Fraternity-Testvériség, 1952 (30. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1952-12-01 / 12. szám
TESTVÉRISÉG 5 SÁNDOR PETŐFI, Hungarian poet (1823-1849) By JOSEPH REMÉNYI Professor of Comparative Literature Western Reserve University IV. Petőfi did not take all knowledge for his province, like Dante or Goethe (and would not have been able to do so because of his youth), but within the boundaries of his own creative horizon he proved to be an accomplished poet. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica we read: “The great public and posterity, too, has placed him among the immortals.”14 According to an Italian Encyclopaedia, “la poesia del Petőfi instauro un’epoca nuova nella letterature Ungherese.” 15 His poems seem like primaeval emotions shaped into ripe expressions without the necessity of a gradual transition from the instinctive to the conscious. His forte was to go to the roots of an experience. A Hungarian critic writes that “Petőfi was a national poet imbued with the ideas of his epoch.” 16 Another critic declares that “Hungarian folksongs were ennobled through his lyric poems.” 17 Petőfi himself defined conventionalities as “the crutches of limping mediocrity.” He rejected petrifying and petrified moral and emotional phrases, and resented those doctrinaire versifiers who identify shallow artifice with a poetic impulse. His universal sense was so keen that in his poems, regardless of whether the subject-matter is a sunlit stream, the sweat on the brow of a ploughman, or man’s yearning for freedom, one is aware of a cosmic sensititvity and sensibility; the detail cannot be separated from the whole. He sings about “sacrosanct world liberty”, he damns “false prophets who preach an evil creed”, he glorifies the river Tisza “tearing her way until the dam is broken”, he praises man “who should have the rights of man”, he is overwhelmed by “the wonders of the world”, he meditates about the first days of fall, he probes the conscience of his na14 Encyclopedia Britannica. London. Vol. XVII. 1948. pp. 658. 15 Enciclopedia Ilaliana. Roma. Vol. XXVII. 1930. pp. 5. 16 Irodalmi Lexikon. Ed. by Marcell Benedek. Budapest, 1927. pp. 937. 17 Jenő Pintér, A Magyar Irodalom Története. Budapest, 1938, pp. 259. tion asking “how long will you sleep, my land?”, he shouts a battle song, he writes about love and homesickness and shepherds and sheep grazing over the field and oxen, horses and donkeys and thatch- roofed houses and the great Hungarian plains. His poems are joyful, humorous or tinged with sorrow, and all this “motley life” is organized into a design, in which his personal and Hungarian accentuation of experiences are related to man’s universality. His love poems, such as “A virágnak megtiltani nem lehet” (One cannot forbid the flower), “Elváltam a lyánkától” (I’ve left the little lass), “Reszket a bokor” (Trembling bush), “Mi volt nekem a szerelem?” (What memory has love for me?), “Dicsérsz kedves” (You praise me, dear), “Rózsabokor a domboldalon” (On a hill a rosebush grows), “Ez a világ amilyen nagy” (This great, wide world), and many others spring from his heart, and are among the finest expressions of man’s lyric spirit. In Petőfi’s works form and matter are the embodiment of a unified expression of experience. He does not theorize. He had feeling, imagination, intelligence, humor, a sense of melodiousness, an experiencing nature, and a few doctrines; he had active impressions and refuted dry rationalization. The various elements of his poetry are not unified by rigid concepts about good poetry, but by the instinctive arrangement of an imaginatively conveyed experience in which the immediate and the eternal are harmonized. While generally Versek (Poems), published by the Nemzeti Kör in 1814 is considered his first published book, the fact is that his first published book was a slender volume, containing a parody of village people, a mock heroic, entitled A Helység Kalapácsa (The Hammer of the Village). It is written in dactylic meter; evidently his intention was to ridicule classical epics. The critics misunderstood Petőfi’s farcical aim, and by passing judgment on it as a “serious epic”, their criticism, which was mostly unfavorable, lacked validity. János Vitéz (Childe John) appeared in 1845. This romantic epic is a radiant product of Petőfi’s imagination, humor and prosodic ingenuity. His prolificness seems extraordinary; within the shqrt \
