Fraternity-Testvériség, 1963 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1963-04-01 / 4. szám

6 FRATERNITY It was only one year later that his pride revived and he could rejoice in his boy once more. Then, when Finta’s considerably older sisters were unable to recite a poem they had memorized, their brother, who had listened to them practice, rose to the occasion and volunteered to recite it in their place. The father was so pleased with his four-year-old son’s intellectual feat that he showed him off to all his neighbors and friends.3 Shortly afterwards he bought the child a penknife and taught him to carve the letters of the alphabet from wood. When the young Finta later entered school, he could read better than a fourth-grade pupil, and although making all those letters had at first appeared an insurmountable task, by the time he reached Z he had become a dexterous woodcarver, able to recognize the various types of wood, their grains and structures.4 Finta’s father was again enormously proud, but he was much opposed to his son becoming an artist. He himself had been a promising wood- carver. Invited to Budapest as a youth, he took with him his childhood sweetheart, a minister’s daughter, whose parents refused to permit their marriage. The young couple lived happily for some time in the capital. The artist’s fame began to spread and he received many commissions from the aristocracy; then, unreasonably jealous of a society woman who had commissioned some work, his common-law wife left him and returned to her parents. The heart-broken man gave up his career, destroyed his tools, and went back to his village to resume the life of an ordinary peasant. After several years in self-torment and solitude, he mar­ried a local farm girl, who became the mother of his children.5 3 Ibid. 4 Alexander Finta, Herdboy of Hungary (original edition by Harper and Brothers, reprinted by the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America, 1940), pp. 8-13. 5 Finta, op. cit.

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