Hungarian literature
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The period of the Enlightenment
The Hungarian Enlightenment was more receptive to French and English ideas than it was productive of original developments. The period between about 1772 and 1825, though immensely important in the development of the Hungarian spirit, produced few writers of the first rank.
With the publication in 1772 of the first literary work by György Bessenyei, a translation (from the French) of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, the new era began. All of Bessenyei’s works served a didactic purpose. His drama Ágis tragédiája (1772; “The Tragedy of Agis”) was a somewhat creaking vehicle for his liberal ideas. His best work, Tariménes utazása (1802–04; “Tarimenes’ Journey”), the first real novel in Hungarian, was a bitter attack on everything that was opposed to the Enlightenment. With destructive irony, Bessenyei, an officer of the Hungarian Guards, examined the shortcomings of contemporary society. His personal influence induced several of his fellow officers—for example, Sándor Báróczi and Ábrahám Barcsay—to try to convey the ideas of the Enlightenment in Hungarian to a Hungarian public.
Spurred on by new ideas, but basically traditionalists, József Gvadányi and András Dugonics produced amusing works that were both of some literary merit and popular. Gvadányi’s best work, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása (1790; “The Journey to Buda of a Village Notary”), is a defense of national and traditional values against encroaching foreign ideas. The novel Etelka (1788), by Dugonics, a sentimental love story in a historical setting, was the first Hungarian best-seller. Both Gvadányi and Dugonics used the language of the common people, and this was perhaps their greatest merit. Ádám Pálóczi Horváth left a collection of 450 poems, a treasure-house of authentic folk songs.
The end of the 18th century was a period of experiments with poetic language. The pioneers of the use of Greek and Latin metres in Hungarian verse (to which they are eminently suited) were followed by Benedek Virág, who imbued with poetic inspiration verse forms that for his predecessors were merely formal exercises. It fell to Dániel Berzsenyi, who published a single volume of poetry, in 1813, to show what use a great poet could make of classical metre. His ode “A Magyarokhoz” (“To the Hungarians”), his “Fohász” (“Prayer”), and his elegy “A közelitő tél” (“On the Nearing Winter”) express the transitoriness of power and of friendship.
The ideas of the Enlightenment were not universally welcomed in Hungary. Traditionalist elements looked with distrust on any imported ideas, and the government was increasingly suspicious of a spirit of intellectual freedom, which it believed had led to the French Revolution and, in Hungary, to the Jacobin conspiracy of Martinovics, crushed in 1794. Several writers went to prison for harbouring radical views. The most talented among them, János Batsányi, secured his place in the history of Hungarian literature by his poem “A Franciaországi változásokra” (1789; “On the Changes in France”), a vigorous warning to all tyrants “to cast their watchful eyes on Paris.”
Sentimentalism found its exponents in József Kármán and Gábor Dayka. Kármán’s only work of importance, Fanni hagyományai (1794; “The Memoirs of Fanny”), is a novel of sentiment written in the form of letters and diary entries. Very much on the lines of Goethe’s Werther, the work nevertheless marks an important step in the history of the Hungarian novel. Dayka, who was a poet, died too young for the full measure of his talent to be realized.
The first important lyric poet since Bálint Balassi was Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, who continued the purely Hungarian poetical tradition. His many songs to a woman named Lilla are a happy blend of playful grace and subtle thoughts. The influence of Rousseau is very noticeable in some of his longer philosophical poems. Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock served as a source of inspiration for Csokonai’s comic epic Dorottya (1804), but Csokonai’s poem is original and his context very Hungarian. The language of the poem is vigorous, even vulgar, and the plot is full of hilariously comic situations.
The place of Sándor Kisfaludy in Hungarian literature is secured by his first work, Kesergő szerelem (1801; “Bitter Love”), a lyric cycle depending on a very thin narrative thread. Writing in an elaborate verse form of 12 lines, called the Himfy verse, which he devised himself, Kisfaludy displayed great ingenuity in finding new variations on the theme of unhappy love.
