CHAPTER XIV.
1772-1825.
The formation of different schools of literature was of great benefit to the growth and advance of Hungarian poetry and prose. Many a minor talent could and did, by clinging to and being supported by a “school,” steady his work. After the lapse of some time, however, the exclusiveness of “schools” would have done great harm to the higher development of Hungarian Literature. By 1795 more than schools and literary guilds was needed. The nation wanted powerful individualities who were, so to speak, schools themselves. Fortunately for the cause of the Hungarian intellect, such men did arise in time. The first of them was Francis Verseghy (1757-1822). An ex-Piarist, and involved in the conspiracy of Martinovics: he had gone through the experiences of a priest, a politician and a state-prisoner. His poetical works, which are very numerous, manifest a tender, yet strong mind, much ease of form, and a power of satire. He translated the Marseillaise into Hungarian. He is at his best in short poems. What raises him above most of his predecessors is his considerable independence as a poet. He clings slavishly to no school, and succeeds in combining some of the excellencies of all. In genius he was far excelled by tempestuous John Bacsányi (1763-1845), who espoused the cause of the French Revolution, did some work for Napoleon, and was in 1814 taken back to Austria, where he died an exile. He brought Ossian’s poems to Hungary; and in his fierce poems all the fire of the revolutionary fever may be felt. Yet with all that he could reduce to fine proportions and to efficiency neither his life nor his work. In the melancholy and sweet poems of the ex-priest, Gabriel Dayka (1768-1796), the Hungarian Hölty, which have to the present day lost nothing of their Wordsworth-like delicacy, we have the first instalment of those mournful largos, in which Hungarian Literature is as rich as is Hungarian music.
These three writers were as the forerunners of literary individualities of a much higher type. The first of them was Joseph Kármán (1769-1795). He too spent some time in Vienna, where then centred the political and social life of a large portion of Europe. Like so many more Hungarians, he burst into enthusiasm for his country by staying and living amongst a foreign people who, in the nobler traits of character, were decidedly inferior to the Magyars, and who yet were considered to be their rulers. The people of Austria, and especially the Viennese, are utterly different from the Hungarians. Their love of the burlesque, of the grotesquely funny, of the clownish, stood out then, as it still largely does, in sharp contrast to the dignified gravity of the Magyars. To be considered as subject to people so very much less adapted for the functions of government than themselves, was at all times galling to the Hungarians; and perhaps never more so, than in the nineties of the last century, when a mighty wave of opposition to the Habsburgs was sweeping over Hungary. Kármán’s was a most sensitive soul. He fully realized that to render Hungarian Literature more perfect and independent was first of all a great political deed. He keenly felt, that Hungary, unless emancipated intellectually, must fall a victim to the then immense ascendancy of Austria. Every good poem, every good novel, written by a Hungarian in the language of his country, was then of more service to Hungary than all the proceedings at the national assemblies. Kármán, despite his extreme youth, at once set to work. He proclaimed that Pesth ought to be the literary centre of Hungary. He started a quarterly (“Urania”), and hastened to write his “Memoirs of Fanny” (“Fanni hagyományai”). The latter is a novel in the form of letters and leaves from a diary. Fanny, the heroine, loves with all the inconsiderate passion of a young girl, a young man, whom she is not allowed to marry. She dies of a broken heart in the arms of her lover. The plot of the novel is of the simplest. The excessive sentimentality of the heroine, who is, as it were, drowned in the floods of her own feelings, is to our present taste somewhat overdone. With all these shortcomings, however, Kármán has poured over his little story so much of the golden light of fine, unaffected style, and has enriched it with so many touches of the most effective descriptions of scenery, that “Fanny” will always rank among the foremost of the literary products of the kind, of which Goethe’s “Werther” is the most famous.
The second great poet was Michael Vitéz Csokonai (1773-1805). Born at Debreczen, a town whose famous fairs brought together annually an immense concourse of the agricultural and trading people of Hungary, Csokonai was at an early age imbued with the riches of the gallery of types for which his country has always been so remarkable. Although at all periods of his irregular and vagrant life Csokonai kept in close touch with books, Bürger amongst the Germans, Pope amongst the English, and Metastasio amongst the Italians, being his favourites; yet the real source of his surprising fertility of invention, and surety of draughtsmanship was laid in his constant contact with the people itself. His proud and independent character, the ruggedness of which was not rendered less objectionable by an independent fortune, drove him from post to post. As a roving poet he visited most of the counties, making friends everywhere, protectors and helpers nowhere; and when he finally returned to his old mother’s house, his health was irretrievably shattered by poverty, privations and occasional excesses. He is a great poet. His language is full of savour and truly Magyar. He has abundant and merciful humour, without lacking wit. Frequently he soars to philosophical heights of thought, where, like the eagle, he broods alone. In his lyrical poetry there is much of the rhapsodic frenzy, which was to make Hungary’s greatest poet, Petőfi, as unique in poetry, as Liszt is in music. Csokonai’s most famous poem is a comic epic, somewhat in the style of the Rape of the Lock, called “Dorottya,” or the Triumph of the Ladies at the Carnival (“A dámák diadalma a farsangon”), in four parts. It narrates the warfare of the ladies of a small town, under the leadership of an old maid (Dorottya), with the men of the same place. The women complain of the shortness of the carnival, of the rarity of weddings, etc., and attempt to steal the registers of births compromising to many of them. In the end, the women fall out amongst themselves, Venus steps in, rejuvenating Dorottya, and making peace by marrying the contending parties to each other. The tone of that comic epic is throughout one of genuine mirth, and the language forms a fit drapery of the fleeting scenes of this charming carnival. The types stand out with great plasticity, and in this respect at least, Csokonai’s Dorottya need fear no comparison with Pope’s masterpiece. The critics of his time did not recognize Csokonai’s greatness; and his townsmen, nearly all of them rigid Calvinists, did not think much of a poet in whose stanzas wine flowed abundantly, and love was rampant in forms at times unrestrained. When, therefore, some years after the poet’s death, admirers of his wanted to have his statue erected at Debreczen, and the words, “I too lived in Arcadia” engraved upon it, the good burghers of Debreczen violently opposed the suggestion. For, as if trying to give the departed poet exquisite material for another comic epic, they alleged, that by “Arcadia,” was meant, as they had learned, a country with good pasture, especially for donkeys; and since they solemnly protested against being considered donkeys, etc., etc. From this incident followed the so-called Arcadian lawsuit (“arkádiai pör”).