His poetry
Lajos Páll (1938-2013) was born in Korond, Transylvania, which is also where his earthly remains are buried. The beautiful village with its small waters meandering to and fro, its hard-working people kneading, shaping and firing clay is a true gem. In other words, it is a miracle of existence, which includes the stony countryside, the nearby Firtos River, which is where “Providence fell asleep” (Áron Tamási), the men who deal with earthen pots to pilgrimages to the market to buy a ewe – a sacred tradition at Easter!
This is a small place with big myths; a place where even the devil walks on tiptoe, lest he be painted with the íróka, used for traditional decorations. A succession of potter dynasties, most famously the Pálls, have shaped the landscape’s image while enriching themselves – in material wealth as well, but mostly in beauty. In defiance of his family and a strict father, the child turned to ‘sculpture', sculpting bears and deer.
The desire for self-expression first led him – perhaps in the fifth grade – to painting and drawing, but later he was equally drawn to language. His father scolded him for his very first poem, calling him a liar, when, after reading one of the texts, he declared himself the author.
Erik Majtényi, in his introduction to Fényimádók (The Light Worshippers, 1970), aptly pointed out the same face of the two artists, both talented in their respective genres: “the artist and the woodworker have almost the same task: to capture the message, at a level of emotional saturation that can be passed on to others, in the same way that the furnace fire preserves the glaze. And when he does this, Lajos Páll, the poet, and Lajos Páll, the painter, say the same thing”. How, by putting what at the centre? The older colleague again tells us how. “The love and longing, the weight and lightness of life, the time that is as one, steady and as one, ever-moving, which is like the stone roads of Korond and the calm and restless hillsides, which are called yesterday and today, but both names are only a pretext for the poet to call it tomorrow…”’
In the artistic circumscription, knowing the “play of time” as an important, if not the most important catalyst of existence, there is the complex task of the poet working in the yoke of tomorrow. To cope with fate – the burdens on the Hungarian minority were only exacerbated by the injustice inflicted on them, the four years of imprisonment for nothingness after 1956 – and to show in his works the many spine-tingling dramas of the struggle in such a way that the community is enriched by them. “Stony lands”? The hummus that grew well was made up for by the tenacity and hard work of the people of Korond.
The art school in Târgu Mures, a short period of theatre scenery painting, experimenting with music, the intellectual atmosphere of the Ion Andreescu Képzőművészeti Főiskola (Ion Andreescu College of Fine Arts) in Cluj (where he was arrested in 1958) stimulated the imagination of the young, hungry young poet who started writing poetry at an early age. He was also obviously influenced by the first generation of the Romanian publication Forrás (Source), which started in the early sixties. Although neither Aladár Lászlóffy’s avant-garde nor Domokos Szilágyi’s poetry, which in its language harked back to the West and in fact honoured the T.S Eliott montage poem – its form, its message – captivated him, he did take impetus from them.
By not joining the second generation of Forrás, embodied by Árpád Farkas and László Király, Lajos Páll remained a lone warrior. He focused his attention on Attila József and Miklós Radnóti, as if the two long-suffering classics could melt the ice cube of the “natural man” who had taken the mountains of disarray in his arms. “The willow branches pity me, / and they are gathered into a hard gauze, // and that I laugh at them, / the stars are in tears” – thus the bittersweetly cheerful message of the serene and sober Dalocska (Little Song) by Attila József.
The conciseness (imagery and symbolism) of the folk song and folk ballad is already at work in the poems of the first volume. Although in the thirteen-part Eszmélet (Consciousness) the goal is set – “And I have a sun, a planet and a sky, / and I am the master of my own world” – the more free-breathing melodies of the Gypsy cantata are more to the point. “Gypsy is the world, Gypsy is the god, / man is a waste of coal if he has no joy. // Two deciliters of Jesus encourages me with a toast, / my good mood, take me away, you see who is keeping me” (VI).
The poet, who draws inspiration from many places, reminds us of István Sinka in a flash (Az anyám tánca (The Dance of My Mother)), but Attila József’s peacefully peaceful bear also sneaks into the dancing rotation. The liberating gesture of E se tánc? (This is Not a Dance?) – will be the focus of the entire lyrical oeuvre. “This is not a dance? / Not to dance? / A frown, / a skirt, / no dance? / nor dance? / My grandfather danced it, / my father danced it, / my ancestors’ time-danced feet / were in this. / Is it not a dance? / No dancing? / Where I walk the dance, / a bear has carried the chain, / every link is a haystack, / a freedom-needle stuck in it...” (Censorship changed “freedom-needle” to “grass of the woods”; the original metaphor only gained its right to exist later.)
