A szavak helye
Placing Words

Textual space in the poems of István Pákolitz

Summary/Abstract: The spatiality of the verbal arts is not restricted to evoking the illusion of visuality or of the visual arts; what is more, such an illusion cannot be considered the space of the text in a strict sense. The space of the text is a phenomenal space, fashioned by the interrelation between letters, interpunctuation, and the surface of the page. Invariably constituting a determining facet of the aesthetic experience, a facet governing interpretation, the visual patterns of textual space may form mimetic shapes, or individual visual structures that are not bound to shapes in a referential manner. Textual space is awarded an eminent role in the poetry of István Pákolitz. In his poems, the reader is drawn into the space of the text by way of visual structures determining the appearance of the page or the spread, by directly or indirectly mimetic visual shapes, or by verbal constructions constituting visual jointures independent of figurativity. The visual facet of the text, combined subtly with verbal relations, yields a formation of sense which always allows the multifaceted nature of perceptional or interpretative possibilities to become apparent, and to make their complexity noticeable to the reader in line with the changing directions of perception and interpretation. Such complexity does not only induce a change of perspective in the course of reading, but also encourages the inventive reinterpretation of the reader’s own relations of being, hence providing them at times painful, at times humorous insight into these.

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