The Hungarian Quarterly 2. (1936-1937)

1936-1937 / 2. szám - Dezső Keresztúry: The Spirit of Hungarian Literature

286 THE HUNGARIAN QUARTERLY II. Historical Summary The fountaimhead of Hungar ian culture is the Latin literal ture of Christianity; our country has remained faithful almost until the present day to this holy and classical language. The Latin culture of Hungary was at first but a provincial variety of international ecclesiastical literature. But the forms of Hung# arian reality soon become discernible. In the legends of St. Stephen and St. Emerich (eleventh century) we hardly see Hungarian colours in the conventional figure of the "Christian saint." On the other hand, the legends of St. Ladislas and the Blessed Margaret (twelfth century) breathe the atmosphere of a (Christian) Hungarian world. The Latin Gestae show old pagan traditions interwoven into the courtly ground#texture of secular legends dealing with the origin of the nation. These Gestae followed the example of foreign models in their construction ; but the later Hungarian romantics believed them to contain the cycles of legends of a vanished national epic. The three great Gesta#writers : Ano# nymous (twelfth century), Simon de Kéza (thirteenth century), and Mark de Kált (iyy8) kept up this tradition, but clothed it in a form which was in harmony with the European mind. While this Latin literature belonged to an exceptionally cultured upper class, the ancient oral poetry of the Hungarian people was driven back into a subditerary region where most of it was lost. At best we have references to its existence, its cultivators and motives, but there are no written records. Hard# ly anything but the Christianized language has risen from the depths. The conqueror was obliged to speak the tongue of the peasants ; it underwent a slow process of transformation and became capable of expressing a higher order of thoughts. The literary remains of the thirteenth century, the chief of which are a funeral oration and a verse lamentation to the Virgin, prove that even in the first centuries after the adoption of Christianity the Hungarian language was in general use for ecclesiastical purposes. A literature of the cloister (preserved in codices) burst into sudden bloom at the beginning of the fifteenth century. More use was made of Hungarian sources, especially of the works of Pelbárt de Temesvár (died in 1^04),

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