HUNGARIAN STUDIES 16. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [2002]

József Szili: Nation-Religion in Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Poetry

NATION-RELIGION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HUNGARIAN POETRY JÓZSEF SZILI Institute of Literary Studies, HAS, Budapest Hungary Nation-religion is a term for a national myth and rhetoric formed in Hungaiy from the 15th century in a quest for national identity. A part of it was the myth of the prehistoric genealogy of the nation and the chroniclers' accounts of the occupation of the area surrounded by the Carpathians in the 9th century. In the 16"' century the country was occupied by the Turkish Empire, and the Hungarians parallelled their fate with that of the Lord's chosen people. In the 18th and early 19"' centuries this semi-mythical, semi-religious compound, supplemented by a set of "intellectual emotions" (also retraceable in poems by Schiller, Shelley and Keats), was adapted to a romantic ideology of national history and codified in verse and prose by Ferenc Kölcsey, author of the national anthem. It influenced poetry in the Age of Reforms, and culminated in an apocalyptic imagery and visions of a demonic world when the War of Independence was defeated in 1849. Keywords: nation-religion, national myth, romantic ideology of national history, romantic poetry, verbal imagination, intellectual emotions, moral sentiments, spir­itual gifts, War of Independence (1848 1849), apocalypse, demonic world, memory, hope Nation-religion is a term for a special kind of national myth and rhetoric formed in Hungary from the fifteenth century on by a spiritual quest for national identity. One part came to be formed by stories, based on thirteenth-century Hungarian gestas and chronicles, on the mythical and pseudo-historical genealogy of the nation and accounts of the occupation of the historical area of what used to be the kingdom of Hungary by seven Magyar tribes during the eighth century.1 A new aspect arose during the sixteenth century when a part of the kingdom was occu­pied by the Turkish Empire. Then Hungarians sought help and refuge in the bibli­cal story of the Jews and compared themselves to the Lord's chosen people and saw the Turks as God's scourge sent to punish them for their vices.2 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this semi-mythical, semi-religious compound, supplemented with a few systematizing ideas borrowed from the New Testament (especially the "spiritual gifts" - 1 Cor 12-13), was adapted to a romantic ideol-Hungarian Studies 16/1 (2002) 0236-6568/2002/$5.00 © 2002 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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