The literary–historical classification of Bálint Tóth presents considerable difficulties. His poetry draws on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Romantic and modern sources alike. From quantitative metre to “formless” free verse, from elevated, hymn-like poetic language saturated with pathos to everyday, at times even vulgar diction, he experiments with virtually every mode. He is drawn to contrasts: he identifies with the ivory-tower cult of beauty associated with l’art pour l’art just as readily as with the socially critical, solution-seeking attitude characteristic of the second generation of Nyugat. Although experimental in form, in terms of moral conviction he remains a consistent poet, albeit one inclined to a certain degree of self-repetition. His literary oeuvre is grounded in what has been described as a “relentlessly subjective ethics”[1]: he is concerned with the service of truth and the sustainability of moral conduct in a world dominated by lies and immorality.
It is almost impossible to define his generation. By 1969 the poet already counted as “old” in comparison with the young writers of the “the Seven” [an informal term for the core figures of the first generation of the Hungarian modernist journal Nyugat] or the “the Nine” [a self-identified group of nine Hungarian poets who emerged in the late 1960s]. And although his worldview showed clear affinities with the moral and social orientation of the new generation, his life experience and his time spent in prison isolated him from them. Had he been a member of the folk colleges, his own literary debut might have taken place in 1949, like that of László Nagy and Ferenc Juhász – but he was not. He became part of a lost generation: that of the 1950s, whose careers were broken on the wheel. And let us admit it: even had he not been imprisoned, he would not have been able to embark on a literary career. He would have been incapable of conforming to the ruthlessly idealistic yet reality-obsessed expectations of “socialist realism”. Bálint Tóth was too Catholic and too proud.
His oeuvre is diverse, unruly and drifting; his pliant style contains immense power, yet this very quality does not facilitate reception. “If there is a person who allows almost everything to his instincts and passions, who gives himself over entirely to every pleasure and torment, every predatory desire, reckless intention and finite adventure without losing the blessing of the whole or losing himself, then Bálint Tóth is such a person.”[2] Yet even in his rapture he does not cultivate mere poetry of experience: not only individual self-awareness but communal consciousness is also emphasised. He contemplates both inwardly and outwardly, yet he does not “emote”; a confessional and rebellious temperament fires him at once, much as it did Balassi. In his sense of mission he tends towards pose, but in his poems greater emphasis falls on the mission itself than on the one who assumes it. Bálint Tóth sees, understands and interprets signs like an augur of birds – but whether they are met with receptive ears does not depend on him.
His oeuvre is at once poetry of the self and communal poetry, and within all this tradition is present in an organic way. This manifests itself primarily as an attitude rather than on the level of the text. He does not relate to Hungarian and European literature intertextually, but at the level of roots. He is a traditional poet in the best sense of the term. As a faithful chronicler, he carries forward a vast inheritance, adding himself to it – his life, what was given to him. The art of Bálint Tóth consciously accumulates both the Apollonian and the Dionysian poetic traditions. And in his relationship to tradition he fits fully into the aspirations of the 1970s, even if his formal language remains far removed from the postmodern “new” conception of literature. He may be called “untimely”, because he seeks to shed – and is able to shed – hopelessness and uncertainty. Because he does not believe in the meaninglessness of life or in nothingness after death. Because he is not characterised by depersonalisation, the dismantling of the lyrical self, or the disintegration of personality – tendencies that gradually gained ground in Hungarian literature after 1945. In the case of Bálint Tóth, the speaking voice is often identical with the biographical “I”, since personal involvement is an indispensable component of both confessional poetry and poetry of opinion.
