Magyar Egyház, 1967 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1967-04-01 / 4-5. szám

12

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

Truthfully, the land of our fathers, and this land, too, is a foreign land for us, because our soul longs to sing the Lord’s song, the song of the Lamb in its true home, in the heavenly Jerusalem

Reformed Church in Hungary, our Spiritual Mother! On this occasion of the 400th anniversary of the acceptance of the Second Helvetic Confession we greet you with filial love. We ask God’s blessings upon your leaders, servants and upon the people of the church. We pledge with the brethren in Hungary that we will be faithful and obedient to the Lord of our Church that neither they nor we shall be separated by anything from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. We bless God for past centuries, we are thankful for the present with its opportunities, and we hail those who march toward the future with prayerful and faithful hearts.

JÁNOS ARANY

1817—1882

János Arany, one of the greatest of Hungarian poets was born 150 years ago. Born in Nagyszalonta he was nurtured on the soil and in the faith of his Reformed forefathers. Working first in the municipal service, then as teacher in the high school of Nagykőrös, he finally became the secretary of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In the following we print the excellent account on Arany written by Joseph Reményi from his “Hungarian Writers and Literature”, edited by August J. Molnár (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1964).

★

Reared in a dusty township of the Hungarian Lowland, János Arany remarked: “A genius may be born in an evironment without artistic traditions and he may die without the world’s ever knowing about him.” Notwithstanding Arany’s contribution to Hungarian culture, he is scarcely known outside of his native country, except by a few literary scholars. There are some German, French, Italian translations of his work and translations into other languages; William N. Loew, Nora de Válly, Dorothy M. Stuart, and Watson Kirkconnell translated some of his poetry into English. But there are no translations (although Watson Kirkconnell’s are admirable) in which the Hungarian poet’s genius appears in its fuRest expression. It is sad to say that he does not occupy his deserved place in world literature.

Arany was as much at home in antique cultures, in Hungarian mythology, or in the chivalric age of the Hungarian past as in nineteenth-century Hungarian atmosphere. He could give familiar and unfamiliar facts or fancy a magic air, and while he rarely adorned his writings with classical allusions, unless the theme required them, he seemed to weave Hungarian destiny into a harmonious whole with universal destiny. In reading his lyric and epic poems, his ballads, essays, and critical comments or his Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Gogol translations, it is at once apparent that he possessed disciplined imagination, erudition, and the mastery of words. Without injecting into his work a pronounced didactic purpose, as creator and critic he proved a supreme teacher of his nation.

The focal point of his art is his Hungarianism. He was not a chauvinist but truly a Magyar poet, as Vergil was a Roman poet. One cannot appraise him properly without taking into consideration Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious” applied to poetically expressed historical and

ethnic problems. This is especially true in regard to his magnificent epic works. But in his contemporary topics, too, one is aware of a poet who saw his duty in serving humanity within the framework of the Hungarian ethos. Some of his poems written after the War of Independence in 1848-49, when the allied armies of Austria and Russia overpowered Hungary, are such that only the wounded Hungarian spirit can thoroughly appreciate them. For example, a poem like “Leteszem a lantot” (I Lay the Lute Down) of which this is the last stanza:

I lay the poet’s lute down. Dull as lead It irks the hand. And who still asks for song?

Who can rejoice in flowers that are dead,

Who seeks their mouldering fragrance to prolong? If man destroy the tree, the bloom it bore In shrivelling beauty perishes anon.

Youth of my soul, returning nevermore,

Ah, whither, tell me, whither hast thou gone?

★

A beautiful example of his warm religious poetry is the following, printed from: The Magyar Muse, An Anthology of Hungarian Poetry, 1400-1932. Edited and translated by Watson Kirkconnell, Winnipeg, 1933.

TO MY SON

Thanks be to God, the night has come again To end one day, one portion of life’s pain!

A little candle lights our lonely room,

Surrounded by the ambush of the gloom.

Why are you still awake, my little son?

Behold, your bed is soft, and spent the day.

Then come, my sweet wee lad, let play be done; And kneeling, fold your little hands, and pray.

You see I am a poet, therefore poor,

Unable to bequeath you any store Except the spotless honour of our name And, with the crowd, some evanescent fame.

Hence in the garden of your heart’s pure spring I water you with faith, against that day:

Then come, my sweet wee lad, your spirit bring,

And kneeling, fold your little hands and pray.

Faith to the pious poor is wealth indeed To teach them hope and patience in their need; Until the tomb, this much of fate is sure —

That all are forc’d to hope and to endure.

Ah, would that I, as once, could still believe;

That faith might drive my hopelessness away! .... Then come, my sweet we lad, nay, do not grieve, And kneeling, fold your little hands and pray.

Soon, with the passing year, your youth will see The carking labors of maturity;

And you may serve a man who plays with art The grudging harshness of the stepdame’s part.

Then faith will be a blessed balm to heal The silent sorrow of your soul’s dismay:

Come, my sweet lad, do not disdain to kneel,

And gently fold your little hands, and pray.

Soon you will feel life’s enmity and cares:

The wounds that patient honour grimly bears,

While jealousy and sin, with foul pretence,

Make war on virtue and intelligence,

And crass stupidity is crown’d with bliss;

Then let thy faith these cruelties outweigh.

Come, sweet lad, be not dismay’d at this,

But gently fold your little hands and pray.