the reason of sacrifice. Almási Miklós says that the artitic work is an „anti-world” in the context of its own contemporary society, the mimetic work is built from the pieces of everyday-life, uses them symbolically, and its truth will suggest a philosophy opposite to the everyday philosophy. This is the road from the renessaince to the modern. The creator of the construction uses „imaginary pieces”, however metaphorically he sheds light on the hidden structure of the world. In fact the self-search of humanity is the result of this self-reflection, while its medium is the art. The artist is the soldier sent forward, in the first line. „A világ csak akkor válik megragadható számunkra, ha a művészet felfedezte és bemutatta.” (The world will only be comprihensible for us, if art has discovered and presented it”) „Sőt az ember is csak teremtett másának segítségével képes magába látni, csak a művészi képpel szembesülve képes látni önmagát mint objektív létezőt: lényegéről mindaddig csak homályos leképzelései lehetnek.” („Moreover, the human can only see into himself with the help of his created self, he can only regard himself as an objective creature being faced with the artistic image: until then he can only have blurry ideas about himself”) A művészet tehát „azt jeleníti meg, ami korábban nem volt. Teremti a világot.” So art „shows what has never been before. It creates the world.” (Almási Miklós: Anti-esztétika / Anti-aesthetics). The poet the past. His own past. His conemporaries’ future. So this is a present given with the blood of the poet – and the reader of the end of the 20th century does not need this present? In fact, that is all he needs. If for any reason there were no poets, he would send someone else forward for the same reason, and … he would always find someone, there would always be volunteers. Someone. Anyone. That he, and his work … are not needed? We don’t receive his message – so where is the emphasis in the interaction? The same with the 19th century. In 1848. A war, a world-fire. Then the preparations for new foundations. Cézanne painted protocubist paintings in the 1860’s, long before cubism as stream appeared. In 1945 another world war. Then the manierist postmodernism, which is ironic with itself, with its cowardice, with its defeatism. That the end of the 20th century – looking back at its achievements – is disillusioned? „Tired”? Rather it lost its faith, because it is tired of its faith. In Middle- and Eastern-Europe this coincides with the ugly end of a particular social order, with the collapse of all utopia and reality both in a symbolic and material sense. Looking at this from the perspective of the experience of the harsh everydays, all of this is understandable, moreover acceptable. It is again natural that the reader reacts like this nowadays, and that his dismissive attitude is mainly a matter of the medium. He does not want victims in words, which have been the same for centuries, rather in images, more precisely in films. „According to the perspective of transavantgarde (...) there is no reason to have clearly delimited scientific research fields, because these researches are impersonal, objective, abstract, and they aim at the establishment of a general scheme, model, independent from time, space, tradition or people. Instead the abstract, method-centred, generalizing and anti-history approach, the transavantgarde validates a concrete, personal, image- and history-centred approach.” (Hegyi Lóránd) The Reader also wants to see and follow this „concrete, personal, image- and history-centred”, mediated world, because in the space of the film the distance is reduced, the experience of the now, of the instant becomes important. The creators of popular films rely on these expectations. The distance between the creators and spectators of these films is small, really small, whereas success and feedback are instant. While the distance is a matter of faith – and faith is the strongest at the beginning of centuries, „it can and will be better”, the change of time brings that with itself. Faith is needed, new faith, but from where?, how?, at the beginning of the century there was an Ady, who spoke about „new faiths”, whereas the masters of self-irony chant about ourselves at the end of the century, moreover, if someone has faith in something, they are viewed as having anachronystic way of thinking, as heretics. On the other hand Ridley Scott speaks about how christianity should be discovered again in just a few minutes in Blade Runner, love is being praised by Francis Ford Coppola in Dracula and Frankenstein, he changes the status of monsters, and gives them the possibility od redemption. And that is already new faith, new beginning. „Foundation.” Giving faith a shape is again and invariably poetry. The words of faith, the design of faith, the colours of faith. Because Tarkovszkij – I strongly state – was a poet, a film-poet, and film-poetry has a very strong influence on life; what in the 1960’s was prognozed by Andy Warholm then in the ‘70’s by Herbert Marcuse, today is already a commonplace, e.g. that life imitates art. It imitates film, which on its highest artistic level is beyond complicated, it’s clear poetry, or prose – see Fellini’s works –, or sculpture; “Film is the sculture of time” – says Tarkovszkij with a great poetic image. Researchers of literature are on the lookout, but they cannot be taken seriously, they make a living on this.
