Fraternity-Testvériség, 1952 (30. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1952-11-01 / 11. szám
1 _L TESTVÉRISÉG Aszód, but her people came from County Turóc, in northern Hungary. Petőfi had a brother, István, two years younger than himself. The family was of Lutheran faith. As a child his parents moved to Félegyháza, also in the Hungarian Lowland. Petőfi considered Félegyháza his birthplace; in fact, this is how he wrote about this town in the first stanza of his poem, entitled “Szülőföldemen” (My Birthplace) : 12 Here I was born, around this neighborhood— The Great Plain of the lowlands, fair and good— Within this little town my birthplace lies, It seems so full of Nanny’s lullabies. Still I hear her song of yesterday, “Maybug, maybug, yellow bug of May.” The poetic license applied by Petőfi to his birthplace is justified. He was wont to say that it was this town where he learned to play and sing, and where he learned to appreciate the beauty of the Magyar language. The memories of the sun-baked earth of his environment and the fertile fields of the “Alföld”, the distinctly Magyar atmosphere of this section of Hungary, determined a part of the kind of poetry he produced. The “organic unity” .of which Plato speaks as a substantial element of creative work has in the case of Petőfi its roots and setting in that region of the country. For an unimaginative person this would have been a drab background; for Petőfi it was the occasion for a vision of the Hungarian landscape that made it possible for him to give a convincing portrayal of meadows, flowers, villages, animals, birds, wayside-inns and plain folk. Poeta non fit, sed nascitur. Petőfi was the born poet who could breathe life into lifeless objects, and imagery into colorless facts. Obviously, roots, rhythm and responsibility were correlated factors in the development of his creative and human personality. According to nineteenth century Hungarian economic standards his people were quite well to do. But when Petőfi reached the age of fifteen the father’s business failed, and though he tried to make a living in other communities, he was never able to regain his former economic status. It seemed that every new undertaking was foredoomed to failure. No doubt, in storing up his mental notes, the abject poverty of his father, “the good, old taven-keeper”, influenced the growth of his social views. In frail health, acquiring an education that was fragmentary and intermittent, there was a time when he seemed a shiftless youngster in the estimation of his father and his 12 Sixty Poems by Alexander Petőfi. Translated by E. B. Pierce and E. Delmár. With an introduction by Joseph Reményi. Budapest, New York, 1948. pp. 69. 13 Rezső Szalatnai “Petőfi Pozsonyban”, Budapest, 1949. Válasz. Vol. IX, Number 3-4. pp. 198. teachers. Inherently, there was nothing shiftless about him, but external circumstances and the storm-and-stress symptoms of youth emphasized this. Partly out of despair, and partly of a wrong evaluation of his abilities, he decided to be an actor. He landed, as a super and distributor of handbills, in the Nemzeti Színház (National Theater) in Pest and later played minor parts in provincial theaters, without ever justifying his confidence in his histrionic talent. Oddly enough, this poet, whose verbal sense was definitely musical, had an aversion for music. There is a story told about Petőfi and his two good friends in the school of Pápa, Mór Jókai (who became known as Hungary’s most famous novelist) and Soma Orlay Petries, a relative of his, how they quarreled because of Petőfi’s dislike of music. After his frustrated experiences as a student and actor, Petőfi enlisted in the army in the Transdanubian city, Sopron. He hoped to be transferred to Italy which he had long dreamed of, but he was sent first to Graz, an Austrian city, and then to Karlovac, a Croatian town. He became ill, was taken to a hospital, and upon release from the army he was hardly recognized by his friends— his olive skin had an unhealthly pallor, his face was thin, his eyes feverish. But his poetic instinct which asserted itself in his teen age (as a school boy of fifteen he received first prize for a poem written in hexameters) had not forsaken him. While it is somewhat difficult to apply strict literary judgment to his first versifying attempts, the honesty of expression was apparent in his formative age. He knew that creative sincerity must be blended with human sincerity. He lived through grim times indeed. As student and strolling player he travelled afoot from Selmec to Pest, from there to Pozsony, then back to Pest, then to Debrecen and other cities. The thought of asking other people’s aid was so abhorrent to him that he preferred privation. He could not afford lodgings in Pozsony, where he had expected to get work as a copyist of the Minutes of the National Assembly, since the work was not forthcoming. “Often the park bench was his bed in the mild nights of May.”13 . Kálmán Lisznyai, a minor poet, gave him clothing; he accepted this because Lisznyai was a “fellow-singer”. His winter in Debrecen was spent in an unheated room, looking out upon the gallows. Although he was friendly by nature, he could not ingratiate himself with people whom he did not respect. The year 1842 was a turning point in Petőfi’s life. Athenaeum, a leading literary periodical, published his poem “Borozó” (Tippler). Notwithstanding this poetic recognition, for the next two
