Ottlik Géza Kossuth and József Attila prize-winning Hungarian writer and translator was born in Budapest 111 years ago. Vigil of December 1971, "Who is Jesus to me?" he is remembered with his answer to a circular question on the Facebook page of Vigília's editorial office. You can read this below.
If I understood correctly, the question is not what Jesus means to the world, to humanity, to the past and future millennia, but to me, personally, as a resident of Budapest, who is He, then it is easy to answer.
My Lord and Savior. Just as there is an answer to that question, it is about who, for example, a Kecskemét-born Erzsébet Szabó, Gézáné Ottlik, was to me. My mother. Above me is the starry sky. But what the starry sky, my mother or Jesus means to me, I don't usually think about it, nor can I answer it. It does not belong to anyone else, it is a confidential private matter for the two of us, me and the starry sky. The existing set of meanings of human language, the rules of its composition, and the existing conceptual equipment of our thinking do not allow us to express such intuitively graspable contents - in language and beyond language. We cannot talk or think about the most important things. The foundations of our existence - in the depths of silence - preserve intact, complete contents. Language can break down their enormous complexity into sub-meanings, emotional, emotional, ethical, aesthetic, thought, volitional meanings. These interpretations are all truncated and false. The writer does not use language in this interpretive, breaking down function, but on the contrary, one might say, by abusing the structure of grammar and the meaning system of words, he tries to restore the original integrity and completeness of the world in his poems and novels. And if he succeeds in this at all, he can only succeed with silences flowing into his text. And if my work does not contain all this, my mother, the sky, Jesus, then there is nothing in it.
They must be present not by name - the poem is not about the stars, not about Jesus, not about the poet's mother - but in reality. If He had not flowed into my work composed of such profane, worldly moments of meaning - if not otherwise, then as thirst, immortal desire, the deer's longing for the beautiful cool stream - then we would not have created anything.
Source: romkat.ro / Originally published: Vigilia, December 1971, 860.
Featured image: Fortepan/József Hunyady
