Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
dr. Ferenc Kerényi: A Dramatic Poem from Hungary to the Theaters of the World
FERENC KERÉNYI A DRAMATIC POEM FROM HUNGARY TO THE THEATRES OF THE WORLD It may sound like a paradox, but The Tragedy of Man, one of the most famous works of Hungarian literature which has been translated into twenty-nine different languages, was bom in 1859— 1860 in a small god-forsaken village (Alsósztregova/Dolná Strehová), in the backwoods of prewar, historical Hungary. The country seat of the Madách family was not the only one in Hungary where landlords, after the daily toils of farming, found refuge in a rich library and in the centuriesold documents of the family archives. The Madáches could trace their origins back to the beginning of the thirteenth century and had every right to be proud of their past: they counted generals, poets and famous free masons among their ancestors. Our poet, Imre Madách (1823-1864), started reading at a tender age; he studied books in the German, French, Latin and Greek original, as well as, of course, in Hungarian. He was but five and a half years old when he composed his first „manuscript”: a two-line poem in French, written for his father’s name-day. The future poet was only 14 when he started his university studies. The date was 1837; the year when the best sons of the Hungarian gentry took the lead in a movement towards liberalism. Theoretical books and practical experience had convinced them of the historical necessity of progress. The movement was aimed at the defeudalization of Hungary and at raising it to the Western European level of that time. Unfettered by linguistic barriers, the youth of this generation devoured everything that promised spiritual enrichment and social development: English economics, French political science, German philosophy and, naturally, literature: the great works of the flourishing Age of Romanticism. The subject of their enthusiasm was constantly changing much like Adam’s, the protagonist in The Tragedy of Man. They searched for forms of rational human activity, for means of self-expression and self-realization. Imre 9