His second volume, Köves földek (Stony Lands, 1980), is the most important stage in his career. It has everything. The value so far, the explosive loneliness of the folk poetry-based poems, the happy bitterness of being at home, and the longing for other landscapes, other modes of expression. The former is exemplified, among many others, by the snarling Korai tél (Early Winter): “The sun has escaped, it’s a wonder it’s dawned, / The wild geese weave a painful web over me. / What a mute people, what a mute sun. / My companion is a growling dog, biting itself. / There are those who know that snow is coming, that it will be a hard winter, / And pray to the blue eyes of heaven”. And for the second, humming Apollinaire, or towards Florence, when the diction of the dream train lifts the traveller, dissolved in Renaissance painting: “Who has seen the train of the happy? / Floated towards Florence, through Tuscany…”
The sobering up is not achieved by the lyricist who confesses his proximity to Attila József, although these fragments of thought are an important part of this poetry – “existence is wandering, staring at itself, wanting to witness its truth” (Sófalva (Sarata)) – but by the bearer of the watchful gaze that experiences couleur locale, local colour as immobility, wittingly or unwittingly, almost as a punishment. In vain does she assume the mask of the author of Nem én kiáltok (Not I Shout) – “Window world, / window death, / why are the poppies / drops of blood? / The world is blanked out, / Death is blanked out, / So I am alone in my sin?” (Szárszó) – what hurts hurts deep inside.
The “wild glow”, the pots, plates, bowls, the snow-covered hillside, and the “Madonna of the pots” as a happiness factor, as a contrast to Mary of Korond, the “ship of fools” that never sets sail (A műterem (The Studio)), but most of all the news of the coming of the real or imagined universal winter. He did not have to travel far to witness the drama of the masked landscape, which suggests the crucifixion of the lyric, almost turning it inside out. “The saw weeps, the branch is tight, / the earth’s brow wrinkles. / In front of our house, our beautiful acacia / is stripped to a rustling stick. // The saw is weeping, the branch is squeezing, / this autumn is now a symbol – / opposite Firtos, he has put on his white shirt for weaving” (November).
In lyric portraits, too, there are many ways of self-confession. In Derkovits, too, the focus is on crucifixion – “Alas, my friend, my bread, // Tulips weep on the frosty meadow” – and in Mészkő (Limestone), written in memory of Ferenc Balázs, the impeccability that affects the community – “For so much whiteness / how much have we paid, / for so much purity / how much will our wages be?” – in Szolnay the ominous judgment of the “painter who betrayed wounds” – “The sword flowers burst from the ground” – and in the poem Virágom, világom… (My flower, my world…), which evokes the lamentations of Kata Bethlen, the grief and pain.
How is the latter, in the spell of adaptation to folk poetry, almost one voice with it? All the more so to perceive the suffocating example of pain sung in a borrowed classical mask – wept over – and of loneliness trapped in “stones”.
The personality is still undeveloped, the stealthily learned dance – because the feet want to bend and the feet want to walk fancy – almost tears up the floor. But already in the lyrical self, which is filled from many places, there is, beyond the innate nakedness, the singing myth, which tries to absorb the cultural (fine arts, music, literature), the omnipotence of the singing myth, and even the poet’s faltering doubt, which confronts the bull who kidnaps the woman, alongside the pale earth of the homeland: “how long will I not see your face / if you are my mother, Europe?” (Alku nélkül (Without a deal)).
In the “blizzard of mercy” – is the plea made in the cathedral of nature? – the lyricist’s prayer shawl is precisely that inward plus, in whose fairy mixture the gaiety of “Mr Vivaldi” is as much there as “Bach’s measure” (Baroque world – modernised, of course, in the twentieth century), or the wakeful dream of the grasses of the salt meadow, the woolly clouds, the magic of snowfalls and the shimmering dirt, which bears the world as a cross with Radnóti’s pain in the context of introspection.
The state of being – “sadness is starry, / its ribs are comets” (Álmatlanul (Sleepless)) – does not change much later on, since the years of imprisonment he suffered only further destroyed his already “unsteady” psyche (as a sixteen-year-old teenager, he attempted suicide). Interestingly, this burden weighed much more heavily on the poet than on the painter. However, as time went on, the political rigour following the change in political system (revolution?) relaxed the political climate and was good for the poet’s mood – especially since he was now also available in print.