Researchers of literature? Approaching the poet, his journey, his poem with methods, supersophisticated methods is the high class of cynism. It is allright that „criticism mediates to the receptors”, moreover they bring more and more people in the team of readers”, but working with vivisection, or putting it bluntly with disecting the living, is more pervert than robbing corpses. However in interpreting the art work, the mapping of the „status” is just some kind of point of departure – „Between the idea / and reality between the motion / and the act / falls the shadow / For Thine is the Kingdom” (T. S. Eliot: The hollow man) -, and the interpretations stop here, eben though this is only the intensive totality of the art work ... This is only the place of departure, we should help ourselves and the receptors forward from this point. That this is not the duty or area of literature? Or still? One thing is for sure, it is not the duty of critism, because that is only second fiddler behind active artists – but it is the duty of literature, in the widest and noblest sense of the word. As the method toils with itself ... First of all the tussle aims at clarifying the status of the method, but it is known that it can only be done with information gatehered on the other side. But ... in the end how can we check the result of our work? Naturally, with another method, a method which checks the method itself ... The same as with poetry, we try to find a way out from the statusless situation of literature. Never has ever been there such chaos as in the super-developed 20th century. Development, peaks, boundaries, the recognition of boundaries, being against boundaries, disappointment, faithlessness, „tired fin-de-siecle”. Everything is the dead-end of rational (spelled with capital R) cognition, or rather the prevision of the end of the dead-end. And the receptor has also gone through his own hell.
There is the sign towards the last part of the dead-end. Language is genial: the complete ruler, and it rules our lives in such a way that it leaves us the possibility of ruling the essential, and the possibility of complete freedom from it. How do we conjugate our everyday-self? I – the first, you – the second, he/she/it – the third. And this is valid for everyone. It is eerie what this sequence suggests – the order of the world! -, but it is even eerier, that we conjugate the world around us with serenity and insensitive negligence. The language rules are proof to that. And who thinks of questioning the rules of the language? However in cut-off situations, in „periods of transitions” we must do that.
I – who, in the sense of renessaince creation, am continuously speaking about myself – am looking for my ancestors at the moment. I – one in many millions. When selecting, interpreting, valuing works, we stand against living creatures, people, among whom there are weak and very strong individuals, it is previously decided on an irrational level according to our art-philosophy knowledge, how we approach them as receptors. So I am looking for the freedom of the method again. „The person is more than what he can know about himself” ... (Karl Jaspers) How, based on what can we relate to them? Mutatis mutandis, the other is initially more than what I can know about him. „You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I am looking for my ancestors.
The work of art is the objectivization of human existance – reasearching works of art I can assess, and interpret the grade of existance of others, and searching for these grades is my most important aim. The researched objectivizationis first of all an object, which becomes an aesthetic object as a result of my reception, of my action. This is how IT is reborn. The receptor’s state of conscience is altered, even if the receptor – naturally – remains the same, even though he can’t be the same, because as a totality of his physical ego and his ego living in the work of art, in its interpretation ... is already objectivization. The objectivization of the existance of the being in the work of art. The process of my cognition started with the interaction, and in this process I don’t reflect on my action, but on the object, let’s say poem that I am analyzing. „I am a receptor”. Paradoxically, I don’t set off on this scout journey from the creator’s side, but I depart from myself, I read the poem, the novel, I seek for my aesthetic pleasure in the work of art, I seek myself in him as well, and ... I pay attention to myself. For example an objectivized being with the name William Shakespeare gives people the pleasure with the talent of a real magician of finding themselves in the „work” for centuries. At those times Shakespeare lives in us, and we all live in him – I state silently on the analogy of creation.We live, exist, do self-examinations in every catharsis both within and outside of the artistic works, and meanwhile we don’t notice what is really happening. We pass away above the works.
We look into the paper from above, and that creates such illusions. I am above, and I consider this to be natural. „Above” – a serious word, because „above” and „beneath” are archetypes, the creation of the world started with the separation of the two, with defining their space and place.
According to the three dimensions of real space, I can be „above”, but the dimensions of space, of mental space are originally different and they change in a different way. The slogans – „Long live the ...” etc. – have always been put up there, whereas in my ancestors I was beneath, so how could I relate to what was up there? Even if up there is that something, and I was under, I still ... And then the „period of transition”.
