Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/249

Rh has died out in ashes; when death has torn our loved ones from our side and we begin to feel out of place in a world which either has forgotten us or mocks us in the pride of its new ideas, do we not all resemble in some respects the aged Toldi?"

But what perhaps attracts us most in this noble-minded giant is his highly sensitive conscience. Every fault finds its merciless judge in his own soul. In the first part of the epic the young Toldi unintentionally commits a crime, and then goes straight to the king at Buda, to receive either punishment or pardon. He cannot rest while there is a stain upon his character. In the second part, when Toldi breaks the rules of chivalry by fighting under another's colours and winning the hand of a lady for his friend, and when too late his own passion awakes and gives him infinite pain, it is still the pangs of an uneasy conscience from which he suffers most. Alike in his ballads and in his Toldi conscience is king and judge.

Piroska, the most charming of Arany's characters, and drawn with most love on the poet's part, is thoroughly Hungarian. A German poet, in depicting the heroine of so sad a love story, would have made her sentimental, but Arany paints her as a woman of deep feeling, strong and never sentimental.

Arany's work is characterised by its realism. The poet never lost sight of reality even in the highest soarings of his imagination. Whatever he described is so exactly depicted even in its details that we almost fancy he actually saw what he described. Here is one instance among many. Toldi listens sorrowfully to the news brought by his faithful servant. Another poet might have merely said that Toldi's eyes were full of tears, but Arany tells us that "A warm, heavy tear trembled in his