Fraternity-Testvériség, 1952 (30. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1952-11-01 / 11. szám
TESTVÉRISÉG 15 ality. His most fragile poems or verbal snapshots must be identified with his genius. Except some of his early verses, in which one notices a faint echo of foreign and Hungarian poets and some obsolete words—an echo of “almanac” poetry, as it is somtimes called—Petőfi’s poems show that no unintegrated experience ever affected the manner and matter of his work. The alternation of the obvious and the unexpected in his poems, their revolutionary, patriotic, humanitarian, idyllic, buoyant or mocking tone, the concreteness of his visual and auditory images, the honesty of his feelings which was antithetical to mellifluous sentimentalism, the freshness of his heart and mind, the impeccable character of a man whose youth was in contrast to his poetic maturity—all these qualities served values of lasting significance which no “modern trend” of creative or critical writing could dim. During his lifetime Petőfi was the target of derision for his literary enemies; he was denounced by some politicians as corrupting the people’s respect for traditions. Byron called the early works of Keats the verses of a “rhymester”; (later he changed his opinion regarding Keats). Petőfi has been similarly treated by some critics, who were not even second-rate Byrons. However, the truly great Hungarian waiters and poets of his age recognized his superior ability and forthright soul. They may have disagreed with his egalitarian ideals adopted from the French Revolution, (these ideals were also projections of his true self), yet they sensed and later were certain that this poet, struggling against terrible odds and stressing the need of constant vigilance for the realization of human rights, would make the world take notice of their nation’s will to live. Sometimes from the amorphous mass of human material there emerges an individual whose “romantic emphasis on freedom of style” 5 entails obligations of a free spirit who first seems like a baffling heretic in the midst of stagnant forces; gradually this “free spirit”, by not allowing the world to deprive him of his freedon, proves to be the conscience of his nation and that of mankind. Petőfi was such an individual. A Hungarian writer called him “a strange mixture of an angry and cheerful soul.” 6 While compromise makes adjustability easy for spineless individuals or cynics, there are those—and Petőfi was one of them—who do not have to re5 Huntington Cairns “Introduction”. Lectures in Criticism. Bollingen Series XVI, 1949. pp. 5-6. 6 Gyula Illyés: Petőfi, Budapest, 1936. pp. 49. 7 La Grande Encyclopedic, Paris Vol. XXVI. 1903. pp. 531. 8 Watson Kirkconnell. A Little Treasury of Hungarian Verse. American Hungarian Library. Washington, D. C. 1947. pp. 39. sort to humiliating trick of deception or self- deception. Petőfi lived only twenty-six years. In a sense he did not die prematurely; he seemed to have fulfilled his destiny. There is, of course, no assurance that had he lived longer he would not have learned the penalties of cynicism or desperation. But it is reasonable to assume that he would not have ceased to fight against injustice. II. » The name of Sándor Petőfi immediately calls to mind the Hungarian Puszta (The Great Plains). There are two reasons for this. One is that the poet was born in that region of the country, and the other is that he did not sever his spiritual and poetic contact with his native surroundings, even when away from there. One who never set foot on Hungarian soil can feel its reality in Petőfi’s poetry. In a French Encyclopaedia we read: “C’est dans la Puszta aux vastes horizons qu’il voit l’image de la liberté, divinité de son ame.”7 While Petőfi expressed with identical power his manifold experiences, and all his expressions sprang from his belief that there is no human dignity without personal freedom, social duty, national loyalty and universal outlook, his turn of mind and emotional directives—in spite of the wide scope of his poetry-— compelled him to return in spirit from time to time and in fact to his childhood home. In his poem, “Az Alföld” (The Lowland), he sings thus:8 What, O ye wild Carpathians, to me Are your romantic eyries, bold with pine? Ye win my admiration, not my love; Your lofty valleys lure no dreams of mine. Down where the prairies billow like the sea, Here is my world, my home, my heart’s true fane. My eagle spirit soars, from chains released, When I behold the unhorizoned plain. This is not provincialism; this is not regionalism ; this is a poet’s peculiar ability to delve in a world of his own which is at once real and unreal. In the outpouring of his soul and affection for his native soil, Petőfi responded with equal fervor to its barren indifference or to its benevolent warmth; he seemed like one standing upright while the sun was beating down mercilessly from a cloudless sky, and—despite its intense heat—he knew that the sun is also a blessing to the earth. Regardless of whether he sang in a plaintive “private” voice, or seemed the expression of the vox populi, regardless of whether he emphasized with pensive or sanguine temperament his lonely lot, much of his poetry sounds like a call that reaches out from his native heath. There is no muddled thinking in these poems, no rhetorical or rattling language. In their brevity and length they reveal the poet’s sure grasp of
