Abstract

What does it mean to take an academic writer, for instance the Hungarian philologist Peter Szondi, as himself an object of philological analysis and discussion? The question is not one of appropriateness; Szondi's philological work has been the subject of academic attention for many years now, and its seriousness is self-evident. The distinction here is nearer the difference between talking with someone and talking about someone. It is a distinction that can never be entirely abandoned by philology. However open-ended and dialogical its procedures are taken to be, philological discourse is ultimately conditioned by their participation in a field exposed…