Fraternity-Testvériség, 1955 (33. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1955-09-01 / 9. szám

12

TESTVÉRISÉG

attributes) of a nation facing ruination. Nonetheless, he seldom sounds defeated, rather hurt. He could exhibit forebearance and renewed faith, but to be praised by Apollo was vital to him. A transgression of conventional social norms seemed but a mistake and not even necessarily that; a transgression of poetic responsibility, however, seemed a violation of creative integrity. He had no rigorous doctrines of poetry as an end in itself, although it is possible that he saw in it a means towards certain useful ends. The quality of his poems is such that not only by contrast with contemporary versifiers, but also by their owrn value the poems constitute an artistic contribution to Hungarian literature.

Balassa was born in 1554 in Zólyomvára, the son of a noble family, also known as Balassi. The dream and memory of the Magna Hungária, related to the Eastern traditions of the Magyars, to their long-gone past, and to the former glory of the nation, lived in the hearts of his parents and was one of the principles by which he was brought up. As a young nobleman of Protestant faith, he was tutored by Péter Bornemissza, a Lutheran preacher, whose sermons and traslation of Sophocles’ Electra give him a modest niche in Hungarian literature. In his youth Balassa translated from German into Hungarian a religious tract, entitled Beteg lelkeknek való füves kertecske (A Green Garden for Ailing Souls). A picturesque episode happened in his early life when in 1572 he accompanied his father to the city of Pozsony where at a pageant, in the presence of the members of the Habsburg family, he performed Hungarian dances to the delight of the audience. Miklós Istvánffy tells this episode in his history.

Balassa’s interest in military action was apparent in his youth; he took part in several campaigns of guerilla warfare and fought at the fortress of Eger against the Turks. In Eger he fell in love with Anna Losonczy, the daughter of István Losonczy, the defender of Temesvár. But Anna Losonczy was married to the captain of the fortress of Eger and even after the death of her husband she refused Balassa as a suitor, and married someone else. When István Báthory, the Prince of Transylvania, was elected King of Poland, he took Balassa along to his Polish realm. Balassa returned to his native land and married his cousin, Krisztina Dobó, the widow of Mihály Várday, a high court official. The poet did not prove himself a good husband; moreover, his brother-in-law accused him of incest for having married a cousin. In order to prevent further complications, Balassa became a convert to the Catholic religion, expecting support from the Church in his marital problems, but without avail. In the lawsuit between his wife’s family and himself, he was the loser. He fled to Poland;

for a time his whereabouts were unknowm. He returned to Hungary, took part in the siege of Esztergom, was wounded there and died of his wounds in 1594. In commemoration of this event, a statue of Balassa was erected in this city.

III.

The temperament of the Hungarian poet was not suited to a methodical life. Adventures inspired his poetry, but it is his poetry that sustains our interest in his adventures. Without his poems—one hundred in all—Hungarian literature would be considerably poorer. About one-fourth have religious topics; the others are soldier or love poems, called “virágénekek” (flower-songs). His martial poems “exerted influence upon seventeenth and eighteenth century Hungarian soldier songs and folksongs,” 11 and his devotional poems, sometimes attempts at metaphysical conceits, affected Albert Szenczi Molnár, the translator of the psalms of David. In Balassa’s works the external and internal world are one. For a long time only his religious poems were in circulation; they express the spirit of a repentant sinner turning to God for help and consolation. He himself translated several psalms. He also influenced Cardinal Péter Pázmány’s Canticum de Magna Hungáriáé Regina, “a baroque poem, unmistakably akin in its versification to contemporary Hungarian verses, especially to the music of Balassa’s strophes.”12 For almost three centuries Balassa’s secular poems were considered lost. They were discovered by Farkas Deák in 1874 in the archives of an aristocratic family. Critics were hesitant in deciding which of his works, the religious, martial or love poems, were the most outstanding. It has been finally agreed that “not his love poems, but his religious and martial songs are superior; in the latter, independently of any foreign influence, he is original in form and content.”13 His devotional poetry, by its nature and aim, shows a serious vein; in his love and martial songs he can be light-hearted, maintaining a high standard throughout most of them.

To provide a basis of comparison with foreign poetry, one must turn to his pastoral poems. He learned from Angerianus, the Neapolitan poet, and Marullus, the Greek poet, who wrote in Latin but lived in Constantinople. The narrative parts of his love songs are modelled on the works of foreign poets. One notices a debt to Ovid by his allusions to Cupid, Mars, Venus, Ulysses. While his devotional poems sometimes show “fear

11 György Király, ed. ŐSZI HARMAT UTÁN (Gyoma, 1921), p. 107.

12 Mihály Babits, AMOR SANCTUS (Budapest, 1933), p. 237.

13 György Király, op. cit., p. 108.