Balázs Lengyel: The Poet and his Experience

(The New Hungarian Quarterly, vol. XXVII/101.1986. Spring. 154-155. p.)

István Baka: Döbling. Szépirodalmi, 1985, 56 pp., András Fodor: Reményfutam (Second-Chance Heat), Szépirodalmi, 1985, 124 pp.

        Fifteen years ago Robert Graves established a prize for Hungarian poets out of the royalties of his Hungarian publications. According to the charter, the prize is to be given annually to a poet who has published an especially fine poem. The Graves Prize, because of an extremely conscientious prize committee, has since become one of the most prestigious private prizes in Hungary. *

        This year the Graves Prize has gone to István Baka. Since then the poem, Franz Liszt Spends a Night above the Fish Market,** has appeared in the poet's third volume, Döbling. Baka, in his late thirties, cannot really be said to write either prolifically or not facility. The book only has 56 pages, and his previous ones are not much larger either. Baka is one of those poets who resist fleeting impressions and the spontaneous formulation of experience; he is one of those who aim at giving poetic form to emotional perceptions finalized by repetition. In the wake of the fleeting moments, these accumulate imperceptibly. Since such experiences take shape in the deepest layers of the spirit, as the result of their recurrence, the poetry based on them may well be meagre as far as length is concerned, but it concentrates all the more on fundamental aspects of modern man's perceptions and attitudes. Specifically, on the historical and existential experience of man in Central Europe in the recent past – in spite of the fact that no specific events or specific historical situations are alluded to. No, this is not the case – that would call for a different poetic treatment. István Baka's poems express his feelings and attitudes towards life and existence. He is not concerned with specific events, but with fate, God, and cosmic indifference. In his poems he conducts with them a bitter and fearlessly explicit argument, wich appears in conventional verse forms, though objectified in a modern manner, and often invents symbols of past events and human fates with a new lease of life. Today's perceptions and feelings are composed into symbols of the past not only in the poem on Liszt, but also in the title poem of the volume Döbling. Döbling, a Vienna suburb, has particularly bleak associations for Hungarians, for it was there in a nursing home for nervous diseases that the great statesman of the Reform Age, Count István Széchenyi, was confined by the Viennese Court until his suicide in 1860. Both these poems reveal – and there are others – how strong Baka's involvement is with the Hungarian past, and how he objectifies the emotions of today through symbols and situations from Hungarian national history. Today we no longer have to confront the superstition that objectification places poetry at a great distance and lessens its effect. Confessional, or first-person, poetry, a characteristic product of Romanticism, is on the wane or, even, can be said to have disappeared altogether. No subjectively confessional poem can be written after Eliot, Pound, George, and Rilke, or in Hungarian poetry after Mihály Babits, Milán Füst or Sándor Weöres. Even the general public needs no further evidence on the force and suggestivity of the depersonalized poem, after „The Waste Land” or, to cite a Hungarian example, Babits' Jónás könyve (The Book of Jonah). The effect and suggestivity of poetry derive from qualites other than the principles and techniques of writing lyric poetry.

        Aware of his own anti-impressionist, anti-spontaneous nature, Baka gradually found the use of the objective as an adequate means of expressing his more elusive, heavier personality. In contrast to the interest in the momentary in poetry – which has even led to a re-discovery of automatic writing in our day, a new fashion among young poets now – he assigns his poems the role of conveying basic lyric observations in a comprised manner. His poetry is terse, almost puritanical, and reveals a strict moral and professional attitude towards art; in this Baka has clearly followed the practice of the great poets already mentioned, and the poets around the periodical Új Hold (1946-48), who first developed this form of objective lyric poetry. Baka has few words, but they are woven into a strong texture in his poem. Thus, in a worldwide inflation of words he deserves greater attention – which is what the Graves Committee has accorded to him – even though he rarely appears in public. And although his concern with traditions occasionally influences his poetic means – his similes and vocabulary especially – to a greater degree than would be desirable, his bitter despair – over indifference, the waning willpower of a nation, or the deaf and empty sky – has so much authenticity, and bears the stamp of first-hand experience, that the conventional forms are with worthy content.

        András Fodor belongs to an older generation [...]

*On the history of the prize, see Miklós Vajda's article, NHQ 100, p. 188.
**See the poem in transtation by George Szirtes, on p. 90 of this issue.

(The New Hungarian Quarterly, vol. XXVII/101.1986. Spring. 154-155. p.)