Ferenc Kazinczy, a mediocre poet but an influential man of letters, was the pivot of literary life for about 40 years. For his involvement in the conspiracy of Martinovics he paid with six years’ imprisonment. He wanted a literature refined and limpid, neither baroque nor popular, and his interest was focused on style. He became the head of the neologi, or linguistic innovators, who tried to renew and enrich the Hungarian language so that it could express the most elaborate concepts. The success of the language reform was due, to a large extent, to Kazinczy’s efforts.
The 19th century
Romanticism
The literary revival initiated by Kazinczy continued after his death. The literary leadership of Hungary at the beginning of the 19th century was assumed by Károly Kisfaludy when, in 1822, he founded a literary magazine, Aurora, to which all the important writers of the period contributed. He was also the first representative of Romanticism and the first playwright to achieve popular success.
While Kisfaludy’s tragedies were applauded all over the country, Bánk bán (the bán was a high Hungarian dignitary), one of Hungary’s best tragedies, by József Katona, was published in 1821 but, for the time being, was overlooked. Set in the 13th century and written in vigorous prose, the play was a masterful combination of national and individual conflicts, and one of its characters, Tiborc, a poor peasant, has remained ever since a symbol of the oppressed.
Ferenc Kölcsey was a deputy in the Hungarian parliament and a brilliant orator; his literary criticism was of a high standard, though unduly severe. His later poems, which were grave but vigorous in thought and expression, often dealt with national problems; his impressive “Hymnusz” (1823) became the Hungarian national anthem. After Kisfaludy’s death, Mihály Vörösmarty became a central figure in literary life, producing writings of value in every genre. In particular he succeeded with a long epic poem Zalán futása (1825; “The Flight of Zalán”), written in a Romantic vein but expressing a concern for contemporary problems. This concern is evident also in many of his best lyric poems and even in his symbolic fairy play Csongor és Tünde (1831; “Csongor and Tünde”).
In Hungarian literature, poetry was far ahead of drama, and the novel seemed slow in taking root. Miklós Jósika, a disciple of Sir Walter Scott, was the first successful novelist. His first and best work, the historical novel Abafi (1836), marked a turning point for the genre. József Eötvös, who after the 1848 revolution became a political theorist, produced two of the best novels in 19th-century Hungarian literature—A falu jegyzője (1845; The Village Notary), a portrait of feudal life in his own time, and Magyarország 1514-ben (1847; “Hungary in 1514”), about György Dózsa’s peasants’ revolt. They possessed exceptional qualities of characterization, both of individuals and of periods, and were political manifestos in support of the oppressed and against the appalling injustices that led to revolutions—of which Eötvös nevertheless disapproved.
The folk song and ballad collections of János Erdélyi and János Kriza exerted an influence on the further development of Hungarian poetry. “Popular poetry is the only real poetry” was the opinion of Sándor Petőfi, one of the greatest Hungarian poets, whose best poems rank among the masterpieces of world literature. He was an innovator and made a break with conventional subjects and poetic language. His poems are striking in immediacy of perception and directness of language and cover a vast range of subjects. The fervour of his patriotic poems inspired the revolution of 1848. Petőfi’s many songs are enchanting in their simplicity, and in this genre he remained unsurpassed.
János Arany shared Petőfi’s conviction of the value of popular poetry, but his approach was different, for his subjects were often taken from history and showed deep understanding of the human mind. He had the assurance of one who knew that what he wrote was the language of the people, lifted to a degree never surpassed in Hungarian. His ballads, often romantic, had vigour, conciseness, and uncommon evocative power. His great narrative poems, the Toldi trilogy (1847–79) and Buda halála (1864; The Death of King Buda), reflected eternal human problems; Arany’s philosophy appeared through his characters and not in lengthy digressions and was accompanied by subtle humour.
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