Hungarian literature

by Emil Reich

CHAPTER VI.

1520-1711.

1520-1711. The Reformation made rapid headway in Hungary. From the very beginning, Protestantism in Hungary had a political element, in that its rise was coeval with the accession of the Catholic Austrian dynasty so unwelcome to many Hungarians. Theological and political opposition thus gave a more than ordinary impetus to the study of all the questions and problems agitated during the Reformation. The most prominent result of that movement was a revival of the national feeling; and coupled with that, a regeneration of Hungarian Literature. The vast intellectual revolution of the fifteenth century, commonly called the Renascence, had, of course, left its traces in Hungary too. One of the most popular of Magyar Kings, Matthew Corvinus (1458-1490), invited a number of Italian scholars and artists to Hungary, such as Anton Bonfini, of Ascoli (1427-1503), Marzio Galeotto, of Narni, in Umbria (1427(?)-1497), Peter Ranzanus, of Palermo; Thaddeus Ugoletus, of Parma; Bartholinus Fontius; Felix of Ragusa; etc.

These scholars and artists, ably assisted by the Hungarian John Cesinge, or Janus Pannonius (1432-1472), and chiefly by the generous and refined king himself, brought some new leaven into the stagnant intellectual life of Hungary. In addition to the university founded by King Lewis the Great, at Pécs (1367), a new university was founded at Pozsony, where the Danube enters Hungary; the king’s famous library (the Corvina) became the delight of scholars; and a printing press was established at Buda (1473). The king’s victorious campaigns against the Hussites (see Jósika’s novel, “The Bohemians in Hungary”), the Turks and the Austrians, gave rise to numerous poems and songs composed by unknown poets; and his age, called the Age of the Hunyadis, the king being a Hunyadi, bade fair to be one of great intellectual brilliancy too. However Matthew’s premature death and the ensuing political troubles put an end to such prospects. It was left for the passions roused by the Reformation to kindle the fire which the torch of the Renascence had been unable to light. In all the countries where the deep influence of the Renascence preceded that of the Reformation, the intellectual capital of the country was not impaired, even when its political was. In Hungary, the Renascence left too slender traces to guard the nation from falling into lawless writing about the topics of the day, regardless of the rules and classical measure so deeply impressed by the Renascence on the more fortunate nations of Italy, Spain, France and England. Hence the immense mental and emotional stir imparted by the Reformation was not sufficient to raise up great writers in Hungary. In fact, Hungary was, on a smaller scale, in a mental condition exactly similar to that of Germany. There too the Renascence had scarcely begun to do its beneficial work, when the Reformation swept everything before it. The consequence was the same. Luther himself, although one of the geniuses of language; Fischart, a very demon of language; and Hutten, the great champion of thought and liberty, together with numerous minor lights, were, in spite of efforts without number, debarred from creating a great German national literature. It was only much later, when the Renascence had done its work in Germany too, that the Germans, following in the wake of the Greeks, Romans, French, English, Spanish and Italians, were able to create a great national literature of their own. The same remark holds good for Hungary too.

Protestantism in Hungary assumed all the aspects it had taken in Germany and Switzerland. There were Lutherans proper, and Calvinists; Anabaptists and Unitarians. The Geneva of Hungary was the town of the “cives,” Debreczen, east of the middle Theiss, in a large plain. Melius, or Peter Juhász (1536-1572) was the “pope” of the Magyar Calvinists; as Matthew Biró de Déva, 1500(?)-1545, was that of the Lutherans. Both preached in Hungarian and published a number of doctrinal and controversial writings in Hungarian; and both were followed by many a writer whose enthusiasm was the better part of his ability. The Bible, portions of which had been translated into Hungarian before the Reformation, was now published in Magyar in its entirety. This most excellent translation, executed chiefly by Caspar Károlyi, was printed at Vizsoly, in the county of Abauj.

