In one sense, I would suppose that there are two kinds of artistic genius out there, the one neither necessarily greater than the other. The first, and the most common, is a kind of labourer–the artist who through a long process of maturation and deliberation has come to perfect his or her craft. And then there is a rarer, wilder and all to often tragic breed of genius. One who, if lacking in a certain technical refinement or intellectual complexity, makes up for it with a radical, prodigious artistic vision which he just seems to be born with–which seems to be overflowing in him and be almost too big for the artist himself–yea, even the world–to contain.
In this second category I would place the beautiful, poor soul that was Attila József, a Hungarian poet who, in spite of his life being cut short by a suspected suicide at the age of 32, possessed one of the great poetic minds of the modern era. While there might certainly be an artistic progression to be seen in his work, even in his first poems, published at the age of just seventeen, one feels like one is reading a “complete” poet–one entirely grounded in his art.
As always, I would like to give a greater discussion of Józsefs poetry by highlighting a number of his poems and juxtaposing these with his destiny’s course but that would require time that I do not currently have. Perhaps in the future. In the meantime I can simply encourage you to read more of his work by following this link to access a number of them: https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~lukacs/ja/poems2/jozsef-eng.htm#10. As far as the poem featured here is concerned, credit has to be given to the translator, Thomas Kabdebó, who has done a very admirable job in rendering them into English.
Ode.
1.
I am sitting
here on a glittering wall of rocks.
The mellow wind of the young summer
like the warmth of a good supper
flies around.
I let my heart grow fond of silence.
It is not so difficult,
–the past swarms around–
the head bends down
and down hangs the hand.
I gaze at the mountains’ mane
every leaf reflects the glow
of your brow.
The road is empty, empty,
yet I can see
how the wind makes your skirt flutter
under the fragile branches of the tree.
I see a lock of your hair tip foreward
your soft breasts quiver
–as the stream down below is running away
behold, I see again,
how the ripples on round white pebbles
the fairy laughter spouts out on your teeth.
2.
O how I love you
who, made to speak
both the wily solitude which weaves its plots
in the deepest caverns of the heart
and the universe.
Who part from me, in silence, and run away
like the waterfall from its own rumble
while I, between the peaks of my life,
near to the far,
cry out and reverberate
rebounding against sky and earth
that I love you, you sweet step-mother.
3.
I love you like the child loves his mother,
like silent pits love their depth
I love you like halls love the light
like the soul loves the flame,
like the body loves repose.
I love you like all mortals love living
until they die.
Every single smile, movement, word of yours
I keep like the earth keeps all fallen matter.
Like acids into metal
so my instincts have burnt
your dear and beautiful form into my mind,
and there your being fills up everything.
Moments pass by, rattling
but you are sitting mutely in my ears.
Stars blaze and fall
but you stand still in my eyes.
Like silence in a cave,
your flavour, now cool,
still lingers in my mouth
and your hand upon the waterglass
and the delicate veins upon your hand
glimmer up before me again and again.
4.
O what kind of matter am I
that your glance cuts and shapes me?
What kind of soul and what kind of light
and what kind of amazing phenomenon am I
that in the mist of emptiness
I can walk around
the gentle slopes of your fertile body?
And like the word
entering into an enlightened mind
I can enter into its mysteries…
Your veins like rosebushes
tremble ceaselessly.
They carry the eternal current
that love may blossom in your cheeks
and thy womb may bear a blessed fruit.
Many a small root embroiders through and through
the sensitive soil of your stomach
weaving knots, unwinding the tangle
that the cells of your juices may align
into clusters of swarming lines
and that the good thickets of your bushy lungs
may whisper their own glory.
The eternal matter happily proceeds in you
along the tunnels of your bowels
and the waste gains a rich life
in the hot wells of your ardent kidneys.
Undulating hills rise
star constellations oscillate
lakes move, factories operate
millions of living creatures
insects
seaweed
cruelty and goodness stir
the sun shines, a misty arctic light looms –
unconscious eternity roams about
in your metabolism.
5.
Like clots of blood
these words fall
before you.
Existence stutters
only the law speaks clearly.
But my industrious organs that renew me
day by day
are now preparing for silence.
But until then all cry out.
You,
whom they have selected out of the multitude
of two thousand million people,
you only one,
you soft cradle,
strong grave, living bed
receive me into you!…
(How tall is the sky at dawn!
Armies are dazzling in its ore.
