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.
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.