It is playful humour, laughing a broad, sound laugh. He is not as witty as Heine or Byron, but neither is he as cutting. In his famous poem ridiculing the Magyar hidalgo (“A magyar nemes”) there is nothing but broad thrusts of a well-handled sword. There is no pricking with needles, nor any guffaws of a satyr.
Literary critics in Hungary and elsewhere have, in their anxiety for classification and cataloguing, placed Petőfi amongst the so-called folk-poets, and nothing is more frequent than a comparison of Petőfi with Burns and Béranger, the chansonniers of Scotland and France respectively. However, the comparison is untenable. While humour, pathos, tenderness and descriptive powers will readily be accorded, and in great measure, to the Scotch singer, he can hardly be compared to Petőfi in that distinctively creative power, which not only touches sentiment, not only finds charming words and images for things external or internal, but also and chiefly discovers new poetic continents, so to speak, new mines of poetic gold. The very range of subjects covered by the poetry of the Hungarian poet is considerably wider than that of the Scotch bard; and in the last two years of his life Petőfi was raised, partly by his own genius and partly by the events of his time, to the position of a nation’s prophet. This very position acted on his poetic gifts with a force that Burns never experienced, and accordingly, every comparison of the two poets is radically false. The same remark applies to Béranger. The entire atmosphere of his famous chansons is so different from that of Petőfi’s songs, as to render a comparison of the two impossible. Béranger sings the glories of the great Revolution and of Napoleon’s time. He is sweet, fresh, graceful, full of élan and smartness. He creates a genre, a mode of poetry, but a limited one. Petőfi was impressed by both poets; he knew Burns and Béranger well, and studied them, together with Shelley, Byron, and Heine, pretty carefully. But he never imitated them, and for the simple reason that he could not do so. He was in the best sense of the word, original, that is, creative. He could imitate no one, and no one could imitate him. Petőfi cannot be classified; he is a class by himself. He cultivates, it is true, the manner and tone of the folk-song (“népdal”), and so to superficial critics he may appear only as the best folk-song writer of Hungary. He is infinitely more than that; in 1846, for instance, he did not write a single “népdal” (folk-song); he is Hungary’s greatest poet. In him is embodied the entire poetical genius of a nation, in whose single members we may frequently find the gift of improvisation and poetic invention. The rhapsodic vein so conspicuous in the everyday life of Hungary, and the exaggerations of which have vitiated many an effort, literary or musical, comes out in Petőfi in its full vigour and full beauty. Like all great poets, he is intensely truthful. There is no sham whatever in him, no affectation and no false note. His passion is terribly real, and his mirth, true joy. Nowhere can this absolute truthfulness be noticed with greater clearness; nowhere does it shine forth more imposingly than in one of Petőfi’s wildest, and apparently most exaggerated poems, “The Madman” (“Az őrült”). It is a monologue of a mad Titan, whose fine intellect has been unhinged by ingratitude of friends, treachery of women, and undeserved reverses. We do not hesitate to say that there is in the whole range of European literature no other single poem representing the demoniac charm of a mind at once vigorous and diseased with equal force and truth. Constantly moving on the edges of abysses than which the human mind or heart does not know any more appalling, the “madman” yet talks with a power and lucidity so overwhelming as to send through his hearers the holy shivers of religious prostration. Distorted in form, terribly true in substance; such is the character of this unique poem, in which all the serpents of scorn and pain seem to wriggle beneath the leaves of the beautiful word-foliage.
From Petőfi emanates the very soul of poetry and of all art: enthusiasm, inspiration. After having written comic epics, love-poems, and genre-pictures with a success never before witnessed, Petőfi, on the approach of the revolutionary period, wrote those inflammatory patriotic songs, the power of which was officially recognized by the Hungarian Government, who had enormous numbers of Petőfi’s patriotic poetry printed at their expense and distributed among the soldiers of the revolutionary armies. His poems were then a national event, and they may in justice be compared to a series of different “Marseillaises.”
