Hungarian literature

by Emil Reich

CHAPTER XXI.

The work of Kisfaludy was great. He charmed his readers, and thus awakened an interest in Hungarian Literature in circles that had hitherto been callous to the intellectual revival of their country. His vocation, however, was limited. The Hungarians, by nature grave and given to ponderous sentiments, needed, for a full awakening of their literary life, more than the perfume of flowers. The rhythmic thunder of the war-clarion; the majesty of the organ was needed. And the right man came. The man, in whose sublime poems was heard the turmoil of the old glorious wars, the symphony of love and patriotism, in tones of unprecedented beauty. That man was Michael Vörösmarty (1800-1855). His life was devoted entirely to the pursuit of literature, and in his soul there was only one grand thought: to become Hungary’s troubadour, to kindle the holy light of patriotism on the altar, and with the aid of the muses. In this he was successful beyond all his predecessors. His were some of the rarest qualities, the union of which goes to make the great poet. In beauty and truly Magyar rhythm of language he was and largely still is unsurpassed. His diction is, like his country, full of the majesty of vast mountains, and the loveliness of flower-clad meadows sloping down to melodious rivers. Without being a reckless innovator of words, his works read at the first appearance as if written in a new language. As when the student of Hellenic antiquity, after years spent with engravings of old Greek art, comes for the first time to see one of the still extant remains of that art itself: so felt the contemporaries of Vörösmarty when the glorious hexameters of his epic, “Zalán futása” first struck their ears. There was at last, not only this or that instrument of the orchestra of Hungarian language; there was heard, not only the wails of the ’cello of Kölcsey; the musical cascades of the clarinet of Charles Kisfaludy; the wafting chords of the harp of Berzsenyi; or the gossamer oboe of Csokonai: there was heard the unison and harmonious struggle of all the instruments of the great idiom. Like the composers of the immortal symphonies, Vörösmarty wielded the resources of the Magyar language, intensifying the effect of each instrument by the parallel or counter-quires of the other instruments. In his love-songs you hear not only the notes of the melody, but also, as in the songs of his Austrian contemporary, Schubert, the undercurrents of the melody in the accompaniment. The wealth of poetic figures in Vörösmarty is surprising; yet a chaste moderation tempers all undue exuberance. He is powerful, not violent; imposing, not fierce. He writes mostly Largos; but there are very few longeurs in them. The quick pulsation of the drama does not suit him; the epic and ode are his favourite forms. For, in him is much of the priest, of the seer of a nation. In the depth of his reticent heart he feels the whole life of his nation, and smarts unspeakably from its then degradation. Too proud to indulge in constant moanings, he is yet in an agony of rage and indignation at the oppression of his people. But this holy anger goes forth from him sculptured in songs, swelling with abiding life of beauty and power.

Vörösmarty’s poetic vocation was, if not aroused, yet, undoubtedly, guided into the right direction by an epic of one Alexander Székely, a Unitarian preacher, entitled “The Szekler in Transylvania” (“A Székelyek Erdélyországban”), in which a not infelicitous attempt was made to work into one national song the ancient Magyar legends and mythology. An epic is the song of a nation whose critical dangers are not yet over. It may be said, without exaggeration, that heroic Wolfe in driving the French out of Canada (1759), drove out the last chance of the Americans for anything like a great national epic. In gaining their independence a few years after Wolfe’s success, the Americans also obtained perfect security. There was no serious enemy left to jeopardize their existence. The Indians could and did annoy them much; they could not seriously call their very existence in question. Hence the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper are the only epics of the Americans. In Hungary matters stood quite differently. There the very existence of the nation was doubtful. A catastrophe might occur at any time. And in the terrible anguish of that “gigantic death” (“nagyszerü halál”), of which Vörösmarty sings in his “Szózat” (national hymn), the people of Hungary needed more than a drama or an ode can give. It needed a national poem of large dimensions in which the glories of the past were held up to the people as an incitement to the conquest of the trophies of the future; in which the powers of the Divine were shown to have a personal interest in the destinies of the nation; and in which the sacred language of thirty generations of patriots glows in all the victorious beauty of perfection. When in 1748 Klopstock published his great epic, the “Messias,” he too desired to do his country a patriotic service. His aim was, however, at once larger and smaller than that of Vörösmarty. He meant chiefly to weld for the Germans the weapon of a better language. Beyond this he meant his epic for any nation whatever, its subject-matter being of universal acceptance amongst Christian nations. Not so Vörösmarty. He meant to write a Messianic epic, in which the Messiah was the Hungarian nation itself. He wanted to raise up a particular nation, his nation, to the consciousness of its force, of its vocation. And thus, while the intellectual scope of his poem was much more limited than that of either Milton or Klopstock, the intensity of its purport far exceeded both.

