ON A SPECIAL LYRICAL GENRE IN THE POETRY OF ATTILA JÓZSEF, MIKLÓS RADNÓTI AND SÁNDOR KÁNYÁDI

Abstract

In the poetry of Attila József and then Miklós Radnóti a new genre-form is presented, which hardly can be found in the books of literary theory and poetics as an autonomous genre. The common feature of these poems that their title consists in only one word, from a grammatical aspect a continuous participle (gerund). In some cases the titleword is used also as a noun in Hungarian language (for ex. Bevezető [’Introducing’], Altató [’Sleeping’] in Attila József, Sirató [’Weeping’], Toborzó [’Recruiting’] in Radnóti, or Álmodó [’Dreaming’] and Ballagó [’Walking’] in Kányádi). However, in more cases they obtain a noun-character and a genre- meaning power just because of their status as an independent title (for instance Hívogató, Dudoló [Attila József ], Szusszanó, Bájoló [Radnóti], Hessegető, Kerekítő [Kányádi]). Furthermore, there are some very rare or dialect words among these titles (for e. Keseredő [Radnóti], Tűvé-tevő, Kallózó [Kányádi]), and sometimes we can even reveal a unique word-creation practice, a so called hapax legomenon (Tószunnyadó [Attila József], Emlékvirrasztó [Kányádi]). The paper aims to show the special poetic and thematic properties of this genre-form, its potential roots and its differences in the corpus of the three mentioned poets, with a special emphasis on Attila József and Miklós Radnóti, onorating in this way Imre Bori’s scholarly work.