Kalla Zsuzsa: Beszélő tárgyak. A Petőfi család relikviái (Budapest, 2006)

Rita Ratzky: Sándor Petőfi, his tastes and style

Petőfi, 1845 by Miklós Barabás

humour, was clad in black from head to toe, even his shirt was of black silk.

‘Frigyes Podmaniczky [mayor of Pest-Buda] sue- cessfully combined English and Flungarian fashion. He wore a voluminous Quaker, high collars and a mushroom-shaped Cserhát hat.

‘[Political writer] József Irinyi was distinguished in elegant tails, white waistcoat and white Castor hat. Even outside in the bitterly cold winter he did not wear an overcoat, only dress clothes. He was demonstrating for civilisation. We forgave him.

‘Only [the writer] Albert Pálffy stood out in our group, with his quatre epingle and, at the time still unusual accessory, a monocle. But he was a loyal friend, and because of his talent we made allowances for his eccentricity: he was trying to be European.

‘Of my own distinguishing features I mention only that which I find immortalised in a portrait made at that time: a wide, black neck scarf was wound around my neck in such a way that no part of the shirt collar was visible. Our fathers wore them like that at the beginning of the century. Then there was my Carbonary cloak thrown

proudly over my left shoulder like a gentlemen of Verona.

‘Petőfi, on the other hand, had entirely different ideas.

‘No necktie spoiled his figure. Instead, he turned back his wide, unstarched shirt collars over his braided military coat. It suited him very well.’ (é. n. [undated], 32-33)

There were two aspects to the way Petőfi dressed between 1845 and the autumn of 1848. Prior to this period he had stopped wearing his Notary of Peleske costume, and after it he wore army uniform or a ‘Petofi-ized’ version of it. In the interim period he continued to wear the folk-style version of the Hungarian national costume - the felt coat, the boots and the circular felt hat with a turned-up brim - but also dressed like a city gentlemen, in a silk military coat and a top hat or Claque hat. He became a man about town, but one who liked to emphasise his patriotism. During the Revolution he appeared on the Austrian Army’s wanted list. The description they had of him contained many errors but the one which infuriated him the most was that which said he dressed like a fashionable German. His attire represented both the revolutionary folk-poet soon to become a popular leader, and the social, romantic poet-intellectual. This duality was not necessarily a source of conflict; Petőfi had a multifaceted, strong personality, and during his life he successfully played numerous private, public and poetic ‘roles’.

Petőfi, along with Vasvári, was one of the leaders of a group called the Youths of March. They were the intellectuals, including writers and university students, who started the Revolution in Pest. As was the case during the French revolution, the Pest of 1848 also saw certain items of clothing and accessories become political symbols, and a diary written by Gyula Bulyovszky, a member of the March Youth, provides rare information on this subject, with a particularly detailed account of Pál Vasvári’s attire (1877). The colours of the feathers worn on hats and caps carried meaning. At the outset, Vasvári and his friends wore white marabou feathers. Petőfi, along with László Madarász and Dániel Irányi, wore flamingo pink but also red, white and green feathers, while his wife, Júlia Szendrey, horrified the ladies of the mid- dleclass nobility by wearing a red, white and green cap (Kaffka Margit MS).

Petőfi wore a red, white and green ribbon, the symbol of 15th March, as well as the armband of

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