Yet the poet most decisively turns his back on the postmodern trend by daring to yearn for the restoration of the broken whole. “Bálint Tóth embraces a poetic tradition whose foundation lies in the belief that the creative subject is capable of interpreting the world, of uncovering and preserving Truth in a milieu that has lost its meaning or has become hostile.”[3] The scholarly literature at times interprets all this as anachronistic, since in an age in which truths and grand concepts are questioned and meanings become polarised, it is no longer considered timely to assume the existence of any absolute. Guided by a kind of medieval religiosity, the poet believes and senses that everything in the world is endowed with cause and meaning. And the One metaphysical meaning interests him more than the play of meanings. “Bálint Tóth believes, almost provocatively, in traditional human values; he knows of salvation, integrity, truth or damnation, because he believes infinitely in the word, in beauty, in art.”[4] And the list is not only to be understood with capital letters, but can also be extended…
Füveskert (Herb Garden)(1954–56, 1988, 1995)
Five Füveskert (Herb Garden) anthologies survived and made their way out of prison: three volumes of literary translation and two collections of original poetry. The translations of world literature proclaim Christian, European tradition and spirituality at a time of Russian oppression that sought to dismantle tradition. In his translations, Bálint Tóth works predominantly with Roman distichs, medieval hymns, as well as English, French and German Romantic and modern poems. Already here he lays down one of the cornerstones of his ars poetica through his Hungarian rendering of Horace’s Ode III.30: “Ércnél maradandóbb emléket emeltem” (“I have built a monument more lasting than bronze”), which is enduring and outlives its creator. Both spiritual immortality and the act of commemoration receive strong emphasis.
Of the twenty original poems, ten appear in the booklet of IV. Füveskönyv (Fourth Herb Book), while the other ten existed largely only in the poet’s mind. The coherence of the “published” poems is provided by the experience of community. In these texts we find no direct references to prison or to tragic facts; rather, a tone of hopeful, visionary faith in providence predominates, as in A tűz pilléi (The Moths of the Fire), Himnusz gyümölcsoltó Boldogasszonyhoz (Hymn to Our Lady of the Annunciation), Húsvét (Easter), and Pünkösd (Pentecost). The roles of sacrifice and suffering gain their meaning through the great concepts of divine justice and redemption.
His secret or “mind-poems” are inspired by the desire to speak the truth, by social action. “And though violence may break upon me, / I do not bend, I remain: a human being for human beings.” (Januári elégia (January Elegy)). The emotional background of the poems is shaped by the confident sense of innocence, a tense concentration on the future, or the survival laws of the given day. Accordingly, the tone ranges from impassioned and rhetorical to intensely emotional or indifferent. As two extreme examples one may cite the enervated statement “In the morning the executioner took your measure” and the pure joy of Mátyásnapi mákos tészta (St Martin’s Day Poppy Seed Pasta). The sequence of these poems constitutes a cautious rebellion: existing works that circulated within the walls, yet could not be proven. The poem Magánzárkán (In Solitary Confinement) may have taken wing in the prison not only because of its ease of memorability, but also because of its superb evocation of atmosphere: a cage seven steps long, grey-brick landscapes, “identical Wednesdays and Saturdays”.
In the poems of Füveskert (Herb Garden), Bálint Tóth, on the one hand, seeks a sense of homeliness that can be created through memory and literary tradition; on the other, he elaborates strategies and modes of conduct for survival. True to its genre, the title follows the norm of scholarly herbals in its attempt to define, recognise and heal – in this case, spiritual traumas. The prison poems provide inner resilience as well as a minimal experience of community: for the author, a reader; for the reader, the awareness that suffering is not endured alone, and that beauty can be created even within the walls.
Nehéz örökség (Difficult Legacy) (1969)
After eleven years of silence, the first volume in fact appeared as a contemporary “collected poems of Bálint Tóth”. For this reason, the collection may strike the reader as somewhat unruly and erratic. One encounters a wide range of lyric voices: the tone alternates between rebellious and wondering; loud and quiet, commanding and companionable. Tragic poems probing questions of fate coexist harmoniously with gentle, charming mood pieces. The pessimistic vision of national mourning in Krisztinavárosi körmenet (Krisztinaváros Procession), the amorous and plaintive stylistic imitation Balassi Bálint keserves nótája (Bálint Balassi’s Lamenting Song), and the playful charm of A rét itt csupa kígyószisz (This Meadow Is All Sibilant with Snakes) only appear to stand in opposition to one another. The coherence of the volume is shaped by the poet’s sincere effort to move from disharmony towards harmony – or at least in that direction.