We began our characterization of Petőfi by saying that he, perhaps alone amongst Hungarian writers, completely blended Hungarian with European elements. We may now state the reason of this his peculiar excellence. Petőfi, like all classical poets, while very great as a master of form, owes less to the beauty or ornaments of his language than to the objective beauty of his imagery, personifications and poetic scenes. For such as largely identify literature with great word-feats, Virgil will be greater than Homer (as was commonly believed in the seventeenth century); Tennyson greater than Shelley; Platen greater than Heine; and Arany ([see page 194]) greater than Petőfi. This is, however, not the judgment of such as gauge poetic greatness by the measure of objective beauty contained in a given work. The importance of form in poetry can hardly be exaggerated, and the necessity of paying the closest attention to the rules of form will be felt by no one more keenly than by the student of Hungarian Literature. Yet in attempting to find a measure of comparison between great poets, who all more or less excel in form, there can be no doubt, that he who is richer in objective beauty is also the superior poet. It is this superiority that raises Petőfi head and shoulders not only over the rest of the Hungarian poets, but also above most other poetic writers of modern Europe. The types of the puszta, which we have essayed to sketch above, the women, and events of his time; all these and many more Magyar subjects were by Petőfi so objectivated, and given an independent poetic existence of their own, that they cease to be familiar to Hungarians only. They grow on the German, French or English reader with equal sympathy, and Petőfi thus needs less commentary for the foreigner than any other Hungarian poet. His works are like the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, which appeal to Americans with the same irresistible force as to Magyars, as the present writer has had abundant opportunity of experiencing in the United States. Yet the same Magyar melodies and turbulent cadences that Liszt, and Liszt alone, succeeded in objectivating, utterly fail of effect in countries other than Hungary when played by Hungarian gypsies in unadulterated Magyar fashion. This, then, is the deepest and truest secret of Petőfi’s immense power: while embracing mostly Magyar subjects, he so objectivates them as to render them enjoyable and sympathetic to non-Magyar readers too. National poets inferior to Petőfi give their nation songs which other nations too possess, and the only difference between them is that of language. Petőfi gave Hungary and the rest of the civilized world what no nation other than the Hungarian possesses. As the Hungarian nation itself has an individuality so marked and so different from the other nations of Europe, as to entail upon it an historic and social vocation sui generis, so the poems of Petőfi, as the most felicitous exponent of Hungarian nationality, add to the types of poetry produced by other nations, a type, a species so individual and so richly personal as to endow it with a literary vocation altogether its own. If we are to reduce this peculiarly Magyar element to the precincts of a word, we should say it is the rhapsodic element. By this we mean a peculiar temper of the inspired mind pervading its joyous, humorous, meditative or despondent moods alike. As Liszt is the greatest exponent of this rhapsodic element in music, so Petőfi is in poetry. Most other rhapsodic poets or musicians, Magyar or otherwise, have badly failed, some by degenerating into rant or redundancy, others by becoming formless. Petőfi alone succeeded in raising rhapsodies to the level of true art.
It was said above that Petőfi’s works are not in need of much commentary, even for the foreigner. We may now add that the only commentary needed is a knowledge of Petőfi’s life. Petőfi’s short life as a poet was coeval with the great awakening of the Magyar nation to the full consciousness of its position and its rights. He was born in 1823, in Kis-Körös, and was the son of a well-to-do butcher, by the name of Petrovics, husband to a Slav woman, called Mary Hruz. For historians who believe in the race-theory, there is ample room for speculation, sympathetic or malevolent, in the fact that the beloved mother of Hungary’s greatest Magyar poet belonged to the “race” of the Slavs, whom all staunch Magyars are disinclined to reckon amongst human beings. “Tót nem ember, kása nem étel” (“The Slav is no human being, and porridge is no meal”), holds the Hungarian proverb. Fully convinced as we are that there is no truth whatever in the race-theory, we can only see in the fact of Petőfi being the child of a Slav mother and a Magyar (or Magyar-speaking) father a providential fact creating Hungary’s greatest poet from amongst a milieu saturated with both of the main elements of Hungarian society: Magyar and Slav. Young Petőfi spent his youth in the large plains between the Theiss and the Danube, and the impressions of that picturesque portion of Hungary have left their indelible traces on his imagination. At the age of fifteen, Petőfi was deprived of the comfort he had so far enjoyed, by the financial failure of his father. From that time onward he led a life replete with hardships of all kinds. At school he was a failure, and even in poetics, as he has told us in one of his humorous poems, he was “ploughed.” Being somewhat too fond of the inspiration of the wine-cup, or at least being credited with such fondness, he soon fell out with his hosts, his teachers and finally with his father. From the misery of his position he tried to save himself by volunteering as a private in the Austrian army. The very harsh treatment he had to endure as a soldier told on his health, and although he had still moral strength left to scribble his poems on the planks of the sentry-box in which he mounted guard during the bitter winter, he at last was dismissed from the service on account of symptoms of consumption. In the following two or three years we find him tramping over all Hungary, writing verse, and eking out a miserable livelihood by means of acting on provincial stages. The great poet long believed in his vocation as an actor, and obstinately stuck to a determination that met nowhere with any serious encouragement. Meanwhile, however, his verses had made him a well-known poet, and soon the idol of the country. In his