Text: Imre Makovecz

Makovecz Imre rajza az Atlantisz-sorozatból

If someone has not seen Forum Romanum drawn in line with the laws of perspectives – as perfectly as Piranesi drew it –, and draws people ten times smaller than their actual size, s/he gets a picture of Rome as if it had been built by giants several thousand years before the foundation of Rome.
If someone draws the church of Vesta virgins with its three-quarters dug underground so that the ground level is just beneath the capitals with acanthus leaves and one can only reach the width of the fluting with open arms with the tips of his fingers and the acacia tree grown onto the architrave seems to be a weed by the road, s/he declares without words that we have no idea of the greatness of Rome as its light has been lost in the dark gap of oblivion, and the present is only a tiny hedonist worm – compared to the power of the ancestors. However, the scale system of any North American city is much more irrealistic than the sizes of the ancient Rome. We get something different if it is not a capital with leaves but a building brick which measures 200 metres. One of them suggests the abilities of a titan able to transform nature, whilst the other suggests a golden era. However, both the greatness of ancestors and the promise of a global society appear as a mirage.
Our reality is only a gap slit in our personality, and we cannot see into its depths. We can grasp a small projecting plateau on the edge of the gap and we can look out from there just like in a dream downward and against the disorder of scales – because of our situation – we do not realize that we are actually in a field of flowers on the site of Forum Romanum or a town of Pannonia. We are not scared by depth or height, through our eyes God, the Lord of the universe sees himself.
Our right and chance exceeds our capacities. We forget about chasms, we forget Rome, we forget even Miklós Ybl, who passed only a few minutes ago, we do not trust Dezső Kosztolányi or Borges, nor anyone who is alive, and a wink and a gesture is enough for us to glare into depth again, and let us forget about sunshine and security, anything that could guarantee the peace of our existence, and we are willing to forget about Rome and everything.(…)
Who knows?
Many of us live in a time-gap. The church is being built. It is bigger than what should be on the edge where we take shelter.
A magnified, interior and forgotten Forum is being built, now in Százhalombatta. It is a soul bubble, on the interior wall of which it is raining and the wind blows.
I am sitting on the porch of a house in the destroyed Carthago.
Someone whom I know and love brings a glass of water to me. We start talking, saying silent and forgotten sentences, water spills from the eaves, the bushes in the yard bend against the rain. Via Appia vanishes through the garden. Odoaker turns away with a smile from this afternoon idyll, and remembers Rome. When is now? – asks Borges, the blind again….”