Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

■ Andráó Fáy Andráó, the tireleóó servant of) the common weal

FAY AMDBAS

1786-186^

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MAGYAR IRODALOMTÖRTÉNETI TÁRSASÁG

ORSZÁGOS TAKARÉKPÉNZTÁR 19 65

well! That not done you'd better toil / And leave to be born these wreaths by others". Excelling in a wide range of literary genres, Fáy certainly did not have to give up any "wreaths” that were his due. His "original tales and aphorisms" appeared in 1820, in Vienna (and were published as many as three times); in 1825 he issued his "reformer’s memoirs" which attest to his unbiased analytical faculty, his broad mind, his almost paternalistic urge to care for the public good, his sharp mind and, last but not least, his very practical patriotic spirit. There were few thinkers in this otherwise buoyant age of innovative, reformist zeal who were as eager as Fáy to have their voices heard, or take active steps, in the day-to-day affairs of everyday life. In his oeuvre Fáy embraced every conceivable "public affair from the superannuated system of guilds to the Learned Society, from prison reform to sapling nurseries, from the problem of beggars to the publishers’ obligation to submit copyright deposits to museums,” concluded the literary historian Pál Pándi. What gave weight to Fáy’s observations

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