Outside Hungary, the name of John Arany is seldom heard; and western
readers will be astonished to hear that Arany is considered by many
of the best known Magyar critics the greatest of the Hungarian poets.
Petőfi has never quite pleased the professors of æsthetics and poetry
in the various universities and “_academies_” of Hungary; and there
being no Magyar Saint Beuves or August Schlegels, to guide, with tact
sustained by learning, and learning eased by tact, the tastes and
literary opinions of the professorial minds in Hungary, it is not rare
to hear and read of Arany as the greatest poetic genius of the Magyars.
We hasten to add, that we readily bow to the greatness and charm, and
still more to the merits of Arany. He is a great poet indeed. Nearly
every one of his numerous ballads, epics and smaller poems is replete
with the glamour of true poetry. In point of language he is, no doubt,
the most idiomatic and richest of all Hungarian writers. Yet, with all
these gifts and excellencies, he is not equal to Petőfi. Reaching, as he
did, an age nearly three times as protracted as that of Petőfi, he could
yet not, through any stretch of time or effort, attain to powers which
have been bestowed upon very few poets. Petőfi ranks with the world’s
greatest poets; Arany ranks only with the great poets of Hungary. To the
strictly Magyar Jingo, as well as to the Magyar professor, Arany may
appear greater even than Petőfi; we hope to show that his genius is of a
nature at once different from and smaller than that of the incomparable
Alexander.
The reader will, we trust, permit us to premise a short remark which,
especially for English readers, seems indispensable for a right
appreciation of Arany. In England there has long ceased to be a peasantry
proper; at any rate, there has for now over 400 years been no such
peasantry in England, as may still be seen on the continent generally,
and in Hungary in particular. The type “peasant” is at once the
arch-type of narrow-mindedness, sordidness, _naïveté_, and spontaneous
poetry. He is conservative in the extreme and slow, yet frequently the
source of great upheavals and revolutions. His speech is concrete and
“_terre-à-terre_,” yet at the same time full of quaint metaphors and
conceits. His thoughts are all on the line of synthesis; and analysis
is as strange to him as generalization. He loves Nature; but he is too
much at one with it, part of it, to feel poetically the gulf between
Nature and Man. Honour and respect for himself and his ancient customs
are as the life-atmosphere of his existence; and thus in the social
architecture of the continental state to him is allotted the staying
force of the pillars, beams and rafters of the building.[3] This, the
general picture of the continental peasant, has to be touched up here and
there when meant to represent the Hungarian peasant proper. For, luckily
for Hungarian poets, the Magyar peasant, while fully as conservative
and old-fashioned as his Austrian or German brother, is considerably
less sordid, more frank, and altogether more “gentlemanly.” Yet he is
a peasant, a part both of Hungary’s civic and natural complexion. Now
it is this Hungarian peasant, and his social complement, the rural
nobleman, who are the centre of Arany’s poetry. We say “complement,” for
it is at present well understood by all close students of continental
nobility, that the latter is, in essence and sociological drift, if
not in appearance, one and the same phenomenon as the peasantry. Both
classes form the conservative or static forces of continental states,
and both are necessary conditions for the existence of a _bourgeois_
proper. Without them, or without one of them, the medium or _bourgeois_
element is altogether wanting, or, as in England, of a complexion
totally at variance with the continental middle class. Now in Hungary,
and more especially still, in the Hungary of Arany’s youth and first
manhood (1840-1870), there was no numerous _bourgeois_ proper; and Arany,
singing in tones and images flowing from and meant for the two other
classes only, is for that very reason _toto coelo_ different from most
of the German and French and also from English poets. Modern western
literature, in Austria and Germany exclusively; in France almost, and in
England largely so, is _bourgeois_ poetry; poetry written by and for the
middle and central classes of the community; or at any rate expressive
of sentiments and mental states growing in the atmosphere of _bourgeois_
life. The poems of Arany, on the other hand, were growing in the fields
and farms of the peasant, and in the manors of the landed nobility; even
more in the former than in the latter. Theirs is a spirit charming in
its rural breeziness and compact humour; fascinating in its _naïveté_
and coyness; but somewhat out of tune with the modern or _bourgeois_
sentiment. The more the middle or _bourgeois_ class develops in Hungary,
the less the fame of Arany will continue unimpaired. His works will be
unable to satisfy the poetic needs of a class which he did not know, and
with which he had but scant sympathy. His very _naïveté_, his greatest
poetic charm, will be found wanting. _Naïveté_, like all other tempers
of the heart or mind, has its geography, its _locus_. It does not grow
anywhere or everywhere. It requires a peculiar borderland situated where
two social classes meet. In that borderland it grows willingly. Such
lands are of course to be found only where classes do meet socially. In
England, for instance, classes carefully avoid meeting intimately in a
social manner; although they do so frequently in a manner political,
commercial and religious. Hence, _naïveté_ is scarcely to be found,
either in English life or in English poetry. By a parity of reasoning,
American poetry, based on a life with practically no classes whatever,
can boast still fewer of the blossoms of naïve types or naïve style.
