Page 151 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 151
Play, Chaos and Autonomy in the Poetry of Hungarians in Voivodina (Uj Symposion) 151
the practice of the OHO group (for example some poems from the collec-
tions Comets, comets by Zvonko Maković and Tekst by Branko Maleš) (2008).
All of this indicates that ludism that spread after World War II is a
tradition subverted by the historical avantgarde and that it built up its
playful poetic constructions from the ruins of conventions. Ludist po-
ems are condensations of semantic chaos: poetic plays with remnants of
semanto- and iconoclasm. Poetic discourse is frequently moved rather by
catachresis than by conventional tropic figures. In a number of cases, this
play can be found in the works of neo-avantgarde conceptualism and let-
trism. Ludist poems are not narrative; from the perspective of conven-
tional hermeneutics they seem to be hermetic, inconceivable, nonsense,
discarding reading strategies aimed at understanding. Ludist works are
characterized by humour, irony, absurdity, grotesque, non-hierarchi-
cal mixtures of cultural registers via intertextual and intermedial quo-
tations, and playful subject-destructions. According to Serbian poet and
theoretician Dubravka Đurić
radical poets research the space of the paper sheet, and conceive text as the
score of verbal performance. They look for the possibilities of language us-
ing processes discovered in other media. They mix genres creating mul-
tigeneric effects and thus transcend divisions between different artistic
branches. They question the bourgeois norms of society, harshly criticize
the l’art pour l’art principle and elitist aesthetics of poetry. Their artistic ac-
tivity is provocative and pervading political, ethical and aesthetic questions
(2004, 81).
This radical poetic practice does not only relate to the avantgarde but
also to A Throw of Dice… (1897) by symbolist Mallarmé. According to its
Hungarian translator, Gyula Tellér, this poem is untranslatable, but this
quality makes it paradoxically spellbinding:
Finally there is the sound material of language, the key sentence’s alexan-
drine imbalanced with a thirteenth syllable modelling accidentality, thou-
sands and thousands possibilities of playing with sound, rhythm and tone.
Hardly or non-translatable language-bound singularities … ‘Blanks’ be-
tween articulate sentences or clauses are tightly bound to the linguistic
material, they organize the lines and associations of thought, now slowing,
then accelerating, enhancing, distancing via symmetric positions, now op-
posing, then linking. They behave like the content-organizing categories of
a visual syntax. Mallarmé has found a new form, a third possibility besides
free verse and prose verse that tried to overcome the outbreathed alexan-
the practice of the OHO group (for example some poems from the collec-
tions Comets, comets by Zvonko Maković and Tekst by Branko Maleš) (2008).
All of this indicates that ludism that spread after World War II is a
tradition subverted by the historical avantgarde and that it built up its
playful poetic constructions from the ruins of conventions. Ludist po-
ems are condensations of semantic chaos: poetic plays with remnants of
semanto- and iconoclasm. Poetic discourse is frequently moved rather by
catachresis than by conventional tropic figures. In a number of cases, this
play can be found in the works of neo-avantgarde conceptualism and let-
trism. Ludist poems are not narrative; from the perspective of conven-
tional hermeneutics they seem to be hermetic, inconceivable, nonsense,
discarding reading strategies aimed at understanding. Ludist works are
characterized by humour, irony, absurdity, grotesque, non-hierarchi-
cal mixtures of cultural registers via intertextual and intermedial quo-
tations, and playful subject-destructions. According to Serbian poet and
theoretician Dubravka Đurić
radical poets research the space of the paper sheet, and conceive text as the
score of verbal performance. They look for the possibilities of language us-
ing processes discovered in other media. They mix genres creating mul-
tigeneric effects and thus transcend divisions between different artistic
branches. They question the bourgeois norms of society, harshly criticize
the l’art pour l’art principle and elitist aesthetics of poetry. Their artistic ac-
tivity is provocative and pervading political, ethical and aesthetic questions
(2004, 81).
This radical poetic practice does not only relate to the avantgarde but
also to A Throw of Dice… (1897) by symbolist Mallarmé. According to its
Hungarian translator, Gyula Tellér, this poem is untranslatable, but this
quality makes it paradoxically spellbinding:
Finally there is the sound material of language, the key sentence’s alexan-
drine imbalanced with a thirteenth syllable modelling accidentality, thou-
sands and thousands possibilities of playing with sound, rhythm and tone.
Hardly or non-translatable language-bound singularities … ‘Blanks’ be-
tween articulate sentences or clauses are tightly bound to the linguistic
material, they organize the lines and associations of thought, now slowing,
then accelerating, enhancing, distancing via symmetric positions, now op-
posing, then linking. They behave like the content-organizing categories of
a visual syntax. Mallarmé has found a new form, a third possibility besides
free verse and prose verse that tried to overcome the outbreathed alexan-
