Kosztolányi’s Interpretation of Language Art from the Perspective of Effect and Reception Theory

Modernity as a History of Renewal

Abstract

Jauss links the emergence of the subject that has lost its center and unity to the dawn of the second wave of modernity in 1912. In my view, Kosztolányi came closer to the poetic doctrine of the second wave of modernity as a novelist than as a lyricist. The crossing of boundaries
between speech registers and points of view, the unidentifiability of the self and the other, the unrecognizability of voice and gaze, and the contingency of meaning are the distinguishing features of his narrative language. In Jauss’s concept of the threshold of an era, the emphasis
is on transition, not paradigm shift. The Hungarian writer and later reception aesthetics agree that classical modern literature is also capable of renewal in parallel with the development of the avant-garde. The break with the closed, organic form of the autonomous work of art opens classical modern literature to a reception that creates together with language. Kosztolányi almost literally anticipates Jauss’s insight: the reader „becomes the co-creator of the work.” The striking coincidence can perhaps be explained by the fact that both drew on the same sources, namely Valéry’s essays.