The poet seeks his personal harmony in landscape and in love. The Bakony uplands and Lake Balaton are frequent settings and themes of the poems (e.g. Keszthelyi látogatás (Visit to Keszthely), Badacsonyi bordal (Badacsony Wine Song), Balaton! Nyár! (Balaton! Summer!)). Bálint Tóth also experiments with the pastoral idyll; this, however, at times encounters obstacles, as through the projection of the soul he loads “objective” nature with an excess of content. “Look, ancient Badacsony lies thickly covered in snow, / autumnal Somogy beyond is stretched out in a cloak of mist, / the world has grown old, its forelock snow-white, / and like wise old men, it is silent and grave.” (Exegi monumentum [an allusion to Horace’s “I have built a monument more lasting than bronze”]).
The intense experience of love constitutes a significant component of Bálint Tóth’s poetry. The object of his desire is at times fairy-like and ethereal, a cosmic sustaining force (Szép vagy, szép ( You Are Beautiful, Beautiful); Üvegtestedbe egész életem ( Into Your Glass Body My Entire Life)), at other times passionate (A nyakán azt a harapást ( That Bite on Her Neck), Egy példás családanyára ( To an Exemplary Mother of a Family)), or even a demonic power (Ajkaid zárójele közt ( Within the Parenthesis of Your Lips)). The boundaries between these modes are often blurred, and happiness and suffering are wound into one another. One of the volume’s most visually compelling poems is Távolról madarak szállnak ( From Afar Birds Are Flying), in which the stigmatised woman is identified with the church.
When invoking the transcendent, the shift is striking in comparison with the prison poems’ faith in divine justice. Nehéz örökség (Difficult Legacy) is characterised by a kind of Old Testament image of a punitive God: “my brain, my heart are torn apart within / by a tiger-fanged god” (Tigrisfogú isten (Tiger-Fanged God)). The human being, rendered hopelessly solitary, lives in the knowledge that there is no grace, no absolution. Humanity must endure the divine “plan”; faith, therefore, can only be conceived as a trial. The most intriguing example of this trial is the poem Jób (Job), which depicts a much-tried man who submits to divine will. Waiting and perseverance are expected eventually to bring their reward: “one fine day / in the end you will grow very weary of Job” – says the speaker. It is patience that is put to the test, and thus it is through patience that one must rebel. “Let us see which of us is more patient?”
It is a heavy burden to endure the fate allotted to us, and a heavy legacy is assumed by anyone who matures into a Hungarian poet, for this is scarcely conceivable without moral overtones. It is particularly difficult when the spectre of communism allows a person to breathe only just enough not to suffocate…
Hetedik évad (Seventh Season) (1975)
The second volume is already organised largely around a bitter, finitude-conscious, apocalyptic tone. This is Bálint Tóth’s darkest book. Twentieth-century existential experience and tragic history seep from the poems. “blood creeps up the wall / machine guns ponder / and a generation perishes” (Szakadékmély szemgödrökön (Abyss-Deep Eye Sockets)). The cycle Korszakváltás (Change of Epoch) evokes the Book of Revelation. Béla Pomogáts interprets the entire volume as an experience of descent into hell.[5] One can no longer speak of the world or of humanity with conventional meanings; human communication has become impossible. Yet, unlike Pilinszky, Bálint Tóth cannot turn silence into a confession of faith. He does not relinquish the chronicler’s stance or the intention to bear witness (Felelek kérdezetlen (I Answer Unasked)). He cannot identify with a poetics of silence, but he can with a poetics of absence. The “I” of Hetedik évad (Seventh Season) is “only” capable of great moral acts in the interest of the community; on an individual level it is afflicted by a lack of happiness, a sense of loneliness and a fear of death. Köröttem minden szétesik (Everything Falls Apart Around Me), declares one poem title.