I need a new method so that I don’t work based on the theories of Escarpit and his collegues. I must develop a different aesthetic behaviour, the basis of which is my self-knowledge in a hermeneutical sense, and the reltion to it, self-reflection. According to its nature, this is also an irrational approach, two blurry mirror-images are looking for themselves in each other’s eyes, however it is not update of Worringer Einführung-theory, because the decisive element is the attitude towards myself. So let my interpretation and evaluation begin with a methodological self-analysis, with the self-reflection of a creation objectivized into a receptor. The reception – in its controlled being – becomes metareception, and following the path of the poet I already have those universal values that I can apply. However, let me start from a „zero” state of knowledge, let me ignore all kinds of pre(logical, aesthetic, moral)conceptions, that are otherwise of outmost importance in my everyday life. What I feel in this moment, is the basic feeling that will build on the relation between the two objectivized beings. Then I can ennumerate the rest of the information, even where the poet was born, or whether he was a womanizer. I can evaluate the importance of this thought on the one hand in the metaphysics and deconstruction of the poet’s journey, and on the other hand now, during the period of transition. First of all this is a kind of attitude, aesthetic behaviour that can always be expected from everyone, and secondly, I should turn this into a principle. It is absurd, but I have to make an experiment for myself, even if it is a thought experiment: let me try reading a poem, a short story keeping the paper above my head. Let it ... be above. However I don’t advise myself to analyse this way, but the feelings and thoughts that occur this way, should be added to those that were born in the traditional way – and based on this junction I will see myself in a different way.
I must identify at least one particular behaviour against the world, people, society, order of society, politics, arts etc. that I will follow through from the beginning of the century in literature, fine arts and film as well. Jean Luc Godard, Swiss film director, named his work team after Dziga Vertov. I can give the happiness of searching for ancestors and finding continuity to myself in advance, because it is certainthat I have a solid groundation for it, somewhere deep down for now, but it certainly exists. I am not talking about Tarkovszkij-faced hidden and halfway dug out sculptures, even though it is ironic, that whatever the Russians started, they were the first to offer sollutions against it. I, the receptor, have recognized and admitted my ptolemaic disappointment of the work of art, and – following the path of the poet – I am looking for my ancestors, selecting my heritage, the tradition according to this. So one. Let the writers write. Two. I leave the past to hell, and I follow the natural and universal process in which those who are not lively enough, are left out, as they drop behind the „soft” levels of my everyday life, as they get weaker and weaker and perish in the end. This is how nature works. Three. Let the writers write. Four. I, the interpreter, must reflect on myself first against the world, then against the recreated world and against the work of art, and at the same time learning from the example of my recognized or not-recognized ancestors, I have to try to intervene as little as possible in the process that could work more easily, effectively and quickly without me. It would make progress. Five. Let the writers write. Six. As an interpreter, I must control myself – being aware of the fact that my „doing nothing” is creative passivity. Seven. So that all the above could happen, it is also needed that the past should not mingle in any way with my present. It’s my life. Eight. For my excuse, Tarkovszkij was a great poet. Nine. Let the writers write. Ten. Which work proves to be lasting, is something that I can only find out later, and I simply can’t answer why it stays with me, why I live with and in it. Just the same as I can’t answer why it is beautifel. Meanwhile I make bigger-smaller attempts to build it around me with, but naturally I am aware that the main question is ... what I can offer besides myself. „And then (that is the essence of what I have to say) time, which robs palaces, enriches the poems.” (Jorge Luis Borges: Averoes’s search)
And all of this is communicated by artistic cognition to the „pure reason”, to the rational cognition. Our fin-de-siecle world – as an informational mirror-world, moreover mainly as a mediated information-stream – easily and unstoppably floods and digests the human, who was once its creator. Just in the same way as to overrationalized world methodically, naturally methodically turns against itself. Because it disregarded the evidence – that is knowledge by faith – that was written down, rather chopped in stone 6000, or according to the latest archeological findings 9000 years ago – these were the thoughts of the poet during his journey, who built utopias: aesthetic anti-worlds (Almási Miklós), and denied and showed from time to time newer and newer, at the same time timeless truths. I must note that all of this was done without any religious ideology, it is just about the journey of one type of the creative human spirit. All the findings of the 20th century art-history are comprised in the following two lines, eight words: „Aki dudás akar lenni, / Pokolra kell annak menni.” – „Ye, who wants to be a piper, / must go through hell.” The human intellecet has already used its maximum possibilities in the age of myths and legends, in its texts, and generally in its world. What is this comeback, periodical recurrance? Why is this the same thought? Why then? Why again? Why now? Delay ... What is this delay? What is this hiatus? What is there? What isn’t there? So the thought has lived through centuries-thousands of years, and now it is recreated in a modern way. However the modern, even postmodern theories, methods, notions and terms do not seem to be enough to put everything in words.