Whereas before the lyricist had published a volume every ten years (each one with paintings and drawings proving the viability of the other love), the changed situation has led to a proliferation of books. Szárazvillámlás (Dry Lightning, 1993), with new poems, was followed by Partraszállás (Shore Landing, 1994), which brings together new and older poems. Already in the former, the whirl – the pulling of Lajos Páll’s existence to the extreme – continues, becoming a symbol of betrayal and individual and communal betrayal. “First deep / and now farther and farther away / this purple wheel / to which I am striving. / Matricidal playful country, / Matricidal playful community, / Matricidal playful tongue, / O matricidal playful cruelty, / that you should fly thus, circling / in the name of love, / somewhere, somewhere / in the horror” (Keringve (Circling)).
This degree of confusion is also frightening as a statistic. There is only one truth, as we read in the poem Kufsteini vár alatt (Under the Castle of Kufstein), “the love of all things". In this heightened revelation, nature takes on a bridal veil – “the beating grasses draw the heartbeat of the earth” (Jegesen virraszt… (Staying awake in the cold…)) – but white, which can also be interpreted as a symbol of purity, is transformed into an almost mourning garment by the prison in Samosújvár and the captivity in the Danube Delta. Ahogy… (As It Is…), followed by Bizonyosság (Certainty) – a vision within a vision – which explores Goya’s monsters, but especially January 1959, flashes these horrors. In the latter, the drama is the harshness of the voice. “Objects carry their shadows, / light lingers on the walls, / my companion rattles, a locomotive heated with blood, / I listen to the whistle of decomposed lungs. // Before her soul swings into space, / Her body, like a string, is still tense, / And by morning the straw-light of the lamp, / On her lips will cool to a cool green."
Neither Szárazvillámlás (Dry Lightning) nor Partraszállás (Shore Landing) shows any change in the known lyric structure. The landscape suffers from man, man from the lightning of the stony earth and sky. On the other hand, the layer of memory in Andromakhé uszályán (Andromache’s Barge, 1996) becomes more dynamic – strangely enough, with the proliferation of sonnets in the oeuvre – in that the lyric, long concealed because there was something to conceal, experiences the horrors of decades before as a humiliation of the community (in this case, the Hungarians of Transylvania).
In addition to the clear sound of longing – “Let us go from under the Bucsin, where the sandy hills / Poppy berries and poisonous flowers grow / With us will be the echo of the celestial dance hall / Where our dream was passed from hand to hand” (A Bucsin alól (From under the Bucsin)), or “Lajos, today is a holiday! / The night is bursting with gold, / Christ the King is risen in the cathedral. / Ride a pigeon feather / On his floating boat. / Where is Na' Conxypan? (Húsvét, Firenze (Easter, Florence)) – this indigestible experience dominates the poems. The four poems comprising Négy évszak (Four Seasons) – Húsvét (Easter), Nyár (Summer), Ősz (Autumn), Tél (Winter) – and Ó, gyönyörű (Oh, Beautiful), Zárkában (Under Lock), A nádasban (In the Reeds), Hajóút (The Voyage of the Ship), Az éhség (Hunger), etc. are a Golgotha account of a journey from which, unlike the biblical story, there was fortunately a return.
In Lajos Páll’s poetry, sometimes with a gruff linguistic flavour but in a forgiving tone, sometimes with a sassy tone (see Hány fazekast (How Many Potters), which echoes the vagabond tone of István Kormos), the man who has an account with the Lord but always postpones meeting him is crying. But the pain that comes from anguish, touching biblical circles, is climbing up, and there is only one way – that way! “O beautiful Christmas night, / Stars are gathered in the earth’s tar, / Four hands above my brow, / A light bulb and a ringing rainbow. // I am, O Lord, six feet high / Here above your priests and the iron bedstead, / They blow the psalm of salvation, / I ask you. I wish I had an answer. // I, Lord, am afraid to suffer / And with anguish you've conquered my kidneys and my waist / A happy unhappy is worth more / If I’d surrender myself into your hands. // My gratitude? Why? Who deserves this? / The three friends below are the song’s, / And I'll swim away with the snoring barak, / Somewhere towards Bethlehem” (Ó, gyönyörű (O beautiful one)).
Painting
In some of his poems, the complexity of the paint shop is also given a voice. “I’d mourn with you all day long, / The axe and the cape calls, / The brush may shine in the light, / But the painter’s yoke shall not live” (Búsulhatnék (I Could Mourn)). Complication? More like a confession of a condition. What was realised in the interview with Miklós Kund Nagy – and it is no coincidence that this is the title of the conversation – is that one does not have to live, but one does have to paint.
