CHAPTER XVIII.
1772-1825.
The enlightened foreigner from France, England or Germany, reading about the allegedly great literary works written by Hungarians, Poles, Czechs or other nationalities who have so far not succeeded in playing first fiddle in the European concert, will probably indulge in a polite doubt as to the exceeding excellence of those works, not one of which has ever been spoken of in the columns of the leading papers or periodicals of London, Paris, Berlin, Rome or Vienna. In the preceding pages we have ventured to mention Pope and Shelley, and a few great German poets in the same breath with great Magyar writers. This may appear preposterous to Englishmen or Germans. Far from reviling them for that, we would rather hasten to add, that in a certain sense they are quite right. Pope’s genius is in one most essential point decidedly superior to that of Csokonai ([see page 88]). Pope’s best poems are not exclusively English in taste, subject-matter or form. They belong to that class of European literature, the best products of which may be relished with equal delight by Spaniards and Danes alike. They are European in character; and so much is this the case with the foremost of those writers, that Shakespeare, for instance, is far better known, by the youth at least of Germany, Austria and Hungary, than by that of England. In the great German writers there is little of that specifically German tone, which people other than Germans cannot very well enjoy. In Lessing there is no trace of the sentimentality and liquoriciousness of his native province; in Schiller there is not a trace of Suabian cunning or lumbersomeness; and Goethe might just as well have been born at Syracuse under Gelon, or at Athens under Pericles. Is there any trace of Puritanism, this the most specifically English feature of his time, in Shakespeare? The major part of the better writers of Hungary or Poland, on the other hand, have suffered their intense patriotism to make such inroads on the literary character of their works, that the latter frequently lose all their point to readers outside Hungary and Poland.
These reflections are suggested by a consideration of the works of Francis Kölcsey (1790-1838), a really great orator and a good poet. Born in the county of Bihar, where he spent the best part of his short life, he employed his magnificent powers of oratory chiefly in inculcating in the Hungarians of his time the lesson of patriotism. There can be no doubt that his speeches, his lofty “Paraenesis,” and some of his critical work are written in that gorgeously laborious style which has made the fame of Bossuet in France and Gibbon in England. His poems breathe a mild melancholy that gives them a sombre tint of peculiar beauty. Yet, on the whole, he never oversteps the narrow limits of Magyar life as then existent; and what appeals to men of all countries and all nations found but a feeble rhetorical echo in his writings. No young Hungarian can read his works without deep emotion. In maturer years, however, he finds that Kölcsey’s works belong to those that one gladly remembers to have read once, without desiring to read them again.
The growth of Hungarian Literature from 1772 to 1825 was, compared to that of England from 1570 to 1620; of Germany from 1760 to 1805; or of France from 1630 to 1675, a slow one. Many of the Hungarian writers of that period were endowed with gifts of no common calibre; and some of them, such as Kazinczy, Kisfaludy, Csokonai, Berzsenyi, Kölcsey, can certainly not be denied the distinction of genius. Yet with all their efforts, individual or collective, they did not quicken the step of literary progress very considerably. This was owing to the fact, that Hungary had as yet no literary centres, such as England possessed in London; France in Paris; and Germany in Berlin, Leipsic or Weimar. Nearly all the poets and other writers so far mentioned lived in small towns scattered over the country, and, from the lack of good communications, were practically isolated from one another. Kazinczy lived in the county of Zemplén; Kölcsey in the county of Bihar; Kisfaludy, Berzsenyi, Ádám Horváth in the cis-Danubian counties. There were, it is true, some literary centres in Pesth; such as the house of the able folk-poet Vitkovics. But they were few, and Pesth was, as yet, not a great capital. Literature needs local concentration of high-strung people. Country life gives the aptitude for poetic work; intense urban life alone ripens that aptitude into creative talent. Virgil at Mantua, or Cicero at Arpinum would have remained sterile provincials. The great mental agitation set in motion by the writers in Magyar above mentioned was given additional fuel by a very large number of Hungarians writing in Latin and French. The ideas of the French and German Rationalism (“Aufklaerung”) of that time were eagerly seized upon, elaborated and discussed in over five hundred works and pamphlets treating of Religion, Politics, Law and Philosophy. Hungary was thus during that period (1772-1825), instinct with great intellectual powers; and all that was wanting was to focus them. As long as the political or the life of Hungary was crippled by the autocracy of Metternich, that is, down to 1825-1830, that national focus could not be forthcoming. With the revival of the political life in and through the national Diet assembled at Pesth in 1825, the only remaining condition of a quicker and more energetic pulsation of Hungary’s literary life was fulfilled. Henceforth Hungary employed the right strategy for the able men of her literary army, and the result was a short but brilliant period of literary productions, many of which attain to the higher and some to the highest degrees of artistic perfection. And inasmuch as the creation of the national focus was the most potent cause of the unprecedented revival of Hungary’s literature, we must first treat of that glorious man who was chiefly instrumental in its realization: Count Stephen Széchenyi.