Calvin Synod Herald, 1981 (81. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1981-03-01 / 3-4. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA GYULA ILLYÉS: BARTÓK “Harsh discord?” — Yet! They think it thus that which brings us solace! Yes! Let the violin strings, let singing throats learn curse-clatter of splintering glass crashing to the ground the screech of rasp wedged in the teeth of buzzing saw; — let there be no peace, no gaiety in gilded, lofty far and delicate, closed-off concert halls, until in woe-darkened hearts! “Harsh discord!” Yes! They think it thus that which brings us solace! that the people live and have still a soul their voice is heard Variations on the curse of steel grating crashing against stone Though on the tuned and taut piano and vocal cords if only so they can convey to stark existence their bleak truth, for this same “harsh discord”, this woeful battle cry disturbing hell’s infernal din cries out harmony! For this very anguish cries out —through how many falsely sweet songs—and shouts to fate: Let there be Harmony, order, true order, or the world is lost, the world is lost, if the people speak not again — in majesty! O Stoic, stern musician, true Magyar (like many of your peers — “notorious”) was it ordained by law, that from the depth of the people’s soul, whither your descended through the trumpet, the as yet mine-shaft throat of this pit, you should send up the cry into this frigid-rigid giant hall whose loft-lights myriad candles are? 3 Frivolous, soothing melodies played in my ear insult my grief: let no light-tuned Zerkovicz sing the dirge at this, our mother’s funeral; homelands are lost — who dares to mourn them with grind-organ arpeggios? Is there hope yet in our human race? If this be our care and the reeling brain battles benumbed, speak, you fierce, wild, severe, aggressive great musician, that — for all that! — we still have cause to hope, to live, And that we have the right — for we are mortals and life-givers — to look all that in the eye which we may not avoid. For troubles grow when they are covered. It was possible, but no more, to hide our eyes, to cover our ears while storms wreak their havoc, and later revile: you did not help! You do us honor by revealing what is revealed to you, the good, the bad, virtue and sin — you raise our stature by speaking to us as equals. This — this consoles! What different words are these! Human, not sham. It gives us the right, and so the strength to face the harshest: despair. Our thanks for it, for the strength to take victory, even over hell. Behold the end that carries us on. Behold the guidon: by speaking out the horror is dissolved. Behold the answer to life’s riddle by a great mind, an artist’s spirit: it was worth suffering through hell. Because we have suffered such things that still there are no verbs for them. Picasso’s two-nosed women, six-legged stallions alone could have keened abroad galloping, neighed out what we have borne, we men, what no one who has not lived it can grasp, for which there are no words,nor can be perhaps, only music, music, music, like your music, twin lodestars in our sky of sound, music alone, music alone, music, hot with ancient breath of mine-depths.