God is banished from the thematic field, or appears as a non-intervening, external figure to whom it is not worth turning. The opening poem that gives the volume its title immediately calls the Lord a “bearded Nothing,” whose eyes are “fly agarics.” God is not non-existent, but rather a kind of cruel power that has suffered moral annihilation. The significance of Hetedik évad (Seventh Season), teeming with expressive imagery, also lies in the fact that this is where we first encounter the question of abortion, which later becomes a determining motif. Abortion is both murder and suicide, since through it family planning and national planning alike are tipped into the bucket.
The third episode of the “triple poem” entitled Könyörtelen őszinteséggel (With Relentless Honesty) also erects a memorial to unborn children: “and already they crouch there, watching, / where the draught sways in the cellar, / they sit opposite you on the edge of your bed / and timidly stroke your face.” Love’s imbalance becomes decisive; moreover, the roles of ruler and victim are supplemented by the figure of a woman who commands demonic, dark forces, from whom there is no escape (e.g. Litánia a magamramaradásért (Litany for Remaining Alone)). The greatest strength of the volume is felt to lie in the cycle entitled Vakító partraszállás (Dazzling Landing), in which love is represented as a universal fall: a journey from nothingness into everything, and from everything into nothingness. According to Balázs Lengyel, this cycle is “the song of an intimate and manfully tender love.”[6] The cosmic handling of space, the bitter tone, and the black-and-red colouring characteristic of the volume are most powerfully realised in the poem Minden világok partjainál (At the Shores of All Worlds). The setting is the limitless “nowhere,” the shore of all worlds, where “nothingness offers poppies” – yet by focusing on them it becomes clear that this is a “meadow with a severed neck,” whose “veins are poppy-black.” Everything that in reality, in existence, is “living,” that is, red, here turns black, into a corpse.
The red–black cycle also appears in a playful, humorous form in the closing poem of the volume, Virágének (Flower Song), where from the mouth of a dead man whose throat is filled with black earth first grapes, then red wine begin to sprout. The poet’s satirical humour is realised here for the first time in this second book (most vividly in the poem A Jézusszíve parkolóhely (The Sacred Heart of Jesus Parking Space)); in the seventh poetic phase – season – following the dramatic climax, some form of release must ensue. The tragic tone becomes unsustainable, bitterness becomes eradicable and writable out of the human being.
Túl a vesztett kert fáin (Beyond the Trees of the Lost Garden) (1980)
This volume sets aside the apocalyptic undertones of Hetedik évad (Seventh Season), and the fundamental mood becomes the struggle with life outside Eden, along with a sense of repose found in landscape and in love. The poet has moved beyond the trees of the lost garden – that is, he leaves behind the backward-looking lament of longing to return, and attempts to arrange his life. Here we find no explicitly God-centred poems, only biblical allusions; the stronger emphasis falls on a dispassionate, resigned awareness of death and on the happiness that can be experienced in love and in nature. A more closely articulated biblical narrative appears in the poem Kiűzetés előtt (Before the Expulsion). Adam and Eve, at the height of their love, absorbed in one another, “linger” in Paradise and fail to notice the approaching serpent. The expulsion, however, is “fortunately” not a solitary punishment. They endure it together, and, if anything, it binds their relationship more tightly. Love poetry assumes its most decisive role precisely in this volume. The poet devotes two cycles to this emotion, Kiűzetés előtt (Before the Expulsion) and Ketten egyedül (Together Alone). The slight shift between the two cycles arises from the fact that in the state of “togetherness,” a sense of homeliness is created less by external factors than by love itself. “on every landscape, on every land, we have a home, / we carry one another invisibly, together” (Ketten, egyedül (Together, Alone)). The idea of a freedom that can also be lived within love perhaps finds its first clear articulation here in the poetry of Bálint Tóth.
When examining the love poems of the third volume, we must briefly address two extremely vulgar and bizarre poems. One is A pataki Borostyán Szállóban (At the Borostyán Hotel in Patak), in which the speaker plays host to the voluptuous, blood-soaked figure of a murderous “she-devil” who stuffs a goose, plucks hens and kills, and who ultimately turns out to be Mephisto himself. The other is Káromkodások a szerelemért (Curses for Love), which may be regarded as the crudest “love poem” in Bálint Tóth’s oeuvre. In this dramatic monologue, a torrent of rage unfolds in the form of an endless, madness-intensifying tirade of abuse directed at a woman who has undergone an abortion, culminating in an explicit wish to consign her to hell.
