Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/80

66 gain an entrance to the fortress, together with a number of his men: That event gave Wesselényi possession of the strongest fortress and the loveliest woman in the land. With Richard III. Wesselényi might have asked

Stephen Gyöngyössi was in the service of Wesselényi, and it was in accordance with Wesselényi's suggestion that Gyöngyössi made the history of the lover-com­batants the subject of his poem. The poet, like the other writers of his day, used the somewhat conventional and mythological deus ex machina, and commenced by saying that Cupid, the son of Venus, wounded Wesselényi and Maria Széchy with his arrows. It is not only in its mythological element that Gyöngyössi's poetry reveals the influence of the Baroque taste, but also in an exaggerated use of ornamental metaphors, such as "The arrows of the sunrays wound the clouds," or "The lustre of the diamond challenging the sun."

The calm and critical eye of history does not see as much romance in the marriage of the Hungarian Mars and the Venus of Murány as the poet did. History tells us that Maria had not lived very peacefully with her relatives, and wished to make herself independent of them. Wesselényi, on the other hand, certainly had an eye to the advantages which such a marriage would bring him. It was regarded as a mariage de raison on both sides, and there is one delicate point in it which no poet or historian can quite ignore, and that is the undoubted treason of which Maria was guilty.

The personality of Gyöngyössi was very different from that of Zrinyi. Zrinyi died young, and Gyöngyössi, who was born almost in the same year, outlived him by forty