Swearing an Oath by Shouting the Poem: Petőfi and Performative Language in Poetry

Abstract

The paper raises the question of the effect literary speech acts might have on the political public sphere and, thus, on the field of social action. Furthermore, it asks what it may mean for the performative structure of literary texts to be transposed into the dimension of political action. The public sphere of the 19th century sheds a particularly strong light on this question. One of Sándor Petőfiʼs best-known poems, Nemzeti dal [National Song] (transl. F. Szomy) calls its audience to swear an oath, and even performs an oath. The poem played a central role in the Hungarian Revolution of 15 March 1848 – Petőfi recited it several times at public assemblies. It contributed to shaping the concept of nation during the War of Independence. It became part of real legal and political ceremonies, e.g., the initiation of members of the freedom fightersʼ militia. The paper focuses on the contribution of Nemzeti dal to the discourse on (literary) speech acts. It briefly touches upon the contemporary ethical context of the concept of the oath (primarily Kant), and then looks at how a scene from Péter Esterházyʼs Kis Magyar Pornográfia [A Little Hungarian Pornography] (1984, trans. Judith Sollosy) evokes Petőfiʼs oath in the socio-political context of the second half of the 20th century, primarily in relation to the concepts of freedom and slavery. Finally, the performativity of Nemzeti dal will be confronted with the issues of cursing and bearing false testimony in literature. An example of the former is provided by Mihály Vörösmartyʼs 1849 poem Átok [Curse], which can be read as a kind of reaction to the unconditional surrender that ended the Hungarian War of Independence. The latter is represented by János Aranyʼs 1852 ballad A hamis tanú [The Perjurer], which can also be understood as an implicit response to the dense presence of performatives that determined the political publicness of the struggle for freedom.