Private life comes to dominate, while political and historical scandals and representations of victimhood recede. Military and wartime experiences do appear on the level of imagery (Itt az ezüstkor (Here Is the Silver Age), Indulás (Departure)), yet the prevailing tone is that of “anything may come,” of “the silver indifference of autumn” – that is, a stoic, wise acceptance. Death has prowled around and left traces behind, so that one may prepare (Preparati per la tua morte (Prepare for Your Death)). Nature proclaims the melancholy of passing away, yet within it lies the possibility of renewal as well. The Tóth Bálint–ian attitude is strikingly characterised by the poem Non omnis moriar (I Shall Not Wholly Die): “If I stretch out my fingers, / my hand already grows wrinkled, / yet at once it becomes young again / when I clench it into a fist.”
In terms of Latinisation, we can observe that in this volume ancient philosophy and quantitative metre are given particular emphasis, as reflected in the cycle Horatius-szal borozok (Drinking Wine with Horace). Here we find, among other forms, an elegy written in distichs (Huszonhétéves elégia (Elegy at Twenty-Seven)), Greek songs in Sapphic and Alcaic stanzaic structures (Két dal Mytilénéből (Two Songs from Mytilene)), as well as a bucolic poem in hexameters (Tavaszi eső (Spring Rain)). The three-part work that gives the cycle its title, situated on the border between prose poem and short narrative, consists of two essayistic sections and one novellistic part. The first section concerns poetry, the second the poet, and the third the poem itself.
We must address separately the intermedial dimension of this volume and its relationship to the companion arts, for it is here that the poet’s interest in this direction truly comes to fruition. The two major experiments are the cycles Versbalett Beethoven Hetedik szimfóniájára (Verse Ballet to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony) and Postludium – Hat vers Bartha László képeihez (Postlude – Six Poems to Paintings by László Bartha). In the case of the musical work, from a poetic point of view greater emphasis is placed on the attribution of meaning, while in the case of the paintings the focus falls on representation. Beethoven’s life-affirming symphony, the apotheosis of rhythm, is rendered by Bálint Tóth as pulsating with happiness and dance. Postludium comprises six sonnets written on the basis of six paintings. The title poem is the farewell of a wise magician to the world, to life itself. In this work, which evokes Shakespeare’s Prospero, we encounter the self-image characteristic of the entire volume: a farewell to colours in the time of the silver age, the stance of a person reconciled with everything, ready to depart. Yet “Perhaps one day I shall return – / I do not yet break my magic wanderer’s staff.”
Nyiss kaput angyal (Open the Gate, Angel) (1988)
The fourth volume strives most clearly towards totality. The poet, reconciled with passing away, has also arrived at forgiveness. Familial, serene and loving tones become dominant, and attachment to a world of faith and to literary tradition proves decisive. Awareness of death increasingly transforms into a problematics of salvation. “Extended distance rearranges proportions: so that, within a horizon raised to the Andromeda nebula, whatever is insignificant from there may dwindle.”[7] The sense of the end and the possibility of redemption also revive in Bálint Tóth the desire to belong to the Garden from which humankind was expelled: “cut a path back / into the Garden with the sword // open the gate, angel” – proclaims the title poem of the volume. We thus witness a close connection, a concrete continuation: the human being has learned to live beyond the trees of the lost garden, yet has grown weary of banishment and now seeks to return, sword in hand.
