Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/132

 u8 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE The Almanack did indeed prove to be the dawn-the A u rora-of a better future. Charles Kisfaludy was a lyric poet as weil as adramatic author, and his poems mark the commencement of two new genres in H ungarian literature; which were afterwards cultivated with great success by others. One was the style of the popular ballad or romance, developed to perfection by Arany and Petőfi ; the other, the dignified, classical hexameter verse, which became the genre of Vörösmarty. In one of Kisfaludy's poems, entitled Mohcs, where he sings of his country's great loss in the battle, we find hexameters of such classical perfection that Vörösmarty bimself might have written them. It is this poem which brings us to the threshold of the new age of Ii terature (I825-188I). ln the eíghteenth century there arose a new poetical school, which copied the style and metres of the Latin classics. But its productions were cold, and lacked life and the true Hungarian spirit. DANIEL BERZSENYI (1776-I836) was its only representative whose work attai ned to excel lence. Berzsenyi was a Lutheran country gentleman, who passed his wh ole life on his estate. He was of a strong physique and very spirited, yet indined to sentimentalism and so swayed by his emotions that when he first kissed his fiancée he fainted l He was Hungary's greatest exponen t of the grand the Hungarian Palatine, Archduke Joseph. When he once paid a visit to the town of Florence, with a group of attendants, al l of them Hungarian noblemen, he was received at the gates of the town by a deputation, on whose behalf Cardinal Me.z.zofanti, the world­ renowned linguist, greeted the nobiemen in Hungarian. When however, thanks had to be returned, it was fo und that not one among the Hungarian magnates was able to reply in his own native tongue.