It would be impossible, to write even the shortest sketch of Hungarian
Literature without dwelling on one of the less conspicuous, yet chief
sources of suggestion and inspiration of Hungarian poets. We mean the
_folk-poetry_ of the Hungarian people. Now that we can study that poetry
in numerous and comprehensive collections, published by John Erdélyi
(1848), Paul Gyulai and Ladislas Arany, John Kriza (1863), Lewis Kálmány,
Coloman Thaly (in English, the collection of L. Kropf and W. Jones,
“Magyar Folk-tales,” 1884), etc., etc., we cannot but acknowledge the
profound effect that these countless poems, ballads, songs, fables,
epics, and ditties must have had on the minds of Hungarian poets who
spent their youth in the midst of people singing, reciting or improvising
them. In intensity of colour, in fire and varied picturesqueness,
Hungarian folk-poetry is certainly not inferior to that of the people
of Italy. In humour and exuberant audacity it is probably its equal.
But while Italian folk-poetry frequently stoops to the indecent and
obscene, it may be said without fear of contradiction, that such stains
are unknown to the folk-poetry of the Magyars. In it lives the whole life
of that nation, its sorrows and humiliations, as well as its moments of
triumph and victory. The complete ethnography, historic and present,
of the Magyars could be gleaned from that poetry. Nay, so intense is
the poetic feeling of those lowly and obscure peasant-poets, that every
object of the rich nature of Hungary has been framed and illumined
by them. The _puszta_, and the two mighty rivers of the country; the
snow-clad Carpathians, and the immense lake of the Balaton; the abundant
flora and fauna of their land—all is there, instinct with poetic life
of its own, and embracing, sympathizing or mourning the life of the
shepherd, the outlaw (_betyár_), the lover, the priest, the trader, the
Jew, the constable, the squire, the maiden, the widow, the child. There
is in that folk-poetry a tinkling, ringing and pealing of all the bells
and organs of life. Like the music that almost invariably accompanies
it, it is teeming with intense power, and hurries on over the cascades
of acute rhythms, and the rapids of gusts of passion. As if every object
of Nature had revealed to it the last, brief secret of its being, it
describes scenes and situations in two or three words. Its wit is
harmless or cruel, just as it chooses; and in its humour the laughing
tear is not wanting. Chief of all, as the great pundits of Cairo or
Bagdad, whenever they are at sea about some of the enigmas of the idiom
of the Koran and the Makamat, send for advice to the roving Bedouins of
the Arabian deserts: so the Hungarian poets have gathered their best
knowledge of the recondite lore of the Magyar idiom, in the _pusztas_ of
the _Alföld_, between the Danube and the Theiss, where the true Magyar
peasant is living.
Hungarian folk-poetry is not a thing of the past. Almost day by day,
new and ever new “_nóták_” or songs are rising from the fields and
forests—nobody knows who composed them—and as if carried by the winds of
east and west, they quickly find their way into the heart of the whole
nation. There is thus an inexhaustible fountain of poetry and poetic
suggestiveness in the very nation of the Magyars. Great as some of the
Hungarian lyrical poets have been, it is fair to assume, that with such
an undercurrent of perennial folk-poetry to draw upon, there are, for
this reason alone, still many more great poets in store for us.