We spoke of totality because every earlier theme and motif is present in the volume, even though the number of love poems is significantly reduced, while the folk–superstitious atmosphere and the deer motif, by contrast, truly come into full bloom here. The archaic world and folk prayer achieve their most perfect effect when blended with quantitative metre in the poem Sámánsirató (Shaman’s Lament), in which the incantatory rhythm is provided by Adonic cola. The poem commemorates a remarkably compelling archaic ritual: it recounts the lamentation and burial of the community’s shaman. The striking blue-and-white colouring of the work serves otherworldly, supernatural events, playing upon the immortality of the spirit. The representation of the immortal soul serves a dramatic purpose. The cycle in which it appears is the largest unit of the volume: Requiem – Barátomért, Novotny Vilmosért (Requiem – For My Friend, Vilmos Novotny). The poet-friend in question died in August 1981. The individual pieces of the poem sequence, divided by subtitles, meditate one by one on death, the soul, immortality, resurrection, pain and hopeful joy. This requiem was conceived as a “literary musical work”: it recounts chants, hymns and songs in an archaic folk and Christian “style”.
In this volume, Bálint Tóth erects many poetic memorials: to Miklós Zrínyi, Zoltán Huszárik, Géza Béri, Zoltán Papp, László Nagy, to the poetry of Árpád Tóth and Dániel Berzsenyi, to the paintings of Ödön Márffy, as well as to several members of his own family.
Another significant group of death poems is formed by the autumn and cosmic poems, in which the sense of transience is to a great extent interwoven with nature poetry. “Already Orion walks with diligent hounds / through the blood-red forest, the stag falls silent. […] Now it is autumn and silence. Mighty with the dead” (Őszi üzenet barátaimnak (Autumn Message to My Friends)). The conserving, sustaining role of landscape is also striking in the two poems that thematise the survival of the Csángós (A moldvai csángóknál (Among the Moldavian Csángós), A gyimesi csángóknál (Among the Gyimes Csángós)).
In this volume, landscape and the image of nature become increasingly prominent: it is no longer the woman who shapes nature, but rather nature that becomes feminine – in their perfect beauty they become interchangeable. “dawn arrives in red and white, / the moon’s bud pierces its shirt of mist” (Ibolyával, bőgő szarvassal (With Violets, with a Bellowing Stag)). The poet’s universal attentiveness also truly unfolds here. Nyiss kaput angyal (Open the Gate, Angel) is organised by the gesture of looking upwards, and thus the “material” aspect of the sky also becomes dominant. “I ponder. Now only of stars, of space” (Szobám barlangjából (From the Cave of My Room)). The cycle entitled Téli Szíriusz (Winter Sirius) provides a place for these poems of cosmic interest, and, as the poet writes: “Whoever has found a home in the sky / is never alone” (Nem vagy egyedül (You Are Not Alone)).
Krisztinavárosi körmenet (Krisztinaváros Procession) (1991)
The selected volume of poems written after the regime change is more than a mere act of selection. Here the poet for the first time makes public poems he had never previously published (because they were anti-regime) (Versek szalmazsákból és asztalfiókból (Poems from a Straw Mattress and Desk Drawer)). He writes an almost memoir-like free verse entitled Barátom és zárkatársam, Gál Gyula emlékére (In Memory of My Friend and Cellmate, Gyula Gál), with whom he had “made acquaintance” in the Kozma Street prison: they were shackled together in irons. An extraordinarily vivid document of its age is also the pamphlet-like poem József Attilának hatvanadik születésnapjára (For Attila József on His Sixtieth Birthday), which probes how the state-directed misinterpretation of an outstanding artist comes about. The praise of sexuality speaks in the interest of the fulfilment of sexual desire: this becomes the last refuge of life possibilities under dictatorship. “if passion cannot run elsewhere, let it run / between a woman’s thighs; if your soul / has been castrated, at least do not abandon your body.” A similar rhetoric characterises the sonnet Dante Ravennában (Dante in Ravenna) as well. The classical form is burst apart by passion, the fourteen lines breaking into two-line stanzas: “He wrote. And while disgust rose to his throat: / he made a party out of himself, for himself.” The poet elaborates a lifelong, one-person programme, and it rightly became the closing poem of the volume. Also worthy of mention are the two sub-cycles of the section: in Angyalos ajánlás (Angelic Dedication), he commends his departed loved ones, friends and spiritual role models to the attention of the heavenly beings; while the sub-cycle Te mondod (You Say It) consists mostly of role poems, “male poems” and “female poems.”.
