1772-1825.
The first of these “schools” to publish serious works with the intention
of reforming the literature of Hungary, were the members of the Hungarian
Guard at Vienna, and chiefly George Bessenyei (1747-1811).[2] In 1772 he
published a tragedy, entitled “Agis” (“_Agis tragédiája_”) in which he
attempted to give, within the strict rules of the Franco-Aristotelean
tri-unity of time, place and action, a model for his contemporaries. In
point of language, _Agis_ is not without some merits; as a dramatic work
it has long been regarded as a failure. Bessenyei was more successful in
his comedies (“Philosophus,” etc.), in which he even contrived to create
a type, _Pontyi_, representing the narrow-minded, ultra-conservative
country-squire of his time. His style is held to be much better
still in his prose works containing philosophical essays after the
rationalistic fashion of his epoch. Amongst the numerous colleagues
and literary followers of Bessenyei were: Abraham Barcsai (1742-1806),
Alexander Báróczi (1735-1809), who excelled chiefly in translations
from the French; Ladislas Baranyi, Joseph Naláczi, Bessenyei’s own
brother, Alexander, who tried his hand at Milton’s “_Paradise Lost_,”
etc. To the Bessenyei circle (“_Bessenyei György társasága_”) belonged
also Paul Ányos (1756-1784), in whose mournful and sentimental poems
there are many traces of genuine poetry. Nor must Joseph Péczeli be
forgotten (1750-1792), who through his numerous translations from French
and English works (Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts”) and his “Fables”
(“_Mesék_”) deserved highly of Hungarian Literature.
The next in time and merit was the school of the Classicists, or more
properly speaking, Latinists. The first four remarkable members of that
school were all unfrocked priests. Baróti David Szabó (1739-1819), and
Joseph Rajnis (Reinisch) were ex-Jesuits; Nicolas Révai (1750-1807)
was a Piarist, and Benedictus Virág (1752(?)-1830) an ex-Paulist. The
circumstances of their mental development above indicated led them
naturally to an imitation of the Latin poets; and Virág in Hungary,
like Ramler in Germany, or Cowley in England, was held to be one of
the numerous “Horaces,” in whom the nascent literatures of Europe
were happily so rich. In ripe mellowness of formal beauty and musical
ring Virág cannot, we are afraid, be said to have seriously challenged
the laurels of the friend of Augustus. His _Works_ (_Poétai Munkák_,
1799) are, on the other hand, inspired by a noble glow of patriotism,
which might have added some lustre to the poems even of Flaccus. Virág
translated Horace into Hungarian, as Baróti had done with the _Aeneid_.
The poetical works of the other two ex-priests were of an inferior kind.
To the above two schools now was added the third; the national or
genuinely Magyar school. The two former laid special stress on purity and
perfection of form, both external and internal. In fact, the classicists
came near sacrificing everything else to correctness of form. In this
they were partly justified, partly supported by the peculiar adaptability
of the Hungarian language to the most complicated of classic metres.
Hexameters or alcaics are just as natural to Hungarian, as they are to
Greek and Latin; and infinitely more so than to any other Indo-German
language of Europe. The classicists, and especially the greatest of them,
Berzsenyi—see below—were able to handle the most national and intimate
subjects in the most foreign of verse-forms, and with perfect ease too.
This seemed to go far in convincing many writers, that classical forms
were the only ones to adopt, and classical models the only ones to
follow. The prosodic wealth of the Hungarian language is, however, not
exhausted by its classic metres by far. From time immemorial Hungarian
poetry was wedded to Hungarian music, and the latter, with its pointed
rhythms and sudden irruptions of cadences, was quite unfitted for the
stately calm of antique metres. In German classical music, classical
metres, such as the hexameter or the alcaic may be, and have been
employed. In Hungarian music they are out of place altogether. Here,
then, was the inner justification of the “Magyar” school. Its members
strongly and rightly felt, that in the cult of antique prosody the
classicists had overstepped the bounds; that Hungarian poetry needed
forms and moulds other than those of Virgil or Horace; and that the short
cross-rhymed stanza was to Hungarian Literature, what the violin and the
“_czimbalom_” (dulcimer) were to Hungarian music. It is impossible to
play Hungarian music on the organ.
Of the Magyar school was Ádám Horváth (1760-1820), who in addition
to an epic called “_Hunnias_” (1787), in which he tried to sing the
exploits of John Hunyadi after the battle of Varna (1444), published a
number of simple poems in the style of the folk-poetry of the Hungarian
peasants. By refining the prosody of that _genre_ he introduced it
into the literary world. The most successful of the Magyarists was
Count Joseph Gvadányi (1725-1801), whose “A Village Notary’s Travel to
Buda” (“_Egy falusi nótárius budai utazása_,” 1790), was a felicitous
attempt to expose, in the form of a novel in verse, the utter decadence
and denationalization of the town-people and the gentry of the middle
of the last century. The “notary” has survived as a type. Gvadányi’s
other novels are on the same lines, all of them being animated by a
resolute patriotism. He was followed by Andreas Dugonics (1740-1818),
an ex-Piarist, whose “_Etelka_” a novel (1788) became very popular,
chiefly owing to its strongly accentuated patriotism and anti-Austrian
feeling, and also to the racy, popular language he used. He also compiled
a valuable collection of Hungarian proverbs and apophthegms (“_Magyar
példabeszédek és jeles mondások_”). The number of writers belonging to
the Magyar school in the two last decades of the eighteenth century
is considerable. They all excel in patriotic verve, and much of the
anonymous work done at that time for the restoration of Hungarian
Literature is due to them. We cannot here give more than a list of a
few names. John Kónyi, Stephán Gáti, Francis Nagy, the first Hungarian
translator of the Iliad, and Joachim Szekér, who did much for the
bettering of female education in Hungary. Separate mention must be made
of a number of Magyarist poet-naturalists whose centre was the city
of Debreczen, and amongst whom were John Földi (1755-1801), who wrote
some remarkable works on Hungarian prosody in its relation to music;
and Michael Fazekas, whose “_Ludas Matyi_,” a chap-book written in the
interests of the peasants, has long been one of the most popular comic
stories. Nor were the usual excrescences of the juvenile epoch of a
new language wanting. A limited class of now obscure writers (Gregory
Édes, John Varjas, etc.), abused the great flexibility of the Hungarian
language in verse-forms and metres of the most absurd kind. They were the
caricaturists of the rapidly growing Magyar idiom.