Arany’s world, it is true, is one where the two classes, the nobleman
and the peasant, do meet intimately, and thus the flowers of _naïveté_
are plentiful. It is a _naïveté_ shy of display and timid; a _naïveté_
in deeds more than in words; and finally, a _naïveté_ of men rather
than of women. It has, when enjoyed in Arany’s own exquisite Magyar, a
flavour so pure and hearty, so thoroughly true and poetic as to endear
everything it touches. Yet it is the _naïveté_ of the peasant, not of the
_bourgeois_. It is poor in types, and restricted in emotions. It does
not respond to the psychical atmosphere of the ever growing _bourgeois_
class in Hungary, and accordingly the numerous readers of that class look
for their reading somewhere else. The peasant and the rural nobleman
are both captivating types for poets; they do not, however, represent
more than a minor aspect of that broad humanity which has so far found
its noblest expression in tales, dramas and poems grafted on events or
sentiments of individuals outside the clans and septs of peasants and
noblemen. The Germans, who have the excellent term of “_bürgerliches
Drama_” (_bourgeois_ drama), have felt that profound change coming over
western literature very keenly; and the greatness of their literature is
owing to that circumstance in no small degree. As in Hungary, nearly all
great writers were, first magnates, and then noblemen (even Petőfi was a
nobleman, although he set no value on that fact), so in Germany all the
great writers have been without an exception, “_Bürger_” (_bourgeois_)
proper. Now it is the peculiar greatness of Petőfi that many of his
poems appeal to the sentiments and mental attitudes of that specifically
modern public, the _bourgeois_ readers, with a force and sympathy as
strong as is the charm of many others to the “common people” or peasants
of Hungary. It is said of Pico de Mirandola that while he excited the
awe and admiration of the most learned and thoughtful men at the end of
the fifteenth century Rome and Florence, the maidens and young men of
the beautiful city on the Arno were singing with delight his exquisite
love-songs. Such is Petőfi; such is not Arany. He cannot properly be
enjoyed except in his own Magyar, and by readers intimately acquainted
with the two classes he belongs to. Not even when he selects, as he
sometimes does, foreign subjects, as in his “_The Bards of Wales_,” does
he become less “clannish.” Of the strongest of all feelings of young
humanity, of Love, he has none but epic expression; he never wrote a
love-song proper. The women in his epics are mere phantasms, angels or
fiends; and his men are peasants or heroes, or both. The point on which
he excels every other Hungarian poet, and on which will repose his
lasting fame, is his language. It has the raciness of the peasant’s
talk with the moderation of refined style. In other countries writers
introduced new elements of poetic speech by means of using words or
phrases taken or imitated from one of the dialects of their province or
county. Even in Shakespeare there are traces of the then Warwickshire
dialect, and probably still more of Warwickshire folk-lore. German
writers have legitimated innumerable provincialisms. Hungarian, on the
other hand, has no dialects, or none to speak of. The writer who wants
to find new linguistic affluents can turn only to the stock used by the
peasants in the vast plain of Hungary. Arany, replete as he was with all
the wealth of the language used by the peasants, knew how to ennoble
and purify the language of the farmers and shepherds of the _puszta_,
and to impart to it much of that Greek simplicity and beauty of which,
as a scholar, he was so competent a student. As the French language is
not rich in words but in idioms, so Hungarian is not rich in words but
in word-formations. Especially the verb admits of a variety of forms
and terminations enveloping every shade of thought or movement with the
glibness of water. It is in such linguistic feats that Arany shows his
genius; and since language in Hungary has an importance tenfold more
significant than in countries composed of less polyglot peoples, it is
quite natural that in the literary appreciation of Arany at the hands
of Magyar critics the political element has played a very considerable
part. This is, as we stated above, his great merit. Language in all
modern countries has at first been the make of the peasant classes. In
them there is that mysterious and instinctive power which has produced
the splendid series of Romance and Teutonic languages which, by literary
craft, have come to be formed into the diction of Dante, Cervantes,
Molière, Shakespeare, and Goethe. Arany, in focussing this power with the
strength of a mind at once _logopoeic_ and richly stored with knowledge,
did an inestimable service to the cause of Magyar Literature and Magyar
Nationality. In that respect he occupies in Hungarian Literature a place
undoubtedly higher than that of any other Magyar writer. In matter, he
could not fully unite the strictly Magyar with the broader European
element; in poetic language, on the other hand, he did achieve that
union; and it is in that achievement of his that we must look for his
specific genius and merit.
