Transcultural and regional codes in the “poetry of Slovak Hungarians”

Csilla NAGY

(csillester@gmail.com)

The aim of the paper is to examine the ways, how the cultural codes of the Central European surroundings appear in the poetry of the Slovak Hungarians during the second half of the 20^th century and in the present. Within the scope of the above-mentioned phenomenon, it also analyses in what degree is the regional language use shaping the characteristic features of the different works of art in poetry. The findings are mainly based on the research of the poetry of Árpád Tozsér, Lajos Zs. Nagy and Zoltán Németh.The aim of the paper is to examine the ways, how the cultural codes of the Central European surroundings appear in the poetry of the Slovak Hungarians during the second half of the 20^th century and in the present. Within the scope of the above-mentioned phenomenon, it also analyses in what degree is the regional language use shaping the characteristic features of the different works of art in poetry. The findings are mainly based on the research of the poetry of Árpád Tőzsér, Lajos Zs. Nagy and Zoltán Németh.

Tőzsér and Zs. Nagy are inevitable factors in the period termed as „Hungarian literature in Slovakia”, their significance is witnessed by monographic works and essays: Györgyi Pécsi, Zoltán Németh on Tőzsér, and István Dusza, Zoltán Csehy on Zs. Nagy. Although it was not merely the Hungarian reception in Slovakia which turned with interest towards these authors, they received no room in a textbook of literary history and a summarizing collection of essays published recently in Hungary: A magyar irodalom történetei III (Histories of Hungarian Literature, vol. 3), 2007; Magyar Irodalom (Hungarian Literature), 2011. The voluminous and significant reception of Zs. Nagy and Tőzsér had no influence to date on the canonic structure of Hungarian literature. The present research strives to solve this contradiction but with a critical attitude to eventual gestures of overestimation. A further problem is how to represent the two life-works in the history of Hungarian literature, with what instances of the history of reception or the history of aesthetic parallelisms, and with what measure of due emphasis.

This paper is fundamental as, with a survey of the work of Zoltán Németh. Its subject-matter is one, as yet unfinished, work, which have been for long in the focus of public interest. Although the amount of criticisms and studies is significant, the problems have not been worked out yet in full detail. It hasn’t been written, yet, monography on Németh’s poetry. Studies and critisism concentrate on the close reading of certain works, the introduction of certain poetical strategies and call attention to the reconsideration of some problems.

The paper starts with a complex examination of select texts, presents poetical, linguistical and stylistical solutions and draws attention to changes in reception which chataracterize the authors, and concludes with the description of their canonical positions and changes in their reception. The study of reception will reveal trends in the period termed as „Hungarian literature in Slovakia” and in general it may pave the way to a re-interpretation of the term „regional literature”. The reading texts by Tőzsér, Zs. Nagy and Németh will also help the interpretation of what is termed as contemporary Hungarian literature in Slovakia.