There is just one thing that seemed to stand time – as it has been timeless for millions of years – and that is, what the Book called it „sin”. A diversion from the devine, natural conception. By: the „sense of guilt”.
So there it is. The poet is in a rush, he must dissolve this sin and sense of guilt, he is the one who „wants to be a piper”. But does the piper really want to be a piper, the writer writer, the poet poet, or ... the instrument inevitably falls on him? Let us be aware of categorical answers. This „Wille zur Macht” (Friedrich Nietzsche) aims at the power of reason, the foundation of truth (Martin Heidegger), and that demands sacrifice, and the creator sacrifices himself. It is again the story of his dying and rebirth, as well of the story of our of our redemption, we put the book down, let’s go, it was good, we have work to do. Redemption in the sense that the creator opens – no, would open the eyes of the receptor, art is cognition based on the principles of faith, it is timeless, because it is timeless as well as time-based; the receptor has faith, or no, belives the discoveres truths, when rational cognition translates them to modern notions. So that is the delay. The hiatus. This is development. During which the poet, creator has only one aim left by the end of the millennium, he must go through hell so that the receptor, who is always in a hurry, is busy, overrationalized, tired, lazy, disappointed, faithless, believe him – rather believe in him. He and the literary researchers must convince the receptor, even if he is preoccupied with literary science or literary critism, not to read the works, but rather live them with empathy. The greatest artists can achieve this absolutely alone, without any help from the critics. Just one example. At the beginning of the fights in Iugoslavia, the patriots started killing each other dressed as Syilvester Stallone’s hero, Rambo ... There it is: the result of going through hell, the work of creators, the work of works – the „poet” – in good cases lots of little Christs, who dedicated their miserable life to make sacrifices. The pledge of going through hell is their sacrifice, rather the reason, sense and aim of their sacrifice. „Due corpos frente a frente / son dos astros que caen / en un cielo vacio.” (Octavio Paz: Due corpos) The method? The life and story of the method is still as it fights with himself in neutral gear.
So as the poet approaches the world with faith from the beginning – „Hitem: - vaskenyér, te táplálj -, / s megőrizni téged, ehhez adj erőt / Csikordulj meg számban, ha becsapnak, / s add meg jussomat a kínhoz - mindenekelőtt.” – „My faith: - iron bread, feed me -, / and give me strength to keep you / Squeek in my mouth, if they trick me, / and give me my right to pain – above all.” (Farkas Árpád: Vaskenyéren – On iron bread) -, and the receptor should approach art, art work, the world the same way, one, two, three – road, truth, life. Faith as method? We have turned faith into a literary-critical-methodological cathegory? We have applied (?!) it in a field which is ... strange? No, the first two written words were literature, and justly so on the reason of the universality of faith. Healthy interdisciplinarity is the most solid foundation, moreover the journey of faith from self-generating chaos, from the confusion and deconstruction of world images and perspectives is a real stroke. It is a way-out from our self-created chaos, from one of its most soned-in, rational and only rational way of self-knowledge, that is our East-european heritage. The return to the archetypes. The most important proof of No one’s land. This is a return on a higher levelthis is the road of the creator-recreator, receptor human, a way-out, that has always been there. „And death shall have no dominion.” (Dylan Thomas)
Now looking at József Attila and other poets, I feel that there must be something before the six pronouns, there must be something before the first person singular, there is someone else before „I”. In our everyday – not only literary – relations there is always one of the other five. But someone else, too. But the language – in a genius way – suppresses it. Because I, you, he, we – don’t need any other pronouns. We are good with the existing six. Maybe it’s just me who goes way too far with the search. Maybe ... me. You. He. We, you, they. Becuse all of these are just one. And there is the seventh. Which is One.
The poet is a stranger in the world, but is never estranged from it.
