ABJECTION OF THE RECEPTION IN THE POEM TREES BY ÁGNES NEMES NAGY

Abstract

The reception of Ágnes Nemes Nagy’s emblematic poem Trees (Fák) interprets it to be the description of the process of self re-recreation resulting from an objective “looking behind”. In our approach the Trees signify the unattainability of the body, of the Real (experience) in the lacanian sense along with the impossibility of designation (and thus of testimony), and following from this the temptation of self re-recreation is presented as an empty promise, that is, the promise of emptiness. Nevertheless, the mention of this shortfall carries at the same time the life-affirmation of the self-eliminating subject of Nemes Nagy’s lyric poetry: a speech whose very impossibility makes it possible. The abjection of representation in Kristeva’ sense is the stunning recognition that the lack of representation is concurrently holding onto the texture of representation: the greatly discussed self-reflexivity of Ágnes Nemes Nagy’s lyric poetry is always (and much more) self-elimination: coping with the absence of the subject (and its correlating object) – and making this absence limitless.