Let’s turn away from contemporary Hungarian politics for a moment–especially as HFP’s readers celebrate Easter and Passover–and immerse ourselves in the balmy waters of Southeast Asia, as seen through the eyes of Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres (1913-1989). As far as I could tell, this poem isn’t available anywhere on the Internet, so I am taking the liberty of typing it up from an excellent English-language Weöres-anthology entitled Eternal Moment, published in 1988 by Budapest’s Corvina Kiadó. I bought the book in the early nineties, when I was a high school student in Budapest and roamed Corvina’s bookshop in Vörösmarty tér. (The bookstore is gone, and so is the office building, which made way for a shiny new, glass-and-steel commercial complex a few years ago.)
As a poet, Sándor Weöres’ fascination with the transcendental, classical mythology, exoticism and mysticism is apparent. According to literary critic Miklós Vajda, Mr. Weöres was influenced in the 1930’s by Professor Károly Kerényi of the University of Pécs, who during the rise of fascism “emphasized the Mediterranean heritage, that spirit of the South which could serve as the basis of a modern Hungarian national consciousness, as opposed to the false romanticism of the Asiatic steppes.” (Miklós Vajda (ed.), et. al., Eternal Moment, Corvina Kiadó 1988, p. 15.)
These issues still resonate within contemporary Hungarian discourse. And this Weöres-poem, in particular, calls us to engage in self-reflection.
Christopher Adam / HFP
Sándor Weöres. Photo: Litera.
The Secret Country
Songs from Nakai islands, in the South Sea
One day we’ll jump on a floating log, E Daj the distant is
waiting for us,
we’ll float on the log, wing-locked butterflies,
dance gently downwards through the traveller’s-joy
beneath the sea, no one aware of us.
Below earth and sea there is a black lake,
motionless and mirror-sharp,
no one knows its chasms:
E Daj the distant is waiting for us,
one day we’ll jump on a floating log, plunge in.
The old men say:
As long as we live,
everything we see
hangs in that mirror in the lake,
our faces, our figures
figured facing down.
The palms, the lianas, the foxes, the stars
all hang there in the mirror of the lake.
Short-lived the butterfly, but it visits the old farmhouse,
puttering about it with its whispering
wings, we hear them whispering,
we run, run into the house.
We don’t speak to it, we don’t speak to shadows.
It knocks at the door, knocks, knocks, breaks off, goes
back home,
E Daj the distant is waiting for us.
The old men say:
Our faces and figures are reflected in the black lake,
no one sees its depths:
whatever is, was once in them,
whatever was once in them, falls back there,
and this is the eternal return.
The man throws his spear, bends his bow,
the woman scrapes a hole for the fire,
all look for handholds, build huts:
and this is how we live, hanging head down in the mirror
of the lake.
one day we’ll jump on a floating log, plunge in.
We can’t see what lies below. E Daj the distant is
waiting for us.
[1963]
Translated by: Edwin Morgan