The name of the epic was, “The Flight of Zalán” (“Zalán futása”). It appeared in 1825, or in the year when the national Parliament reassembled after twelve long years’ adjournment, and when the nation, at any rate, many of the best men of the nation, were in feverish expectancy of the rise of New Hungary. Its subject is taken from the history of Árpád the Conqueror, and centres in the Battle of Alpár, in which Árpád defeats his most fearful enemy, Zalán, one of the Bulgarian rulers of the territory between the Danube and the Tisza (Theiss) rivers. There are in the poem three parallel streams of epic deeds, which, like the three choruses of string, reed and brass instruments in an orchestra, join in one powerful symphony. Árpád, the great duke and father of his people, fights Zalán, and especially his herculean general Viddin. Ete, the young and romantic Magyar knight fights Csorna, the diabolic Bulgarian hero; and in the heavens “Hadúr” (“God of the war,” a name introduced by Székely), the national god of the Magyars, fights and conquers “Ármány,” the arch-fiend. The element of love is represented by Ete, who loves Hajna, the beautiful daughter of an old Hungarian hero. She is also courted by a divine charmer, whose temptations, however, she rejects, and from whom she receives an enchanted horse. A large portion of the epic is taken up with the description of single combats between the heroes. In the end, the Hungarians are (as in reality they were) victorious, and Zalán flees from his country.

There is undoubtedly much Ossianic misty glamour in Vörösmarty’s great epic; and the figures of its leading heroes do not stand out with all the desirable plasticity from among the multitude of minor heroes and mythologic divinities. Yet Ete and Hajna are suffused with all the charms of youth, love and heroism; and in Hadúr and Ármány two powerful mythological types are placed before us. Árpád himself answers very well the chief purpose of the poem, in that he is rather the incarnation of a nation strong, noble, God-fearing and conquering, than the representative of any special personality. Perhaps the least endowed figure of the poem is Zalán, in whom the poet might have represented, in contrast to Árpád, the various enemies endangering Hungary’s existence, and of whom he only made a proud and despairing prince. Yet, after allowing for these shortcomings—very natural in a work written in eleven months—“Zalán futása” is a truly great epic. The splendour of its language, in regard to which it is fully the equal of “Paradise Lost,” fell upon its first readers with the spell of the Fata Morgana of the Hungarian pusztas or prairies, on the lonely traveller. There was one general feeling: “such language had not yet risen from any Hungarian lyre!” (“igy még nem zenge magyar lant!”). A nation whose past could inspire such epic music, was a nation of imposing resourcefulness. Only great nations, after conquering great dangers, can produce great epics. A great epic is not alone a literary event; as such it would redound mostly to the glory of the author. It is a national event, and redounds chiefly to the glory of the nation. It is the symptom and warrant of national greatness; of that noble enthusiasm—without which, numerous factories and railways can be built indeed, but no fabric of a national commonwealth holding its own amidst roaring seas of danger and adversity. Vörösmarty’s epic poured into the Hungarians that Belief and Confidence, that Eternality of Hope, which alone steels nations against fate. Széchenyi had connected Buda, the capital of the past, with Pesth, the capital of modern Hungary, by means of a gigantic suspension bridge. Vörösmarty now connected Hungary’s past with her future by the rainbow of his immortal epic.

In addition to “The Flight of Zalán,” Vörösmarty enriched Hungarian Literature with several other smaller epics, such as “Széplak,” “Cserhalom,” and the exquisite “The Two Neighbouring Castles” (“Két szomszéd vár”). After 1831 he ceased writing epics. He had a real passion for dramatic poetry, and although in “Csongor és Tünde” alone he contrived to write a drama of superior finish, yet he continually tried his hand at that form of poetry (“Vérnász”) (“The Sanguinary Wedding”); “Marótbán” (Banus Marót); “Áldozat” (The Sacrifice), etc. His lyrical poetry, on the other hand, contains priceless gems. Adorning, as he did, even the smallest of his lyrical poems with the unrivalled splendour of his diction; he reaches in some of them, and first of all in the majestic “National Hymn” (“Szózat”, 1837), the highest level of poetic élan. In these select poems, while still singing nothing but the hopes and glories of his nation, he becomes so European in tone and chaste beauty of form, that his work will lose little of its perfection by fair translations into other European languages. In them there is felt the breath of that civilization of Greater Hellas, or Europe, which was originally that of Hellas proper. Nor does his lyric muse move in grave and solemn moods alone. In his famous “Song of Fót” (“Fóti dal”), he has left the wine-drinking community of the world a model song in praise of the noble child of Bacchus. He likewise succeeded in writing poetic apotheoses of some of the great Hungarians of his time, such as Liszt, the great musician, and in the composition of small narrative poems, which prove him to have been endowed with a keen sense of humour (“Mák Bandi”; “Laboda;” “Petike;” “Gábor deák”). His great activity as a creative poet did not prevent him from writing a considerable number of articles for literary periodicals, such as the “Tudományos Gyűjtemény,” “Kritikai Lapok” (edited by Bajza), and for the new “Aurora,” and the “Athenæum.” He was also one of the translators of the “Thousand and One Nights,” and of some of Shakespeare’s plays.