Unlike as was Arany’s personality to that of Petőfi: the former modest
and retiring, the latter self-assertive and dashing; their careers too
were equally different from each other. Arany’s life (1817-Oct. 22nd,
1882), was one of quiet work first as a teacher, and later on (1860),
as president of the Kisfaludy Society, and since 1864, as Secretary of
the Academy of Science. The latter part of his life was distressed by
persistent ill-health. In character Arany belonged to the select few,
who have never stooped to any baseness whatever and never lost sight
of the ideals of their youth. He was the intimate friend of Petőfi,
who at once recognized his greatness, and the tolerant patron of the
younger generation of writers. The nation mourned his death as a national
calamity.
Arany is, almost exclusively, a poet of epic songs, epics proper and
ballads. Of the former his most finished works are the Toldi Trilogy,
consisting of “_Toldi_” (the name of the hero, published in 1847);
“_Toldi szerelme_” (“The love of Toldi,” published in 1879); and “_Toldi
estéje_” (“The eve of Toldi,” published previously in 1854). These three
epics, written in rhymed six-feet stanzas of eight lines each, tell the
life-story of an historic Magyar peasant-hero of the fourteenth century,
in the times of King Lewis, justly called the “Great.” He is of herculean
strength, of violent temper, but good-hearted, simple, a loving son, and
a loyal friend and subject. His struggle against his wicked brother; his
love for Piroska, whom, in a passage at arms, he foolishly wins for
another wooer; his despair at seeing the idol of his heart the wife of
another; finally, his declining years when he finds himself out of accord
with the changed times, and retires home to be put into the grave he had
dug for himself. Such is, in the main, the contents of the three epics,
into which the wizard language of Arany has infused the charms of real
poetry. It would be idle to compare Arany’s art with that of Goethe’s
“_Hermann und Dorothea_.” Goethe’s hero too is rather a peasant farmer
than a _bourgeois_. Yet all the other figures of Goethe’s masterpiece are
endowed with life so intensely _bourgeois_, as to secure admiration for
the work in all times to come. Arany’s hero; his dear old mother; his
brother; his love, etc., scarcely leave the boundaries of peasant-world;
and while his epic will thus for ever charm the youth of Hungary, it may
in future cease to be an object of lasting admiration on the part of the
more mature classes of the nation.
The same great qualities of linguistic _verve_ and intense poetic
sentiment are to be found in the other epical poems of Arany. In the
“Death of Buda” (_Buda halála_, 1864), he sings the legendary story
of Attila’s murder of his own brother Buda (Bleda). In this exquisite
epic Attila (or Etele, as Arany calls him), is pictured as a hero of
the magnificent type, and nothing could be more removed from the poet’s
“Etele,” than the conventional or historic Attila. Tragical energy and
incomparable language render this poem one of intense charm. It was
intended for one of three great epics narrating the cycle of Hun legends;
of the other two we have only fragments. The romantic story of Wesselényi
and Mary Szécsi (see page 58), was made into a charming epic by Arany,
under the title “The capture of Murány” (“_Murány ostroma_,” 1849). In
“The Gypsies of Nagy Ida” (“_A nagyidai czigányok_,” 1852), Arany gave
vent, in form of a satirical burlesque, to his profound sorrow over his
country’s decadence, after the suppression of the liberal movement in
1848-1849. His ballads are generally considered to represent the best
specimens of Magyar ballad-writing. It must certainly be conceded that
few ballad-writers, whether in or outside Hungary, have so completely
hit the true ballad-tone, or internal ring of thought and word adapted
to subjects so utterly out of keeping with our modern sentiment. It
may be doubted whether Chopin himself in his ballad in F major has so
felicitously intuned the lay of olden romance as has Arany in his mostly
sombre ballads, such as “Duel at midnight” (“_Éjféli párbaj_”), “Knight
Pázmán” (“_Pázmán lovag_”), “Marfeast” (“_Ünneprontók_”). As in the best
English or German ballads, events are, as a rule, only indicated, not
described, and hurry on to their fatal termination with terrible speed.
All is action and fierce movement.
In addition to his activity as a creative poet, Arany also did much
for the introduction of foreign and classical literature into Hungary
by way of translations. His most successful work in that line were the
translations of several dramas of Shakespeare (_Hamlet_, _Midsummer
Night’s Dream_, _King John_), and more especially still his most
exquisite (—_pace_ all the German philologists!—) translation of the
comedies of Aristophanes.
We ought now to devote a considerable space to a poet who, in his time,
was generally associated with Petőfi and Arany. We mean Michael Tompa
(1817-1868). While it is now impossible to rank Tompa with either Petőfi
or Arany, he yet occupies a very conspicuous place in Magyar literature.
His intense love of nature, his profound religious sentiment, and his
fine humour entitle him to be considered as foremost amongst the lesser
lyrical glories of Hungary. We can only regret that we cannot give here
more than this bare indication of the peculiar individuality of the
author of the “Flower-fables” (_Virágregék_).