HUNGARIAN STUDIES 11. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar ... - EPA

THE AGON OF IRONY AND SATIREA harmadik fog bölcsességfogállkapcsunkban későn virágzik(fogósdit játszunk acélfogóval)és zsibbadunk. Elegáns injekcióvalmár az örökös fájdalom partja se látszik.[The third tooth is wisdom toothit blooms late in our jaw(we play catch with steel pliers)and go numb. An elegant needlemakes invisible the shores of eternal pain].The figurai language is very compact, but it is not needlessly cryptic, nor is it afull return to irony. The play of catch is the play of life and death; only wehumans know what is at stake in this play, yet we still play on. The "elegantneedle" is properly both literal and allegorical: the former is the needle of goodand easy death; the latter, the injection of some artful evasion of death such asgood writing that momentarily dissolves the true world of pain and sorrow. Butbeing in the "stance of wisdom," the post-ironic subject now knows literal andfigurai to be one, and is able to stand both inside and outside, for it, as de Manwrites, "however painful, sees things as they actually are." 9 If Missa agnostica isan "orphan" text, as postulated above, it is because its narrating subject acceptshis own orphanhood, acknowledging as distant kin only the Kierkegaardian"knight of infinite resignation." But orphans, like the Jesus Anguillos of theworld with whom the narrator has shown solidarity, can also play; thewhimpering picture is not the whole picture. Play is available to the adult orphanas well, especially as he had orphaned himself when he chose to follow the roadof his docta ignorantia wherever it took him. The entry of post-ironic irony doesnot inject a lugubrious tone into Vitéz' text; quite the contrary: as in Yeats'Lapis Lazuli, the gaiety and enormous tragic fun of free play still transfigures allthat dread. And the agnostic mass still remains a mass, celebrating the rites ofplay against ennui and bad faith, while quietly acknowledging the "shores ofeternal pain" as its ultimately impassable bounderies.Notes1. References throughout this paper are to Missa agnostica (Paris: Magyar Műhely, 1979). Thepoem also appears in Vitéz's collected poems, Az ájtatos manó imája (Szombathely: Életünkkönyvek, 1991) 125-164.2. Jacques Derrida, "Living on/Border Lines" in Harold Bloom, Deconstruction and Criticism(New York, 1979), 83.