„I am a poet, and Catholic”

János Pilinszky’s philosophy of art

Abstract

The topicality of the essay is two round anniversaries connected to Pilinszky – his birth (100) and his death (40) – and regarding its topic, it focuses on the poet’s philosophy of art. I have used as resources first of all the writings entitled „Tűnődés az evangéliumi esztétikáról” (Contemplation on evangelical aesthetics) and two texts of Nagyvárosi ikonok (City icons), „A „teremtő képzelet” sorsa korunkban” (The fate of „creative visualization” in our era) and Ars poetica helyett (Instead of ars poetica). I consider this task to be important and in-teresting even if the author himself did not create or write an itemised, systemic philosophy of art. But this evangelical aesthetics is still coherent, understandable and exact, especially if we know and understand Simone Weil’s related views. One of Weil’s most well-known sen-tences – „The world exists, it is bad, unrealistic and absurd. God does not exist, he is good and real.” – practically gives us a key to Pilinszky’s poems showing the contrast between the so called facts of the world and reality.

Although it usually slipped the former researchers’ attention of the topic, I consider rele-vant to cite the poet’s text entitled Beszélgetések Sheryl Suttonnel (Conversations with Sheryl Sutton) here, as it helps to understand and formulate the most important statements: Despite all our selfishness, we are inescapably one. We are all God’s creatures, and we have common problems of existence as well, together with its consequences.