A History of Hungarian Literature/Chapter 6
VI
COUNT NICHOLAS ZRINYI
In the year 1626, a young nobleman, at the point of death, was carried into the castle of Archbishop Pázmány, in Pozsony. The dying man was Count George Zrinyi, Commander of the Hungarian army, the King's favourite, the finest soldier of his time, and also the best hunter. It was commonly said of him that he could bring down the game with his lance while riding. He was now brought to his friend Pázmány, who had some years before reconverted him and his family to the Catholic faith. Some said it was the plague that killed him, but certain vague rumours were whispered abroad, that he had been poisoned. Wallenstein, the commander-in-chief of the Imperial army during the Thirty Years War, wished, it was said, to get rid of so formidable a rival, and had the radishes poisoned which he offered to his guest at dinner.
Count George Zrinyi was the bead of the most distinguished family among the aristocracy. His grandfather, the famous Count Nicholas Zrinyi, died a glorious, self-sacrificing death, during the defence of Szigetvár, which he had held with a handful of men against the army of Soliman, innumerable as the sand on the sea-shore. Count George Zrinyi had two little sons, Nicholas and Peter, and the dying father entrusted the children to the care of Archbishop Pázmány.
If the veil which hides the future could have been lifted for one moment, and he could have seen the fate which awaited his two sons, and his grandchildren, a series of the saddest pictures would have been presented to the closing eyes of the dying father. He would have seen one of his sons, Peter, in a vast hall, kneeling on a platform draped in black, with an awe-stricken crowd around him, while the German headsman severed the neck of the condemned hero with his heavy sword. He would have seen his other son, Nicholas, to whom the laurel wreath both of poet and hero had been awarded, lying dead on the bloodstained grass, in the depths of the forest of Kruzsedol. Another picture would have shown George Zrinyi his great granddaughter, Ilona Zrinyi, defending for years the fortress of Munkács, the last bulwark of Hungarian independence, against the Austrian army, and at last dying in exile, far from the fatherland, in a town of Asia Minor. And the last member of the family would have appeared to his dying ancestor, with his heart pierced by Turkish lances.
The sons of Count George were brought up by the Archbishop. Nicholas Zrinyi (1618-I664), the elder, soon proved to be the more talented of the two. He became the greatest epic poet of the century, and at the same time an eminent statesman, and one of the best strategists in Europe. His whole life was remarkable. At an age when other children merely play at warfare with toy swords and tin soldiers, little Zrinyi was introduced to real war by his father, who was fighting the Turks. The warlike spirit was soon awakened in the child, the more so as he lived in a border fortress where they had to be ready at any moment to repel the raids of the Turks; and where his eyes became familiar with fierce foes and deadly weapons.
Such was the childhood of the future hero and bard of battles. At the age of sixteen he went to Italy and visited the papal court. In Rome he became acquainted with the works of the poet, who, next to Virgil, made the deepest impression upon him—Tasso. The whole career of Zrinyi was one of rapid progress. At eight years of age he was one of the bannerets of Hungary, and accordingly had certain official duties to perform. At twenty-one he was the ban of Croatia. He was twenty-six when his grand epic, the Zrinyiász, was published. As a soldier he first greatly distinguished himself in r663. But when, after a long battle, and in spite of the victory of Zrinyi, the Austrian Court agreed to the shameful peace of Vasvár, the terms of which made it seem as though the Turks had won the battle, Zrinyi retired, deeply grieved and indignant, to his fortified castle at Csáktornya. He had consecrated his whole life, his talent as a military writer, as commander and as poet, to one aim, the deliverance of his fatherland from the Turkish yoke. And after all his efforts, he was forced to see Austria withhold justice from Hungary, and to realise that she probably would never do her best to deliver a Christian sister-country from the dominion of the Turk. We must not forget that from the sixteenth century Hungary was divided into three parts. The largest portion was under Turkish rule, the northern belonged to Austria, while the eastern part formed the independent dukedom of Transylvania. Zrinyi saw that he could not trust Austria, and knowing that the continued rule of the Turks meant utter ruin to Hungary, 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 from actual life. Tasso also depicts soldiers and Turks, but his writings reveal his ignorance of military life, and his Turkish heroes are mere opera-Turks. In the world of European literature Zrinyi stands high amongst those who can characterise whole races. We are struck by the truth and reality of his sketches of both Turks and Hungarians. He depicts battles, camp-life and councils of war, as one who knows them by personal experience, and who is as well acquainted with the enemy as he is with his own army. It may be that in many details Zrinyi unconsciously imitated Tasso, but for all that, he is thoroughly national and original. His work reveals the energetic, emotional yet laconic, and proud but generous Hungarian aristocrat and general, just as in the works of Tasso we detect the religious, highly refined, sensual Italian.
