26o HUNGARIAN LITERAT ORE manifestiy impossible, for at that period ali the psycho logical conditions and historical precedents which could engender such a notion were lacking. Wher.eas mental growth is really a gradual modification of existing ideas, in the poem there are nothing but sudden and startling contrasts. Adam sets his heart 'upón the exact opposite of the conditions wh ich have proved so unsatisfactory. As regards the other imporlant character in the drama, Eve, the eternal woman, it must be confessed that in ali her various transformations she is more like an abstraction than a real living woman. Yet in spite of these imperfec tions, the conception of the whole wondrous course of the human race is very grand, and the genius displayed in every detail very great. Madách's pessimism had a two-fold origin. It sprang partly from the condition of his native land, and partly from calamities in his private life . In the fifties of the past century, after the war for fre edom, Hungary was pining beneath the tYr-anny of Austria, during what is known as the Bach Period. At the same time the . poet' s life was bligh:ted by private misfortunes. The Wallach ian insur gents had atrociously butebered the whole of his sister's family, and in 1854 his wife deserted hím. Imagine a man such as his poems and letters sh ow Madách to have been, a man highly sensitíve and contemplative by nature, and indined to torture hímself with all kinds of doubts an d to take a tragic view of life j then place bim in a period when the national aspirations have bee n stifled, an age of oppres sion and despair, in a society domned to inaction and impotent resentment j add to the grief of the patriot the sadness of domestic bereavements and the pang of the inj ured husband, and we shall then understand the state of mind in which Madách wrote his drama. Let us glance