Lajos Páll could draw well even from an early age. Not wanting to be the 301st potter among the 300, he took to the pen and brush to relieve his loneliness. While painting, music played from morning till night – he was particularly fond of Bach and Mozart – and this idyllic state (as a complement to the effects of light?) had a great influence on his artistic flicker and self-expression. Although he took to painting instinctively, his years at the art school in Târgu Mures (the fresh spirit of Pál Nagy) and the theatre as a set painter, and the experience he gained at the Cluj College before his four-year prison sentence (he completed two years at school, his masters were Tibor Kádár and Sándor Mohy), helped him immensely.
In his use of colour and composition, he was influenced by the artists of Baia Mare, but while they almost always found in their search for motifs the many landmarks of the mining town (Zazar beach, the Reformed church, the miners’ houses, etc.), he was content with the “one-man lookout” in Korond. The landscape (hillside, fence, trees, sawhorse, rooster, etc.) that appears in the rectangle of the studio window at home is an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration for the painter. All that is needed is to add a motif – most often a face (whether a self-portrait or the face of someone familiar) – and the composition is complete.
Of the Transylvanian artists, perhaps only János Dési Incze insisted on capturing the place as a visual complex as much as his contemporary from Korond. With his Italianate winding streets, always sloping downwards, and the many figures bobbing on them, he tried to elevate Dej to a unique domain, while Páll’s expressive brushwork and slightly cubist paintings echo the dynamics of the figure rooted in the landscape and unfolding in various situations (at work, at rest) (Krumpliültetők (Potato Planters) – 1965, Szekeres III. (Wagon Driver III) – 1992, Mázörlő, Apám (Making Glaze, My Father) – 1972, Fazekas II. (Potter II) – 1976, Nagy ivó (Big Drinker) – 1978, Alvó fazekas (Sleeping Potter) – 1978).
It is about the dynamics of a figure in a stable position, a tension that looks like an imitation of movement, which is first of all the result of a strange spatial vision. The fact that the artist sees with only one eye – only Andor Antal Fülöp could boast such a curiosity in Transylvanian picturism – makes it seem as if the view, seen from below or above, is being displayed through a telephoto lens, as if it were being involuntarily assembled into a composition. This strange and highly unusual mode of representation also makes the canvases with animal figures, mostly buffalo, fascinating (Lejtőn III. (On the Slope III), A csorda (The Herd), Száraz tavasz (Dry Spring)).
For other artists, being confined to a niche is an adventure, but for the painter of stony fields and the wild hills, the oxen, the vineyards are an exuberance. In this “eternal moment (or at least felt as eternal)”, solitude is always activated. Later, the composition dissolves, it is not as tight (Másnapos önarckép (Self-portrait with a hangover)), but the place remains hallowed by a sense of home, a sense of struggle and service that is a strain on the human face. I wrote about this state of being, which could be called an artistic stance, almost two decades ago, when I saluted the artist, who is sixty years old. And I think no differently today.
“Sixty years – what a sixty years! – It was enough for Lajos Páll to raise his beloved homeland to the sky. In his sensitive art, the silence of the hay stacks explodes. Radnóti’s hexameters are chilling and Balassi’s dancing-footed chicas waltz in the slow lane of the chair. And István Nagy’s meadow, with its black angels, sets off on a journey so long, colouring the mythological with the characteristics of the landscape, that there is a man on his feet who can follow the majesty of the little-spoken but glowing picnic. With wise omniscience, Lajos Páll confesses that man’s aspirations to the stars are in vain, and that his happiness can only be realised here on Earth. If a brush is needed for this, it is a brush; if a pen is needed, it is a pen, and if heroism in support of the Hungarian Revolution is needed to ensure that our integrity is not compromised, then he will bravely face the hell of the tyrant.”
An example of the efficiency of the most complex expression is the superimposition of two faces – poetic and artistic – to create a more sharply defined character. It is no coincidence that all his books – from Fényimádók (The Light Worshippers) to Cigány-kantáta (The Gypsy Cantata, 2005) – show the poet and the painter (unfortunately, the graphic artist) together. Both the black and white pictures (Fényimádók (The Light Worshippers), Köves földek (Stony Fields), Partraszállás (Shore Landing), Andromakhé uszályán (Andromache’s Barge)) and the colour reproductions (Szárazvillámlás (Dry Lightning)) show the artist intoxicated by colour, line and light, not on the same level, since his published prints – with the exception of the pastels omitted from the books – are mostly sketches, but they still reveal something of the landscape lover’s moments of excitement.
Since the artist sold many of his paintings so he coulddevote his life to his lyricism and picturism, the painter’s life can only be fully traced when the hidden canvas emerges. But the man, the hero of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, who suffered imprisonment for the truth of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, stands before us. Uncompromising, under the spell of work (public good) that uplifts the community.
[2012]