Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 86. kötet (1984)

Tanulmányok - Bencze, Loránt: On the Survival of Ancient Beliefs in Metaphers in Contemporary Hungarian Poetry 303

On the Survival of Ancient Beliefs in Metaphors of Contemporary Hungarian Poetry LÓBÁNT BENCZE (Budapest) Myths were considered to be metaphors first by the neoplatonist Porphyry. According to him myths were allegorical representations of "philosophic truth". Psychology rediscovered Porphyry's ideas in the twentieth century. Not only repressed ideas find "Befriedigung", "Erledigung" in symbolic, metaphoric formations but they are means to express totality in our knowledge, to give a holistic view of the world. They fill in the gaps in experience, synthesize and modify our reactions and this way they enable us to rule the world. Conscious symbols are discoveries of similarities in experiences which are seemingly totally different. In fact we are able to abstract by means of generalizing comparable experiences (Eicke 539). In the history of Hungarian literature and language the most important source of renewal has always been the folk poetry, the language of the people, the dialects. This is most obvious in the oeuvres of the classics (Arany, Petőfi), not unlike in those of the composers (Bartók, Kodály) the influence of folk-songs is. Therefore it is interesting and illuminating that in the second half of the twentieth century myths and superstitions appear as metaphors in poetry, exactly at the time they disappear from the life of the people as a consequence of social and economic development in Hungary. With the above facts in mind, I am to limit myself to the textlinguistic analysis of one contemporary work of art and to investigate characteristic levels of its text. The humanist Janus Pannonius was the first Hungarian poet to sing about his dying mother (Threnos, de morte Barbaráé matris — Lamentation on the death of Barbara, my mother, 1463). The classical metre and language (Latin) together with the overbearing rhetoric have the effect of smothering all feeling, however sincere, the poet may have been. Five hundred years later another poet from the same countryside, Katalin Ladik smothers the same feelings, the grief of bereavement by means of folklore elements in a rhythmical prose. Both poets inherited from their motherland (Southern Hungary, now in Yugoslavia) not only a leaning towards irony, but the attitude expressed in the proverb, "He who cannot mourn, did not love the departed" : NÉGY FEKETE LÓ MÖGÖTTEM REPÜL Fekete szemű anyám, enyhítsd szomjadat a sötét szobábul. Eljön az este, tüzes hamuba takarlak, ablakodat befalazom, a vakablakba ültetlek. Fehér galamb repül, ajtó és ablak nincs rajta. Hétszer megolvasom ujjaimat, összeverem szárnyaimat. Meleg szél fújja hátamat, nézz hátra, anyám, mit látsz ? 1*