Gulyás Katalin – Horváth László – Kaposvári Gyöngyi szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 20. (2011)

Irodalomtörténet - Lisztóczky László: Szolnok megye irodalmi hagyományaiból - Pájer Antal élete és költészete

TISICUM XX. - IRODALOMTÖRTÉNET RÉZ Kálmán 1943 Lendvay Márton költő és színész díszcsizmája. In: A jászberényi Jászmúzeum évkönyve 1938-1943. (szerk.: KOMÁROMY József) Budapest. 293-302. TARICZKY Endre 1881 Pájer Antal emlékezete. In: Egri Egyházmegyei Közlöny 101-102. VÁNDORFY János 1895 Jász-apáthi város egyházának múltja és jelene. Eger. [ZALÁR József] 1858 Petőfi és az egri kispapok. In: Szépirodalmi Közlöny, 1637-1641. (-r. monogrammal) 1858 „Orgonavirágok". In: Szépirodalmi Közlöny 16531656. (-r. monogrammal) ZALÁR [József] 1862 Pájer Antal. In: Családi Kör 673-675. László Lisztóczky From the literary traditions of county Szolnok. The life and poetry of Antal Pájer Antal Pájer was born on 20 May 1814 in the village of Maklár, close to Eger, as a third child of a humble and poor middle-class family. He completed the elementary school in his birthplace, and was enrolled the at the Jesuit high school in Eger. He became the seminary student in Eger in 1835. He started to publish his poems regularly in 1836, and won nationwide fame soon. He was a prolific and popular rhymer, his works were welcomed by the prestigious journals of the reform era, and the most popular almanacs and literary year-books with very wide circulation also published them. As a chaplain and parish priest he spent long time in Füzesabony, Eger, Tiszafüred and Jászapáti. The nearly eleven years spent in Tiszafüred was the most productive and successful phase of his poetic career. He served the longest period of his life in Jászapáti, almost 20 years, and this town gave the final resting place for him. In his last years in parallel with the gradual withdrawal and silence his public, pastoral and charitable activities found more colourful and richer forms. Antal Pájer was a poet of distinction in his time, though the posterity hardly knows his name, he brought the same change into the church poetry like Petőfi into the secular poetry: he enriched the means of expression of the church poetry with popular motifs. His biographers called him 'the Petőfi of church poetry', who made fashionable the popular sound and attitude in the religious lyrical poetry at the first time, so thus brought it closer to the everyday life. He did not follow the poetic practices operating with sentimental, conventional phrases. He deliberately set himself against the temptations and fashion of the Petőfi-epigonism, he united the formal achievements of poetical popular character to the motifs of folk religiousness. The popular character of his poetry is mostly mild and temperate, he not only imitated and fondled the people, but shook hands with them - declaring his social sensitivity and sense of justice. »240«