Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
ISTVÁN D. RÁCZ Memory, Writing, Politics: the Poetry of Peter Reading
Memory, Writing, Politics: the Poetry of Peter Reading 7 literary form itself, since the convention of the ballad stanza is incongruent with the lack of catharsis. The horizon of expectation on which a new poem appears for an individual reader determines his/her reading. As Reading's "Ballad" testifies, the convention of a literary form may bring it home to us that the value represented by this particular form has become impossible in our culture. This is the value of purification through sin and overcoming sin by remorse or penitence; a value well known from traditional ballads. Thus, the title of the poem reflects both on a poetic tradition and contemporary culture, and depicts its own alienation from the past, signified by a literary genre. "Ballad" is not a ballad, since it lacks a firm and unchangeable moral value system. The Dialogic Memory Significantly, the subject matter of conventional ballads appears in different forms, as can well be seen in the three brief texts of "Duologues". The first of these is about a girl who grows mad after losing her sweetheart: . .See, er bloke (im as ad that motor bike crack comin ome off the piss that time Gonder's Neck way) e got buried in Boultibrook churchyard as lies back of the farmuss, so as er looks out er bedroom er sees is stone and they reckon as ow evertime er thinks on it.' (Collected Poems 99) The phonetic spelling of dialect forms, on the one hand, recalls the world of medieval ballads; on the other hand, they also alienate this language from the reader, merely by the act of using it in writing. Spelling distances the dialect both from the standard forms of the language and the fictitious speakers. The speakers of a dialect are not necessarily the writers of the dialect since written forms are always closer to standard language than the spoken word. In the text quoted above we hear the voice of a peasant, but see the words of a conscientious and accurate chronicler. Thus a traditional feature of the ballad form is reconstructed: the tension between impersonal narration and the dialogue makes the simultaneous insight and judgment of the reader possible. The narration of the above-quoted poem is determined by two subjects —those of the speaker and the writer. These two are contrasted (also visually) in "Parallel Texts":
