„Sötét és semmi voltak: én valék”

The expression “Sötét és semmi voltak: én valék” (“Darkness and nothing were: I was”) is the opening claim of Night’s cosmic monologue. Its force comes from the refrain’s changing tense: Night first recalls a world before creation, then asserts her presence in the present, and finally imagines herself persisting beyond the world’s end. Human life, history, and achievement are framed between those claims as finite.

The First and Last Night

Night describes an original state of darkness and nothingness, empty, silent, and uninhabited. The phrase “I was” gives this void a speaker: Night presents herself not merely as darkness in the world but as the consciousness that precedes the world’s formation. Her account then turns toward the coming of humanity and the continuation of its generations, encompassing the humble and the deceptive, the murderous and the celebrated.

The monologue’s refrain shifts from past to present: “Sötét és semmi vannak: én vagyok” (“Darkness and nothing are: I am”). The change makes Night’s primordial claim immediate rather than merely remembered. She remains a somber presence that hides from light, even as the human world has come into being around her.

Human Achievement and Its Limits

Against this immense span, human achievement is presented as vulnerable to the loss of its material foundations. Reason builds pillars for strength and marks them with innumerable signs; Night asks what will become of the stones, signs, and pillars if the earth is gone and the sea disappears. The question does not deny that people build or strive. It measures those works against a future in which the ground that supports them no longer exists.

The argument widens from structures to the world itself. The beautiful world fades and burns away; the place where its beginning occurred will also be its end. The refrain then takes its future form: “Sötét és semmi lesznek: én leszek” (“Darkness and nothing will be: I will be”). Night’s final assertion completes the movement from “I was” through “I am” to “I will be”: creation and its eventual disappearance are bounded by her presence.

Form and Significance

The expression’s meaning is carried by the parallel grammar of its three temporal forms. Its repeated pairing of darkness and nothing with Night’s first-person claim makes her persistence the measure against which human generations, constructions, and even the beautiful world seem temporary. The monologue moves from a void before life, through a world shaped by human activity, to the predicted return of darkness; its closing line answers its opening not by restoring the past, but by projecting Night into the future.