The poet also organises his new poems into a separate chapter entitled A Kert misztérium-színpada (The Garden as a Mystery Stage), whose most striking feature is its social focus. Biblicality and Christian motifs are strongly emphasised. The level of “drama” is to be sought in close proximity both to material reality and to transcendence, perhaps “beyond life, yet on this side of death.” The “protagonist” is the life of the solitary individual who professes Jesus, while the themes include the uncertainty and helplessness of life, the probing of existence, and unanswerable ontological questions. “Not to remember the swept-aside / attic, not to start a lawsuit. // To forget the village-edge Christ, / Praised be »socialism«! // To live cheerfully in a slab block, / like a rusty nail in broken crosswood” (Dicsértessék (Praised Be)). The change in mentality did not arrive with the regime change; Hungarians have learned to live with their heads turned away. They have become withdrawn and dulled. The most significant of the new poems is the piece entitled Madárjósok? (Augurs?). The augur was a priestly office of great influence in ancient Rome; conclusions drawn from birds and heavenly signs carried unquestionable authority. From Bálint Tóth’s poem, however, it becomes clear that in the modern age “augury” signifies nothing more than a kind of “airborne” fantasy, the anachronism of the very attempt at interpretation. There is no need today for augurs – that is, for poets. No one interprets the “written sign,” because people do not read. “We are left to ourselves, like a bad sunrise, / which only a monkey may look at, / without the hope of becoming human.”
A senki földjén (On No One’s Land)(1998)
The poet’s disposition, marked by a concise articulation of the shades of life and the moods of language, often turns to the short prose form of the novella – a genre of minor epic scope that possesses artistic possibilities akin to poetry – since here, too, the emphasis falls on atmosphere and subtle stirrings. This choice fits closely with the oeuvre of a poet who renders impressions and experiences with a keen sensibility. The narratives present everyday scenes drawn from war and dictatorship, and within them the possible modes of individual conduct. It is as if each text faintly echoes the notion that everything can be taken away from a person, that everything can be lost – yet the decisive question is whether one loses oneself.
Considering the volume as a whole, no linearity can be discerned among the short stories. Although we may assume a recurring subject who can be identified with the author, the coherence of the narratives nevertheless rests solely on spatiality. This symbolic space is already indicated in the title itself: no man’s land. It is the neutral zone located between hostile front lines, and thus fired upon from both sides. On no man’s land, anyone may do anything without reprisal: it is a land of possibilities for the cruel. In connection with the title, one most readily associates it with the poem Senkiföldjén (On No Man’s Land) by Pilinszky János and the cycle organised around it. The poem depicts the peaceful solitude before and after humanity, the fragility of this solitude, and the fear of the “we.” Wherever the plural appears, roles immediately split into persecutor and persecuted, superior and subordinate. The “we” does not always provide a sense of security; between two people, peace can easily become unstable. Seen through the lens of the short stories, the “we” is accompanied by anxiety and suffering, and only solitude creates the conditions for contemplation and inward attention. The short story Most osztják a vacsorát (They Are Serving Dinner Now) is dominated by aversion to and fear of the political “they.” This terror is not alleviated by release from prison, because it is precisely at that moment that the sense of “I” is dismantled, when the “free” person is supplemented by a surveillance agent. Eső a szilfák levelén (Rain on the Leaves of the Elms) concerns power relations in love: the constant alternation of subordination and dominance between “I” and “you.” Tiszti arany (Officer’s Gold) presents honest and faithful love, when the sense of “we” becomes more important than life itself. The woman dies after her executed partner: she commits suicide. A senki földjén (On No One’s Land), on the one hand, shows the disintegration and loss of the “we,” while on the other it emphasises the importance of the coherence of the “I.”
It is also worth addressing the different modes of narration, for Tóth is an experimental writer in prose as well: he skilfully employs associative impressionism (Eső a szilfák levelén (Rain on the Leaves of the Elms)), as well as real-time narration marked by cinematic cuts (e.g. Händel jobb (Handel’s Right). The short story A senki földjén (On No One’s Land), for instance, not only evokes the style of Szindbád by Krúdy Gyula, but also deploys an objective, impassive, behaviourist narrative voice reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway. The short stories mentioned are outstanding documents of their age; their existential experience is characteristically Tóth Bálint–ian, and they would justly deserve a place in contemporary anthologies.