travels to the north of Hungary he was received, more especially at Kassa and Eperjes, with honours usually accorded only to royalty. The nation felt that he was the living personification of all the political and poetical aspirations of the Magyars then struggling for manifestation. In 1846 he made, in the county of Szathmár, the acquaintance of that strange and ill-balanced girl, who was to become his wife. Juliet Szendrey was her name. She was the daughter of a steward on one of the great estates of a Hungarian nobleman, and had from early years shown symptoms of that malady which is now more widely known under the name of “new womanism,” or “féminisme.” Accordingly, she was eccentric and aimless, and when Petőfi made love to her she was at a loss how to respond to a feeling so simple and natural. Having given Petőfi some cruel samples of the waywardness of her temper, it occurred to her that she might inflict even more pain on her father by marrying the poor poet, and consequently she did so against the wish of her parent. The young couple lived in very primitive lodgings in Pest, and Madame took her fame as the wife of a great man with very grand airs. She so intensely appreciated the happiness of being wedded to a young genius and an affectionate husband, that she married, not quite a year after Petőfi’s disappearance on the battlefield of Segesvár, a man in every way infinitely inferior to Petőfi. Can anything prove the Fata Morgana character of poetry and of poets more cruelly than the ever infamous conduct of that highly cultivated woman, who, after having been idolized and, in verses, immortalized by one of the greatest of poets, showed her worthlessness by marrying a mediocrity before a single year had elapsed after the glorious death of her husband, whose infant son still required all her care? But let us return to the poet. A few months after his marriage Petőfi began his political career by announcing to the people of Pest the abolition of the censorship, and by reading to the enthusiastic crowd his famous poem, “Rise o’ Magyar” (“Talpra magyar!”), on the Ides of March, 1848. Towards the end of the same year he took service in the revolutionary army, and was attached to the Polish general, Bem, a hero wounded in untold battles for liberty, and then serving the cause of the Magyars in Transylvania. Few letters are more touching than the letters written by Petőfi in fair French to the old warrior, his “father,” as he calls him. Bem, himself a genius of character, at once felt and recognized the genius of Petőfi, and with great tact smoothed over difficulties arising from the poet’s wild insubordination. Against the advice and in spite of the entreaties of numerous friends, who wanted to save the poet for his country, Petőfi took actual part in various battles. He was last heard of in the battle of Segesvár, in Transylvania, on July 31st, 1849, where he died as he had long wished, fighting for his country. “To live for love, and die for one’s country”—he had not only sung it....
The works of Petőfi are both lyrical and epical; his novelistic attempts, “The Rope of the Hangman” (“A hóhér kötele”) are crude, so are his few essays in the drama. Amongst his epics, “Childe John” (“János vitéz”) is the best. It is a comic epic, or rather a fairy-story told with exquisite humour and exuberance of fancy. Another excellent comic epic of his is “Bolond İstók.” His lyrical poems are very numerous and cover, as has been already indicated, the whole range of human sentiment. Perhaps it is not superfluous to remark that there is in all the works of Petőfi not a word likely to jar on the ear of the most fastidious moralist. Like himself, his works all breathe the purity and health of untainted youth.
The reader will now perhaps expect a laborious statement of the shortcomings and failings of Petőfi as a poet. And many a Hungarian critic has, apart from his professional duty to fall foul of this or that feature in the literary physiognomy of poets, pointed out some grievous drawbacks in Petőfi’s works. Thus, most critics have, while lauding the splendid lyrical subjectivity of Petőfi, pointed out his alleged incapacity to write anything else than himself. His chief deficiency, it has been asserted, is his lack of objective imagination, such as was possessed by the great epic and dramatic writers of European literature. To this the answer is, it appears to us, very simple. Petőfi never wrote a work intended to be an epic proper; nor were his attempts at dramatic composition really serious. He cannot, therefore, be legitimately reproached with having failed where he did not intend to succeed. He never deliberately worked for such achievements of objective imagination as show in the creation of dramatic personalities. Yet most of his perfect poems manifest, as we have tried to show above, that very objective imagination in the rarest form of strength. Hungarian literary criticism is still, we regret to say, in a stage of development considerably lower than Hungarian literary composition. Hence such judgments on Petőfi. Can we pronounce otherwise on the literary critics of Hungary, who have so far produced no single comprehensive study on the works of a poet who is at once their greatest and most famous genius? Genius has this peculiarity that its works are easy to enjoy but hard to criticise. In reality, it takes another genius, a critical one, to appreciate it adequately. In this respect, foreign literary criticism has been relatively more just to Petőfi. In all the countries of Europe and America, Petőfi’s name has been steadily spreading, and numerous attempts at translations of his works have been made in both hemispheres. We do not think that Petőfi is untranslatable. His very objectiveness renders him more fit for free and yet faithful translations than, for instance, Arany ([see page 194]). Another reason is that Petőfi lays less stress on form and metre than other poets of an equal rank. He who fully seizes the beauty of the poetic subject-matter in Petőfi’s poems can render them more or less adequately in any language. More, however, than by translation might be achieved by Hungarian artists who by picturing the paintable features of Petőfi’s poems, would contribute most potently to a general appreciation of his genius. There are hundreds of perfect pictures to be taken from his works, provided the painter takes them from him in the way in which Petőfi took them from nature.