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

1955-12-01 / 12. szám

TESTVÉttISÉG

11

THREE HUN Q ARI AN POETS

MIHÁLY CSOKONAI VITÉZ

(1773—1805)

By

JOSEPH REMÉNYI

Professor of Comparative Literature Western Reserve University

(Continuation)

It speaks for the will and perseverance of Hungarian men of letters that without material assurance and small hope of understanding, they futhered the interests of their literature. Concerned with the fate of their country, they equated literary integrity and national responsibility’. — Writers and poets, such as György Bessenyei, Dávid Baróti Szabó, Mihály Fazekas, József Gva- dányi, József Kármán, Benedek Virág, Dániel Berzsenyi, the Kisfaludy brothers, Ferenc Kazinczy and others, gave Hungarian letters a new pattern of character, setting and style.

Mihály Csokonai Vitéz is among the foremost poets of this period. There were social institutions against which he stood powerless, but, notwithstanding lack of opportunity, he had the energy to take initiative. He functioned as a mediator between the barren literary past and nineteenth century Hungary which enriched world literature with the poetry of Sándor Petőfi, the great lyrist. His comments on Hungarian prosody, stressing “the pure and exact rhyme”5 were in accordance with Hungarian traditional rules. The importance of such comments—stated in a preface to his works—lies in their perspective; that is to say, in the accentuation of unifying principles and their correlation with the national character. István Gyöngyösi, the seventeenth century poet, did some theorizing about Hungarian prosody; he was the first who distinguished between effective and ineffective Hungarian rhymes. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Dávid Baróti Szabó, József Rájnis, Miklós Révai, Ferenc Kazinczy and others tried to clarify the principles of metrical composition in Hungarian poetry, but the first systematic study in book form, written by Ferenc Verseghy, known as the translator of the Marseillaise and as an opponent of linguistic neologisms, appeared only in 1805, followed by Kristóf Simai’s similar work in 1809. While some authors were more active in uncovering the fundamental problems of the country, mox-e decisive and incisive in their criticism and more sure in diagnosing the nation’s ailments, Csokonai’s contribution to the clarification of public issues is not to be

5 János Horváth, RENDSZERES MAGYAR VERSTAN (Budapest, 1951), p. 59.

ignored. As an example, one may quote this statement of his: “Let us come closer to the peasants, to their communal life, and our idiom will be more effective than it is now.” 6 Perhaps echoing Rousseau, he hoisted the flag of democratic ideas by appreciating the good sense of the so called common people. Somewhat like our present day semanti- cists, he correlated linguistic and literary habits with the virtues and evils of society. Csokonai translated excerpts from the German version of Holbach’s Systeme de la nature, thus reflecting his interest in the French philosopher, one of the major representatives of the Age of Reason.

II.

Mihály Csokonai Vitéz was born in Debrecen in 1773, and died in 1805. His people came from the Trans-Danubian section of the country. He was attached to the home of his ancestors, and “found inspiration in the beauties of Lake Balaton which plays the same part in Hungarian poetry as the lakes of Westmoreland in England.” 7 But Debrecen was his hometown. “In the eighteenth century Debrecen was the largest town in Hungary, and from the time of the Reformation the center of Protestant theology and of national life in general.”8 Csokonai lost his father, a master barber, when he was thirteen; his mother had to provide for him and a younger brother. He decided to become “educated,” although poverty was his lot and he was seldom given a helping hand by his neighbors. At the college of Debrecen and Sárospatak he studied philosophy, and was also interested in law, natural sciences, classical literature and in languages, chiefly Italian and German, which he learned quite well. In his later years his linguistic knowledge enabled him to read Italian and German poets in the original, and translate their works. For a short time he served as a teaching fellow at the college of Debrecen, but he could not get along with some of his superiors. He went to Pozsony, then the capital of the country, where the National Assembly met, and hoped to make his living there as a journalist and writer. His periodical, Diétái Magyar Musa (The Hungarian Muse of the National Assembly) reached only eleven issues but contained some of his best poems. Seeking opportunities elsewhere, Csokonai finally obtained a meagerly remunerated instruc- torship as a substitute teacher at the secondary school in Csurgó, a small Trans-Danubian town. It is said that he refused his salary as he did not think the school could afford to pay him.

In 1800 he returned to Debrecen. In the meantime his brother had died, fire had destroyed the

6 Sándor Endrődi, ed. MAGYAR NÉPDALOK (Budapest, 1951), p. 59.

7 Frederick Reidl, A HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN LITERATURE (New York, N. Y., 1906), p. 85.

8 Ibid., p. 84.