„PROBLÉMY SO ŽÁNROM V PAŽERÁKU SMRTI“: VLASTNÁ SMRŤ PÉTERA NÁDASA A PANKREASNÍK PÉTERA ESTERHÁZYHO AKO HRANIČNÉ PRÍPADY AUTOBIOGRAFIE

Texts that attempt to mediate the author’s own experience with death illuminate the basic problem of autobiographical writing: the impossibility of fully verbalizing an authentic experience and the limits of relatability of such an experience through language. The article focuses on two works by contemporary Hungarian writers that thematise the specificity of an autobiography written at the final point of a life’s journey. Saját halál (2004; Eng. trans. Own death, 2006) by Péter Nádas (b. 1942) relates the experience with clinical death, while Hasnyálmirigynapló (2016; „Pancreatic Diary (Excerpts)“, 2017) by the late Péter Esterházy (1950–2016) documents the author’s process of dying. Based on the idea that autobiography not only restores the face and the experience of the author but also transforms it (Paul de Man), the article investigates how autobiographical text restores and deprives/disfigures the author’s own experience with death. Simultaneously it considers the interdiscursive meaning of these (autobiographical) testimonies.