Hány gondolat bántotta a bárdköltő Petőfit? = How many thoughts kept going round the head of the Hungarian bard, Sándor Petőfi?

Vaderna, Gábor (2024) Hány gondolat bántotta a bárdköltő Petőfit? = How many thoughts kept going round the head of the Hungarian bard, Sándor Petőfi? In: Kétféle én(ek): Petőfi Sándor életei. Modus Hodiernus (14.). Móricz Zsigmond Kulturális Egyesület, Nyíregyháza, pp. 75-93. ISBN 9786155971051

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Abstract

Sándor Petőfi was the best known Hungarian bard. Bardic poetry continued to exist in various forms in Hungary in the mid-19th century. The community addressed and represented could be varied: the rural or urban socio-cultural community, the people as a genealogical-cultural community, the generation as a community of interests, the nation as a community of an invented tradition, humanity as a community striving towards the goal of freedom – all these appear in Petőfi’s poetry. This essay argues that Petőfi speaks in the name of the republican ethos (the voice of the citizen obliged to act for the polis), but that the traditions he poetically elaborates (prophets and saviours) ascribe to what he says the power of divine revelation. Moreover, although Petőfi is a republican, he does not historicise the phenomena of the world in a way that is unusual for his time. For the poet, history is still only a bunch of analogies, and even if it is moving towards some goal (be it world freedom or total annihilation of the world), the individual is not at all a participant in these processes, determined by some kind of historicism. In this respect, and this may come as a surprise, romantic Petőfi is rather an heir of the Enlightenment, and negates the notion of organic historical progress.

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