“In an Impossible-Coloured Green Cardigan”

Connections between Loss and Clothing in György Petri’s Sára Poems

Abstract

Clothing plays an important role in György Petri’s poetry, and especially in the Sára poems associated with the figure of Sára Kepes. In this paper, I examine the role of clothing and the poetic context of the poet’s loss, how the representation of clothing participates in recalling and (re)telling the traumatic “primordial experience” that determines Petri’s writing. When explaining the topic, I approach the relationship between body and clothing, the experience of perceiving and sensing gaze from the insights of phenomenology. At the center of my interpretation is the most significant Sára poem, Sári, ne vigyorogj rajtam, [’Sári, don’t grin at me’], whose train of thought is organized by two motifs, the grin shown in the photograph and the floral printed dress. Both are a means of presenting the tragic past event, with the help of which the poet’s sense of loss and self-blame can become somewhat articulated. The fragmented sequences of the poem, laden with detours; gestures of juxtaposition and trivialization; the stiff mocking grin in the photo; as well as covering up the past event and the fact of the woman’s death all testify to the trauma. The poetic language characteristic of Örökhétfő [’Eternal Monday’]’s period proves to be suitable for expressing the traumatic experience in the Sára poems of this volume, which provides a poetics that conveys the linguistic expressibility, and inexpressibility, of trauma.