CHAPTER XIII.
1772-1825.
The first of these “schools” to publish serious works with the intention of reforming the literature of Hungary, were the members of the Hungarian Guard at Vienna, and chiefly George Bessenyei (1747-1811).[2] In 1772 he published a tragedy, entitled “Agis” (“Agis tragédiája”) in which he attempted to give, within the strict rules of the Franco-Aristotelean tri-unity of time, place and action, a model for his contemporaries. In point of language, Agis is not without some merits; as a dramatic work it has long been regarded as a failure. Bessenyei was more successful in his comedies (“Philosophus,” etc.), in which he even contrived to create a type, Pontyi, representing the narrow-minded, ultra-conservative country-squire of his time. His style is held to be much better still in his prose works containing philosophical essays after the rationalistic fashion of his epoch. Amongst the numerous colleagues and literary followers of Bessenyei were: Abraham Barcsai (1742-1806), Alexander Báróczi (1735-1809), who excelled chiefly in translations from the French; Ladislas Baranyi, Joseph Naláczi, Bessenyei’s own brother, Alexander, who tried his hand at Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” etc. To the Bessenyei circle (“Bessenyei György társasága”) belonged also Paul Ányos (1756-1784), in whose mournful and sentimental poems there are many traces of genuine poetry. Nor must Joseph Péczeli be forgotten (1750-1792), who through his numerous translations from French and English works (Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts”) and his “Fables” (“Mesék”) deserved highly of Hungarian Literature.
The next in time and merit was the school of the Classicists, or more properly speaking, Latinists. The first four remarkable members of that school were all unfrocked priests. Baróti David Szabó (1739-1819), and Joseph Rajnis (Reinisch) were ex-Jesuits; Nicolas Révai (1750-1807) was a Piarist, and Benedictus Virág (1752(?)-1830) an ex-Paulist. The circumstances of their mental development above indicated led them naturally to an imitation of the Latin poets; and Virág in Hungary, like Ramler in Germany, or Cowley in England, was held to be one of the numerous “Horaces,” in whom the nascent literatures of Europe were happily so rich. In ripe mellowness of formal beauty and musical ring Virág cannot, we are afraid, be said to have seriously challenged the laurels of the friend of Augustus. His Works (Poétai Munkák, 1799) are, on the other hand, inspired by a noble glow of patriotism, which might have added some lustre to the poems even of Flaccus. Virág translated Horace into Hungarian, as Baróti had done with the Aeneid. The poetical works of the other two ex-priests were of an inferior kind.
To the above two schools now was added the third; the national or genuinely Magyar school. The two former laid special stress on purity and perfection of form, both external and internal. In fact, the classicists came near sacrificing everything else to correctness of form. In this they were partly justified, partly supported by the peculiar adaptability of the Hungarian language to the most complicated of classic metres. Hexameters or alcaics are just as natural to Hungarian, as they are to Greek and Latin; and infinitely more so than to any other Indo-German language of Europe. The classicists, and especially the greatest of them, Berzsenyi—see below—were able to handle the most national and intimate subjects in the most foreign of verse-forms, and with perfect ease too. This seemed to go far in convincing many writers, that classical forms were the only ones to adopt, and classical models the only ones to follow. The prosodic wealth of the Hungarian language is, however, not exhausted by its classic metres by far. From time immemorial Hungarian poetry was wedded to Hungarian music, and the latter, with its pointed rhythms and sudden irruptions of cadences, was quite unfitted for the stately calm of antique metres. In German classical music, classical metres, such as the hexameter or the alcaic may be, and have been employed. In Hungarian music they are out of place altogether. Here, then, was the inner justification of the “Magyar” school. Its members strongly and rightly felt, that in the cult of antique prosody the classicists had overstepped the bounds; that Hungarian poetry needed forms and moulds other than those of Virgil or Horace; and that the short cross-rhymed stanza was to Hungarian Literature, what the violin and the “czimbalom” (dulcimer) were to Hungarian music. It is impossible to play Hungarian music on the organ.
Of the Magyar school was Ádám Horváth (1760-1820), who in addition to an epic called “Hunnias” (1787), in which he tried to sing the exploits of John Hunyadi after the battle of Varna (1444), published a number of simple poems in the style of the folk-poetry of the Hungarian peasants. By refining the prosody of that genre he introduced it into the literary world. The most successful of the Magyarists was Count Joseph Gvadányi (1725-1801), whose “A Village Notary’s Travel to Buda” (“Egy falusi nótárius budai utazása,” 1790), was a felicitous attempt to expose, in the form of a novel in verse, the utter decadence and denationalization of the town-people and the gentry of the middle of the last century. The “notary” has survived as a type. Gvadányi’s other novels are on the same lines, all of them being animated by a resolute patriotism. He was followed by Andreas Dugonics (1740-1818), an ex-Piarist, whose “Etelka” a novel (1788) became very popular, chiefly owing to its strongly accentuated patriotism and anti-Austrian feeling, and also to the racy, popular language he used. He also compiled a valuable collection of Hungarian proverbs and apophthegms (“Magyar példabeszédek és jeles mondások”). The number of writers belonging to the Magyar school in the two last decades of the eighteenth century is considerable. They all excel in patriotic verve, and much of the anonymous work done at that time for the restoration of Hungarian Literature is due to them. We cannot here give more than a list of a few names. John Kónyi, Stephán Gáti, Francis Nagy, the first Hungarian translator of the Iliad, and Joachim Szekér, who did much for the bettering of female education in Hungary. Separate mention must be made of a number of Magyarist poet-naturalists whose centre was the city of Debreczen, and amongst whom were John Földi (1755-1801), who wrote some remarkable works on Hungarian prosody in its relation to music; and Michael Fazekas, whose “Ludas Matyi,” a chap-book written in the interests of the peasants, has long been one of the most popular comic stories. Nor were the usual excrescences of the juvenile epoch of a new language wanting. A limited class of now obscure writers (Gregory Édes, John Varjas, etc.), abused the great flexibility of the Hungarian language in verse-forms and metres of the most absurd kind. They were the caricaturists of the rapidly growing Magyar idiom.