Poetry
Te meg a világ
Not translated into English
Lőrinc Szabó · 1932
Synopsis
Poems in which the speaker defends to the end the freedom of the self against the world and other people. He asks why the body works for the soul, questions what he is beyond his flesh, and finds consolation only in death. In love, he demands that the woman live only for him and give up her own will. His faith wavers: each time he turns to God, the cold respect for facts turns him away.
Context
The volume appears in 1932 from Pantheon, printed by Kner in Gyoma, ten years after the author's first book. Nourished by the extreme individualism of Max Stirner, it marks a turning point: the grand gestures of the collections of the twenties give way to objectivity, analysis and the discipline of thought. In the Nyugat, Gábor Halász hailed the poet as the most demanding of his reader, whose poetry rests on intellectual precision. The same year, the author received the first of his three Baumgarten prizes.
Who it is for
Poems of reasoning, with brief, unadorned sentences, some of whose assertions still jar; no French or English translation of the collection has been located.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, together with Attila József's poems around Eszmélet, as one of the summits of Hungarian poetry of the century.
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