The number of Hungarian poets writing in Hungarian during the sixteenth century is more than one hundred; most of them being Protestants. In the first years of the Reformation, their works were mostly of a religious character, such as psalms and prayers. Amongst these we may mention the religious poems of Andreas Batizi, Matthew Biró, and Gál Huszár. The constant wars with the Turks or infidels added a peculiar intensity to the religious passions of the time; and accordingly the first Hungarian drama, “The Marriage of Priests” (A papok házassága), published in Cracow (then belonging to Poland) in 1550, and written by Michael Sztárai, was in reality an exposition of Protestantism in the form of a drama. “Moralities,” and mordant satires against priests and the Catholic Church generally, were frequent. Didactic poetry, so closely allied with the moralizing spirit of early Protestantism, was ably represented by Gabriel Pesti, whose translation of Æsop’s “Fables” appeared in 1536 (in Vienna); and by Caspar Heltai, who likewise translated fables from ancient authors, 1566.

From the second half of the sixteenth century we possess a great number of rhymed stories, taken from the Bible, from foreign novels or from Hungarian history. One of the most famous of the authors of such stories was Sebastian Tinódy, whose “Chronicle,” or poetical narrative of contemporary events appeared in Kolozsvár, in Transylvania, in 1554. As a poetical work it is scarcely of any value, with the exception of the music accompanying it. As a faithful picture of the Hungary of that time it will continue to be valuable to the patriot and historian. The language is heavy; the form is unshapely. In some respects superior to Tinódy were Stephen Temesváry and Matthew Nagy de Bánka; the latter being the bard of the great John Hunyadi. One, Albert Gergei, of whose personal circumstances nothing is known, composed, chiefly from Italian sources, the story of a young prince fighting innumerable foes and surmounting difficulties of all sorts in search of the fairy whom he, in the end, does not fail to win. This story (“Argirius Királyfi”) has ever since the sixteenth century been the most popular chap-book amongst the lower classes in Hungary. Its naïveté and good epic tone render it agreeable even to a more cultured taste. Another poet of the second half of the sixteenth century, Peter İlosvai, composed, probably from the floating folk-poetry of his age, a poetical narrative of the life of Nicolas Toldy, one of the most popular heroes of the Magyars, who lived in the fourteenth century, under King Lewis the Great, and was of Herculean strength. His feats are sung in İlosvai’s poem (published at Debreczen in 1574) in an effective, if rough, manner. A number of Magyar novels may also be found; but nearly all were translations from German or Latin novels of the time. The sixteenth century produced even a few Magyar works of historic and philologic character. John Erdősi, or Sylvester, wrote the first grammar of the Magyar language (1539); Gabriel Pesti gave, in 1538, a short dictionary of the Magyar language; John Decsi de Baranya published in 1588 a collection of about 5,000 Magyar proverbs; Stephen Székely de Bencéd and Caspar Heltai published “World-Chronicles,” in 1559 and 1575 respectively. Very many memoirs and journals of that time are still unpublished.

We must now mention the greatest of all the Hungarian poets of the sixteenth century, whose name we have so far left unnoticed because, by one of the strange freaks of life, the manuscripts of his lyrical poems, on which rests his great fame among Magyar poets, were first discovered only twenty-four years ago (in 1874), and some of them even after that date, and were therefore never largely known to the contemporaries of their author. This poet is Baron Valentin Balassi (1551-1594). He came from a magnate family, and so great were the gifts with which nature had endowed him, that men praised him as a model of heroism, and women worshipped him as the embodiment of chivalrous charm. In the troubles of his time, both political and social, he took more than one part; and he may be considered as at once the Knight Errant and the Parsifal of Hungary in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Highly cultivated and sensitive as he was, he could not but respond to the religious impulses of his time, and so became the author of many a religious poem. On his wanderings, which took him not only over the whole of his own country, but even as far as North Germany and probably also to England, he saw all forms and aspects of life. His lyric sentiments he embodied in the so-called “Flower Songs” (“Virág-énekek”), which are full of that verve and sweetness so characteristic of the best lyric poets of Hungary. He also introduced a new form of lyric stanza—the Balassi Stanza—which consists of nine short lines, the end-rhymes of which are the same in the third, sixth, and ninth lines, while the remaining three couples, have each their own rhymes.