Varázsduda (Magic Bagpipe) (2000)
The final volume was written for children. This is a telling choice: during the years of dictatorship, Bálint Tóth consciously kept his distance from the “lighter” registers of poetry, as his sense of social vocation found its proper expression in a markedly rhetorical tone. By the turn of the millennium, however, he no longer feels the priority of public engagement; he can calmly shift to a more playful register and experience beauty with greater ease. Yet this volume by the “poet of moral bearing” may also be interpreted as the manifestation of a forward-looking attitude, one that seeks to address future generations: let the child read and enjoy the beauty and humour of literature, the savour of language itself.
Varázsduda (Magic Bagpipe) is not characterised by a large-scale composition. Pessimism and the pain of transience seem to be replaced by the Benedictine injunction: “pray and work.” This slender volume is of an entirely different tone from the earlier ones. Into the pastoral idyll, the cult of nature and amorous attraction no melancholy intrudes; joy is ethereal and pure. The existential–philosophical mode of outlook gives way to a simplicity that marvels at existence itself and at its beauty. The ethically grounded mode of speech, fuelled by opposing emotions, is replaced by a markedly rhythmic, chiming, rhyming, language-devouring light poetic voice. We may also speak of a poetic mask, for at times the familiar poet unmistakably emerges, and the “childlikeness” of the children’s poems becomes questionable when the poet occasionally spices the gentle, playful tone with eroticism (Keszthelyi alkony (Keszthely Dusk), Vadgesztenye (Horse Chestnut)). In the poem Copfod (Your Braids), the little girl who appears fidgetingly fingers her braid while the speaker pays her compliments. “Your left braid, like / a honey- / stream it flows, / all the way / down to the hip / and acacia- / cluster-like, / it hangs / in chain-like form, while / the bee / fusses upon it.” The division of the poem into two pulsating columns moreover evokes in its very form the girl’s two “golden plaits.” In these gentle, charmingly humorous poems, light fantasy takes the place of the fantasy that seeks to understand. The probing of phenomena creates a fairy-tale semblance of a world, a visionary dream-image, in which a sense of being at home in the world can be played out and orientation can be made believable.
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The poetry of Bálint Tóth is active and passive, passionate and refined, idealised and understated, painful and pleasurable, apocalyptic and Edenic. These oppositions not only coexist, but also complement one another. The poet strives for harmony, even if such harmony is often aborted in the “storm-tossed” twentieth century. He seeks the path back to the Garden – and whether with sword or with verse, he will surely find it.
[2015]
[1] Imre Kis Pintér, Helyzetjelentés (Situation Report), Budapest, 1979, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, p. 236.
[2] Lajos Márton Varga, “Életen túl, halálon innen” (Beyond Life, on This Side of Death), Jelenkor, 1981/5, p. 469.
[3] László Molnár, Tóth Bálint: Krisztinavárosi körmenet (Bálint Tóth: Krisztinaváros Procession), Alföld, 1992/7, p. 70.
[4] Imre Kis Pintér, Nyiss kaput angyal (Open the Gate, Angel), Kortárs, 1988/10, p. 164.
[5] Béla Pomogáts, “Versek atlantiszi szélben: töredékek Tóth Bálint költészetéről” (Poems in an Atlantean Wind: Fragments on the Poetry of Bálint Tóth), Hitel, 2002/8, pp. 112–119.
[6] Balázs Lengyel, Útelágazások. Verseskönyvről verseskönyvre (Branching Paths: From Poetry Volume to Poetry Volume), http://dia.jadox.pim.hu/jetspeed/displayXhtml?docId=0000000668&secId=0000062860&mode
=html#Lengyel_Balazs-Verseskonyvrol_verseskonyvre_[1982]-lengyel00144.
[7] Kis Pintér Imre, i. m., 164.