This great radiance hurts my eyes.
I am lost, I believe…
I hear my heart beating
flapping above me.)
6.
(By-Song.)
(The train is taking me, I am going
perhaps I may even find you today.
My burning face may then cool down,
and perhaps you will softly say:
The water is running, take a bath.
Here is a towel for you to dry.
The meat is cooking appease your hunger,
this is your bed, where I lie.)
Form:
In translation, free verse, with the exception of part 6, “the by-song” which consists of two rhymed quatrains in an irregular meter).
Analysis
Part 1:
It is a pleasant, early summer’s day. The poet is sitting alone atop a rocky wall and gazing out onto the landscape before him. In the silence, the poet takes to reminiscence (he mentions that the past is “swarming about him”) and in the third stanza of this part it becomes clear that he is remembering a woman whom he loves. The differences in both time and place become blurred however as the poet looks out on the landscape and in its details sees her: the crest of the mountains is like her brow, the wind shaking the leaves of the trees reminds him of her fluttering dress and quivering breasts and the warbling of the stream of her laughter:
I gaze at the mountains’ mane
every leaf reflects the glow
of your brow.
The road is empty, empty,
yet I can see
how the wind makes your skirt flutter
under the fragile branches of the tree.
I see a lock of your hair tip foreward
your soft breasts quiver
as the stream down below is running away
behold, I see again,
how the ripples on round white pebbles
the fairy laughter spouts out on your teeth.
Part 2
Oh, yes, how he loves her. Writing good love poetry is in many ways the ultimate test of a poet’s ability–this most complex of subjects also requires a linguistic complexity for it not to fall into cliché. So if nothing else, just delight in the verbal banquet that he dishes up for us here in portraying the paradoxical nature of a love that feels both personal and universal:
made to speak
both, the wily solitude which weaves its plots
in the deepest caverns of the heart
and the universe.
Who part from me, in silence, and run away
like the waterfall from its own rumble
Part 3:
The first stanza, in a similar way to part 2, describes the nature of his love. The second and third stanzas however are about memory and time. The beloved is as a collection of images and feelings that have silted in his mind and now come surging out in the poem. Since this woman is a memory, though, there is also a hint of distance here–one gets the feeling as though this might be a person with whom he has little or no intimate contact:
Moments pass by, rattling
but you are sitting mutely in my ears.
Stars blaze and fall
but you stand still in my eyes.
Like silence in a cave,
your flavour, now cool,
still lingers in my mouth
and your hand upon the waterglass
and the delicate veins upon your hand
glimmer up before me again and again.
Part 4:
Once again, the landscape and the beloved are melded together and the poet delights in his imagination’s ability of traversing through it. Note how though he is in “the mist of emptiness” he can nonetheless “walk about the slopes of her fertile body”. On one hand, this part takes on a somewhat religious character–the love he feels is as a key to the enigmas of the universe:
And like the word
entering into an enlightened mind
I can enter into its mysteries…
and hence his beloved is also compared to the Virgin Mary: “Thy womb may bear a blessed fruit”. But on the other hand the religious imagery is at the same time undermined by the carnality of the imagery here:
Many a small root embroiders through and through
the sensitive soil of your stomach
weaving knots, unwinding the tangle
that the cells of your juices may align
into clusters of swarming lines
and that the good thickets of your bushy lungs
may whisper their own glory.
–and it’s a fleshliness that is so deep that it even encompasses her digestive system:
The eternal matter happily proceeds in you
along the tunnels of your bowels
and the waste gains a rich life
in the hot wells of your ardent kidneys.
Part 5:
The distance hinted at earlier becomes much more obvious here–there is an impossibility in his longing. His words “fall” before her “like clots of blood”, his existence “stutters” and he is preparing himself for “silence”. The second and third stanzas close this part as a kind of supplication to the beloved for acceptance.
Part 6:
The fact that the final part is called a “by-song” and that it is entirely presented between parentheses indicates that it is different from the rest of the poem. It is also the only part to be written in some kind of regular form (two quatrains of rhymed verse). The poet is no longer sitting and looking out over the landscape, but he is riding the train. We do not know where he is going but his mind is consumed with the rather hopeless idea that he might, by chance, cross paths with the woman that he loves today. There is a leap from wish to fulfillment in the last stanza, which closes with an image of a longed-for future of domestic banality–so unlike the love-filled inebriation of the rest of the poem!