The Birth of Thougth in János Arany's Poems

What is it about?

In his essay entitled Zrínyi and Tasso János Arany refuses to accept the – in his view – romantic idea that a poet could creat a story out of nothing. His argumentative contemplation on the conventions and traditions of plots and narrative forms demonstrates that the world of a narrative can not be created “out of nothing”. Nevertheless, when he analyses the special relations between verse language and lyric poetry, he seriously ruminates upon the possibility of a thought arising out of nothing. In his poetic practice Arany often uses floating signifiers, deictic elements in the focal points of his poems in order to emphasize the lack of adequate words or ideas. The essay focuses on the process of how an ideologically and semantically smashed and emptied word acquires sense in a poem, and how this special poetic procedure provokes the birth of a new thougth.

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