CHAPTER XVII.
1772-1825.
The romanticism started by Kisfaludy did not, however, retard the other literary movements in Hungary. The Hungarian language is in many ways too closely akin to the classic languages, if not in body, at least in prosody, to have easily forsaken the classic forms which had long been used by writers of this period, for the sake of romanticism. The Hungarian language is in that respect like Hungarian music. Although apparently nothing can be more remote from the strict moderation and stately respectability of classical music than Hungarian music, yet the strictest of the forms of classical music, viz., the fugue, has a curious internal resemblance to Magyar airs, in that the latter easily yield magnificent fugue themes, and preludes to fugues. Likewise the Hungarian language lends itself with surprising felicitousness to the expression of the highest form of classic metrical poetry: the ode.
Daniel Berzsenyi (1776-1826) was the poet who fully realized the riches of the classical veins in the mines of the Hungarian language, and who gave his country a number of perfect odes written in the metre and in the spirit of the best of antique odes. His patriotic odes, most famous of which is the one beginning “Perishing is now the once strong Magyar” (“Romlásnak indult hajdan erős Magyar” in alcaic metre); his religious odes, most perfect of which is “God-seeking” (“Fohászkodás” in alcaic metre); show the chief quality of classical poetry: perfect form wedded to hale and true subjects. He moves on the Alpine roads and in the ravines of the antique arduous metres with natural ease; for the real subjects of his poetry are akin and similar to Alpine sunsets and sunrises, majestic glaciers, and despondent abysses. He is sublime and natural; and amongst modern writers of odes in antique metres only the German Platen, when at his best, can compare with him. His poems were listened to with rapturous attention by the old warriors and politicians of the National Assembly, and read with equal enthusiasm and admiration by the youth of Hungary. From the height whereon he places himself with his lyre, there is no difference of size or age in his listeners. Nor has time abated one tittle of the glory of his best poems. Some of the best critics of his epoch (amongst them Kölcsey) did not appreciate him adequately. At present we cannot sufficiently wonder at their blindness. We must console ourselves with the thought that poets, like the sun, are, as a rule, not noticed for some time after their appearance on the horizon. In the time of Berzsenyi there died at Vienna (in 1820) a young Hungarian, probably by his own hand, in utter distress; his name was Ladislas Tóth de Ungvárnémet. His mind, living in the regions of the Greek ideals (he even wrote Greek poetry), could not endure the sordid materialism of his surroundings. He left, in Hungarian, a tragedy after the Hellenic model, “Narcisz.” Hungary has, by the premature death of Tóth, probably lost her chance of having her Shelley.