„Petőfi név alatt valami régibb iró” = „Under Petőfi’s name some earlier writer…”

Csörsz, Rumen István (2024) „Petőfi név alatt valami régibb iró” = „Under Petőfi’s name some earlier writer…”. In: Kétféle én(ek): Petőfi Sándor életei. Modus Hodiernus. A nyíregyházi Móricz Zsigmond Kulturális Egyesület könyvsorozata (14). Móricz Zsigmond Kulturális Egyesület, Nyíregyháza, pp. 10-38. (In Press)

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Abstract

Sándor Petőfi’s relation to earlier Hungarian literature was ambivalent. He found radical working with the past an unnecessary thing, an owl-like behaviour. However, he was keenly interested in the epic and material memories of the past (castles, ruins, etc.). Literature only partly belonged to this. The earlier authors could not be read in official, professional editions in his period; the scientific editions were published mostly in the second part of the nineteenth century. The anthology Handbuch der ungrischen Poesie (1826–1828), edited by Ferenc Schedel (Toldy), was the first breakthrough, whose approximately one quarter presents early Hungarian writers. On the other hand, a lot of seventeenth-eighteenthcentury texts spread on popular prints or in church songbooks. Some of them could be found in the original editions as well (Miklós Zrínyi, István Gyöngyösi, József Gvadányi). Popular poems in colleges conserved a few early texts, even some based on mediaeval compositions. Petőfi knew the rest of these, and their inspiration is reflected on his poems (rhymes, metrical forms etc.), but he avoided the closer imitation. The most important example is János vitéz (János, the valiant, 1844, publ. 1845), which, for the contemporary readers, could have seemed an imitation of earlier epic poems (Story of Árgirus, József Gvadányi’s works etc.).

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