Inter-Textus és Resurexus

The presence of Pilinszky’s lyrical poetry in Borbély Szilárd’s works is common knowledge which can easily be proved with examples taken from Borbély’s statements and the reception of his works. This study examines the connections between the poetic history of the two oeuvres from two aspects. First, the ways they relate to Christian traditions are brought into discussion. Arguing with the canonized interpretations of Pilinszky’s reception too, the question to be answered is whether only the theologically anti-dogmatic articulation of the experience of not-being-redeemed can be the poetically relevant statement from poets in the lyrical poetry of modernity and postmodernity. Second, the analysis of the poem about camp commander Otto Moll in the cycle entitled Haszid szekvenciák [Hasidic Sequences] of Halotti Pompa through the dialogue between the religious traditions intends to illustrate how Szilárd Borbély was able to reinterpret Pilinszky’s well-known paradox of “atoning the unatonable” in his own pessimistic world, and in so doing how he can preserve something from passing hope.