The martyr's death of the hero of Szigetvár was not really a decisive event, and did not mark a turning point in the history of Hungary, brilliant as it was as an episode of the Turkish wars. But the poet so groups the events as to give the incident greater importance. Zrinyi is made to appear as one who voluntarily sacrifices his life for the salvation of his country, and he is rewarded for this deed by a vision announcing that God accepts his sacrifice, and that after four generations have arisen, Hungary will be delivered from the Turk. The fourth generation was that to which the poet himself belonged, and it was as if by a prophetic inspiration that he foretold the coming deliverance of Hungary, for only his sudden death prevented him from seeing the realisation of his visions. Twenty-two years after his death, the fortress of Buda, which the nations of Europe had always regarded as the key of the Turkish dominion, and also of Jerusalem, was reconquered by the Christians.
In 1664, the year of Zrinyi's death, an epic poem appeared which became vastly more popular. The subject of the poem was the romantic marriage of Count Francis Wesselényi (afterwards Palatine of Hungary) and the beautiful Countess Maria Széchy. Its chief interest for us lies in the fact that it marks the beginning of an entirely new literary style, which quickly became popular throughout Europe.
The title, The Venus of Murány allied to Mars, is in itself enough to show the nature of the new style, which was characterised by florid metaphor and mythological allusions. It is the Baroque style, which influenced every department of life during the second half of the seventeenth century. The palaces display it as much as the pictures; the laying out of gardens, as the binding of books; literature not less than hairdressing. In all things there was something grotesque and over-ornamental, originating in the exaggeration of the Renaissance.
The change of taste introduced the Rococo period. The restful; straight lines of the Renaissance buildings suddenly became twisted, curved, or broken. There was more wealth of detail but less dignity. Everywhere were rounded corners, shell-shaped hollowed surfaces, or intersecting lines. Sculpture, too, assumed an entirely different character. The statues as it were became restless. The ample and twisted folds of their garments seemed agitated by the wind, and their very gestures became nervous or excited, although the spectator could not possibly tell why. It was as though some emotion stirred them, the source of which could not be divined. The unexplained or gratuitous vehemence of their gestures was the ruling feature of the Baroque, and above all of the Rococo statues.
The same departure from naturalness was manifested in the realm of fashion. Elaborateness was the order of the day. People were even dissatisfied with their own hair, and wigs made their appearance in order to add to the wearer’s dignity. Artificiality invaded the garden. Trees and shrubs were shaped into geometrical figures, triangular cor square, until the garden showed nothing but a continuation of the stiff lines of the buildings.
Poetry shared in the infection, and poets revelled in allegory, myth and metaphor. What they learned from their antique models they spoiled by exaggeration. The structure of the epic poem lost its noble harmony, because the poets drew its component parts in too sharp outlines. The mythological element became aggressively pompous, and yet the deities lacked dignity.
The new tendency may be discerned in Hungarian poetry, and a good illustration is provided by the Venus of Murány, written by the favourite poet of the period, Stephen Gyöngyösi (1625–1704). His subject is an incident of European fame. Although the story seems pure romance, it was based on an historical event which occurred in the year 1644. Francis Wesselényi, a general belonging to the imperial party, and afterwards the leader of the Wesselényi conspiracy, was attacking the strong fortress of Murány. The defender and captain of the fortress, which belonged to the national party, was Countess Maria Széchy, famous for her great beauty. In the course of the siege the two hostile leaders, captivated by each other’s fame and valour, fell in love, and Maria Széchy enabled the leader of the besiegers to 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
Was ever woman in this humour won?"
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 years. Zrinyi possessed a certain austere dignity. He did not regard fine, grandiloquent language of great importance in poetry, and his strength lay chiefly in composition and character drawing. He was a great general who employed his master-hand in carrying out great plans and in the wise government of his men.
Gyöngyössi, on the other hand, was a poet of the Ovidian order, full of softness and melody. His technique is highly developed, and in descriptive and lyric poetry his style is remarkably pleasing.
Another elaborate allegorical work by him is entitled The Phoenix that Sprang to New Life from his Ashes, or the Memory of John Kemény. It also treats of a stirring historical episode, and is no mere adventure of love. Charles X. of Sweden invaded Poland and asked the help of the Prince of Transylvania. The Prince consented and one of the heroes in his army was John Kemény, a Transylvanian magnate. But the war was brought to a sudden end by a great catastrophe. The Poles were helped by the Tartars, who decoyed the Hungarian army further and further, until at length, having received reinforcements, they were able to take most of the Hungarians prisoners. Among them was John Kemény. A Tartar prison meant slavery, and that became the fate of the unfortunate captives.
In the first part of the poem, Gyöngyössi's theme is the suffering of his hero, while in the second he relates how Kemény was delivered, became Prince of Transylvania, and married Anne Lónyay, to whom he wrote touching letters from his prison.