Albatross, ostrich, swan…
Géza Szőcs has left us. From today, the sun will rise differently and nothing will be the same. We could list, as one does in an obituary, his titles, his awards, his rank, his status – but those who knew him, beyond being aware of all this, know that a great tragedy has occurred. He was a man who we could all count on, whose personal destinies and the fate of the nation were equally important to him, and whose daily task was to help to shape those destinies.
This obituary, too, beyond the evidence, can only tell us how there are no words, and I am sure that Géza wanted to leave this world in such a way that we feel this vacuum afterwards: we know that it is irreplaceable. He was a fatalist, always facing up to fate and handling life’s most absurd situations with the utmost calm. He loved danger, he always found brilliant solutions to situations that others had long since turned their backs on, and the part of the world that was not a mystery to him was always a challenge, whether it was literature, politics, fate or even the future, when he was making predictions.
He saw the world clearly, with all its known or recognisable connections, he was annoyed by the little follies of life, but on important matters he always thought with confident calm, his wise advice was worth taking. He had a fine sense of the absurd, obviously, not only in literature but also in everyday life, and was at home in the world of the incomprehensible – as befits a poet. Like a magician or a shaman. Perhaps that is why poet is a good term: he is the one who can create a world, or recreate it if need be.
His fantastic work ethic was also due to his self-destructive work pace which was hard to keep up with, and although he had many direct colleagues, sometimes too few to be exactly as he wanted every minute to meet his needs.
I have also witnessed him surrounded by profiteers, who surround him with their hands on his back as good friends and then turn on him with their mouths full behind his back. Yes, we need to say that too. But also that he always helped these people. As with others, I know of no one who has turned down anyone asking for help.
There is also evidence that he was a divisive personality, but the opposite would be sad. As a poet, however, no one would fail to recognise his merits. It is a risky business to compare poets, to compare their works, to write a canon is a thankless task, or to find anyone’s place in any literature, yet somehow we all feel and know his place. We cannot say that he was like X, nor that his significance can be measured by the significance of Y. He was Géza Szőcs, full stop.
Three topos from the world of his poetry come to mind, three birds. The albatross, the ostrich and the swan. The albatross, the symbolic bird of infinite flight, the ostrich (the protagonist of his book, Limpopó), the world of the flightless bird, which became a cornerstone of his oeuvre as an individual and a symbol of destiny, and the swan – the swan from the Cluj Napoca promenade. The swan, who warns us that even the noblest things are mortal and that in the end only one thing survives us, poetry, is the eternal commandment of beauty. But before its publication, let us say that the last one, the swan book, is a book of loyalty. I think that no one has ever loved Cluj-Napoca so much, and this swan song – as the whole book can be interpreted as such – tells the pain and sadness that one can lose the most beautiful things in life. Just like he has lost Cluj. Just like Cluj has lost him.
Before the 1990 change of regime, Géza Szőcs was identified with the freedom strivings of the Transylvanian Hungarians, with the universal anti-communist resistance, and after the change of regime with the unfolding of the freedom strivings. Now it seems that other times are coming… What he could do for us, he did, so he moved on.
Géza Szőcs – “A sétatéri hattyúkról” (About the Swam at the Promenade)
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