Page 153 - 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. 153
Play, Chaos and Autonomy in the Poetry of Hungarians in Voivodina (Uj Symposion) 153
It was not the revision and re-actualization of the avantgarde between the
World Wars, but rather an authentic existentialist response to the ideolog-
ical, cultural and artistic requirements of the nineteen-fifties and sixties
(2004, 91).
When we look at the experimentation of Symposionist poetry with
ludism, reism, conceptualism, lettrism, it turns out that it not merely had
aesthetic aspects, but also took social-political and existential risks. Sym-
posionists first reckoned with the ‘frog-’ and ‘church tower-’ perspective
of the Vojvodinian Hungarian poetry. Then came their ambivalent play
with the Vojvodinian state apparatus. In this way the ludist chaos-forms
of Symposionist poetry constituted an attempt at creating a space of per-
sonal autonomy from the political and the existential scale.
Nikola Dedić claims that this radical experimentation is an attribute
of ‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ (2008, 595–602). Serbian reception does
not differentiate between ‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ and ‘Vojvodinian
textualism’ (Šuvaković 1997) on a national/ethnic basis. However, due
to the language barrier, Serbs are familiar only with those Yugoslav au-
thors whose works have been translated to either Serbian or Croatian. Šu-
vaković uses the epithet ‘Vojvodinian’ since, in contrast to the fragment-
ed, critical ‘Vojvodinian textualism’, the criticism and poetry in Belgrade
were more conventional, with verism, i.e. narrative types of poetry, com-
ing to the fore. Bálint Szombathy (1991, 91–100) defines antecedents of
‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ and conceptualism as the verbo-voco-visual
poetry in the Serbian tradition (authors surrounding zenithist and sur-
realist Dragan Aleksić and Ljubomir Micić). The notion of ‘textualism’
might be extended to Symposionist poetry, too, and then we can talk
about ‘Symposionist textualism’ and linguistic-visual fireworks (which in
the case of Katalin Ladik were enriched by phonic experiments).
Old News?
In the nineteen-nineties, young Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian po-
ets were not much fascinated with ludism. The play of poetry was not
exhausted, however, only its means of expression were transformed. In
Hungarian literature, ludism appeared more or less idiosyncratically only
in the individual poetics of some Symposionist authors. There is no such
thing as pure ludist Symposionist poetry. There exist as many ludisms as
the number of Southern Slavic poets who have used ludist strategies in
their poetics. Ludism is a principle, a parasitic poetics rather than an au-
It was not the revision and re-actualization of the avantgarde between the
World Wars, but rather an authentic existentialist response to the ideolog-
ical, cultural and artistic requirements of the nineteen-fifties and sixties
(2004, 91).
When we look at the experimentation of Symposionist poetry with
ludism, reism, conceptualism, lettrism, it turns out that it not merely had
aesthetic aspects, but also took social-political and existential risks. Sym-
posionists first reckoned with the ‘frog-’ and ‘church tower-’ perspective
of the Vojvodinian Hungarian poetry. Then came their ambivalent play
with the Vojvodinian state apparatus. In this way the ludist chaos-forms
of Symposionist poetry constituted an attempt at creating a space of per-
sonal autonomy from the political and the existential scale.
Nikola Dedić claims that this radical experimentation is an attribute
of ‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ (2008, 595–602). Serbian reception does
not differentiate between ‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ and ‘Vojvodinian
textualism’ (Šuvaković 1997) on a national/ethnic basis. However, due
to the language barrier, Serbs are familiar only with those Yugoslav au-
thors whose works have been translated to either Serbian or Croatian. Šu-
vaković uses the epithet ‘Vojvodinian’ since, in contrast to the fragment-
ed, critical ‘Vojvodinian textualism’, the criticism and poetry in Belgrade
were more conventional, with verism, i.e. narrative types of poetry, com-
ing to the fore. Bálint Szombathy (1991, 91–100) defines antecedents of
‘neo-avantgarde textualism’ and conceptualism as the verbo-voco-visual
poetry in the Serbian tradition (authors surrounding zenithist and sur-
realist Dragan Aleksić and Ljubomir Micić). The notion of ‘textualism’
might be extended to Symposionist poetry, too, and then we can talk
about ‘Symposionist textualism’ and linguistic-visual fireworks (which in
the case of Katalin Ladik were enriched by phonic experiments).
Old News?
In the nineteen-nineties, young Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian po-
ets were not much fascinated with ludism. The play of poetry was not
exhausted, however, only its means of expression were transformed. In
Hungarian literature, ludism appeared more or less idiosyncratically only
in the individual poetics of some Symposionist authors. There is no such
thing as pure ludist Symposionist poetry. There exist as many ludisms as
the number of Southern Slavic poets who have used ludist strategies in
their poetics. Ludism is a principle, a parasitic poetics rather than an au-
