Variations of intertextuality: the poetry of Mihály Babits

Ágnes Kelevéz

doi:10.6093/1826-753X/10821

Ágnes Kelevéz Petőfi Literary Museum, Budapest http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0586-0969

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/1826-753X/10821

Keywords: Hungarian literature, intertextuality, Mihály Babits, modernity

Abstract

Poet, writer, translator (e.g., Dante’s Comedy) and author of a History of European Literature (1936, It. 2000), Mihály Babits (1883-1941) is among the most influential figures of the 20^th-century Hungarian literature. With an intense commitment to the study of multiple literary traditions in their original languages, he landed on two manifestly modern poetic experiments: intertextuality and intermediality. The present study explores how, with his exceptional scholarship, Babits adopted a type of intertextuality that simultaneously alludes to literary texts from different eras and different poetic styles, and how the resulting tapestry (made up of sometimes anachronistically ironic entanglements and juxtapositions) anticipates postmodern works. In a forthcoming article, «Experiments with Intermediality in the Early Poetry of Mihály Babits», I will analyze the even broader references by which Babits poetry constructs allusions to nonverbal media i.e., paintings, sculptures, and buildings.

Author Biography

Ágnes Kelevéz, Petőfi Literary Museum, Budapest

Ágnes Kelevéz, PhD (kelevez.agnes@pim.hu) is honorary chief museologist at the Petőfi Literary Museum and senior researcher at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Research Center for the Humanities in Budapest. A curator of several exhibitions, her research focuses on modern Hungarian literature and the theory and practice of textual criticism. Her publications include A keletkező szöveg esztétikája. Genetikus közelítés Babits költészetéhez (1988; The Aesthetics of the developing text. A genetic approach to Babits Poetry), «Kit új korokba küldtek régi révek». Babits útján az antikvitástól napjainkig (2008; «Sent to new ages from old ports». On the way of Babits from antiquity to the present day), Esti kérdések. Irodalomtörténeti nyomozás Babits költészetében (2021; Questions for the evening: literary history investigation in the poetry of Babits), and the recent critical edition Babits Mihály Összes versei 1906-1910 (2022; The Complete Poems of Mihály Babits 1906-1910).