Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/76

62 he resolved to deliver his country by means of foreign aid. He began to weave the threads which, after his death, led to the conspiracy of Wesselényi and his party, the same conspiracy of which his brother Peter Zrinyi was the victim. While occupied with these plans, his life was suddenly brought to an end by an accident. During a hunt, he was found dying in the forest, his throat ripped open by the tusks of a wild boar. The people, however, were convinced that their hero had been treacherously slain by his rival, Montecuccoli, the commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, who felt as if under a cloud.

Zrinyi's chief work is a long epic poem which was pub­lished with a Latin title: Obsidio Szigetiana—The Siege of Szigetvár, popularly known as the Zrinyiász. In it, he glorifies his great-grandfather, the first Nicholas Zrinyi, Szigetvár's valiant defender. In the choice of his subject the poet was influenced partly by family tradi­tions, and partly by the similarity of his own life to that of his hero.

The poem opens with a scene in Heaven. The Hungarians, through their civil dissensions, have roused the wrath of God, who resolves to chastise them by sending the Turks upon them. In the end, Zrinyi sacrifices himself for the Hungarians, and when he sees that the fortress cannot hold out any longer, sallies forth for one last fierce conflict, slays the Sultan, and dies with all his heroic comrades.

The poem is of the purely national epic order, in the style of Virgil and Tasso. Its language, although at times rough and unpolished, is wonderfully powerful. The chief value of the poem lies in its structure and its character drawing. The men are all real and drawn