Másodlagos ignorancia: A metamodern zsákutcái

Abstract

The new anthology of Transylvanian poetry entitled Címtelen föld (“Land Without a Label”) has intensified the discussions on the concept of metamodernism in the contemporary Hungarian literary scene. In my paper, I carry out a scrutiny of the conceptualization of metamodernism and how it is applied to contemporary Hungarian poetry. Firstly, I analyse the context, both Hungarian and international, in which the need for a new epochality succeeding postmodernism has arisen. Secondly, I examine the historical consciousness (or the lack of it, for that matter), which seems to be characteristic of a metamodern perspective as far as its relations to modernism and postmodernism are concerned.Th irdly, I carry out a comparison between how metamodernism is applied differently to novels and poems. In my conclusion, I argue for the return of modernism’s so-called “unhappy consciousness” with respect to contemporary Hungarian poetry’s obsessive fixation on manifesting the structure of feeling in contemporary Western society.