1520-1711.
Amidst the din and excitement of the endless wars in Hungary, both civil and foreign, during the seventeenth century, the agitated mind of the common people vented itself in numerous ditties, skits and lampoons, which, after the name of one of the national parties, have been called Kurucz-poetry. It consists almost exclusively of largely unprinted little poems, mostly political, and depicts the agonies and torments of the patriots. Some of them are good and true in tone, and even powerful in the expression of hatred and satire. The one ever-memorable folk-poem of that time, however, was not written in words. The profound passions aroused by the last great revolution under the romantic Francis Rákóczy II., towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, were incarnated in inimitable fashion in the “Rákóczy march,” the most fanaticising of all war-marches. Whoever actually composed it (tradition ascribes it to a Hungarian gipsy-woman by the name of Panna Czinka), that march spells a whole period of Hungarian history, just as Milton’s Paradise Lost spells a whole period of English life. The Magyar nation was at the end of the seventeenth century far too unpractised in literary architecture to rear its pangs and longings into a dome of words. It was, however, then as now sufficiently imbued with the power of musical creation, to embody its woes in the fiery rhythms of the most heroic of martial songs.
CHAPTER IX.
1520-1711.
During the period in question very little was done for historic and scientific studies. John Cséri de Apáca (1625-1660), an enthusiastic student and patriot, published a small Hungarian “Encyclopedia” (1655), in which the elements of knowledge, both philologic, natural and mathematical are given in a simple and clear manner. Francis Páriz-Pápai published a much used dictionary of the Hungarian and Latin languages (1708). The nine books of the chronicle of John Szalárdi, who died 1666 (“Siralmas Krónika”), form the first attempt at historiography in the Hungarian language. Some of the leading men of that age left memoirs; and grammarians were also not wanting. The great philosophic wave, sweeping over Europe in the seventeenth century (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Pierre Bayle), left scarcely any traces in Hungarian Literature, except in Cséri’s Encyclopedia, where Cartesianism is not quite absent.
CHAPTER X.
1711-1772.
1711-1772. The period bounded by the years 1711-1772 is one of decline. During these years, which comprise the reigns of Emperor Charles VI., and most of that of Austria’s greatest ruler, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), there was practically very little Magyar literature; and the little was bad. Hungarians of that period wrote, as a rule, in Latin; and the subjects they selected were those of laborious erudition; philology; descriptive natural science; annalistic history; historic theology. This decline in national literature was only another phase of the decline of the Magyar idiom. For, both in Transylvania, which was now again, as formerly, united with Hungary, and in Hungary proper, the Hungarian language ceased to be used in the schools, at the county-sessions, in the law-courts, and in polite society. In all these centres of intellectual intercourse, Latin, German or French were used instead of the sonorous language of Árpád. In Catholic and Protestant schools alike instruction was given in bad Latin. At the county-sessions; in the national parliament; and in the law-courts, Latin alone was used; while the higher classes of society were talking either in German or in French. For the latter fact, there is a simple explanation at hand. When, in 1711, Hungary was at last “pacified,” it had become evident to the most patriotic of the leading families, that further armed resistance to the Habsburgs being impossible, the only chances of promotion for their children were at the court of Vienna. This involved the adoption of Viennese manners, and Viennese mediums of conversation; that is, of French and German. No sooner was that done by the aristocratic families of Hungary, than the abnormal state of the then national literature revealed all its latent barrenness. As has been seen in the preceding chapters, all the great Hungarian writers from 1600 to 1711 were recruited from the class of the magnates. When, now, after 1711, the magnates flocked to Vienna, there to undergo a thorough process of Germanization, or rather Austrianization, there was no class of writers left in Hungary to take their place. Hence the sudden dearth of great writers, and the astounding decline of Hungarian Literature. To this must be added the fact, that German literature which was naturally destined to have a considerable influence on Hungarian writers, both from geographical contiguity, and on account of the general knowledge of German in the then Hungary; that German literature, we say, was not beginning to reach its classical period before the sixties of that century, and could therefore stimulate Hungarian Literature but very little. It is much more difficult to account for the exclusive use of Latin in the schools and in parliamentary debates. Had the use of Latin in the schools been accompanied by the study of Greek and Greek literature it would probably have wrought very much less mischief.