Mihály Vörösmarty
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- The native form of this personal name is Vörösmarty Mihály. This article uses the Western name order.
Mihály Vörösmarty (December 1, 1800 - November 19, 1855), Hungarian poet, was born at Puszta-Nyék, of a noble Roman Catholic family.
His father was a steward of the Nádasdys. Mihály was educated at Székesfehérvár by the Cistercians and at Pest by the Piarists. The death of the elder Vörösmarty in 1811 left his widow and numerous family extremely poor. As tutor to the Perczel family, however, Vörösmarty contrived to pay his own way and go through his academical course at Pest.
The doings of the diet of 1825 first enkindled his patriotism and gave a new direction to his poetry (he had already begun a drama entitled Salomon), and he flung himself the more recklessly into public life when he fell in love with Etelka Perczel, who socially was far above him. Many of his lyrics pertained to , while his patriotism found expression in the heroic epic Zalán futása (Zalan's Flee) (1824. This new epic marked a transition from the classical to the romantic school.
Henceforth Vörösmarty was hailed by Károly Kisfaludy and the Hungarian romanticists as one of themselves. All this time he was living from hand to mouth. He had forsaken the law for literature, but his contributions to newspapers and reviews were miserably paid. Between 1823 and 1831 he composed four dramas and eight smaller epics, partly historical, partly fanciful. Of these epics he always regarded Cserhalom (1825) as the best, but modern criticism has given the preference to A két szomszédvár (Two Neighbouring Castles) (1831).[citation needed]
When the Hungarian Academy was finally established (November 17, 1830) he was elected a member of the philological section, and ultimately succeeded Károly Kisfaludy as director with an annual pension of 500 florins. He was one of the founders of the Kisfaludy Society, and in 1837 started the Athenaeum and the Figyelmező, the first the chief bellettristic, the second the best critical periodical of Hungary.[citation needed]
From 1830 to 1843 he devoted himself mainly to the drama, the most notable of his plays, perhaps, being Vérnász (Blood Wedding) (1833), which won the Academy's 200-gulden prize.[citation needed] He also published several volumes of poetry. He also wrote Szózat (Appeal, 1836), which became a national anthem, Az elhagyott anya (The Abandoned Mother) (1837) and Az uri hölgyhöz (To the Noble Lady) (1841). His marriage in 1843 to Laura Csajághy inspired him to compose a new cycle of erotics. In 1848, in conjunction with Arany and Petőfi, he set on foot an translation of Shakespeare's works.
By the support of Lajos Kossuth and Imre Cseszneky he was elected to represent Jankovác at the diet of 1848, and in 1849 was made one of the judges of the high court. The national catastrophe (the fall of the revolution of 1848-49) profoundly affected him. For a short time he was an exile, and when he returned to Hungary in 1850 he was already an old man. A profound melancholy crippled him for the rest of his life.[citation needed] In 1854 he wrote his last poem, A vén cigány (The old Gypsy). He died at Pest in the same house where Károly Kisfaludy had died twenty-five years before. His funeral, on November 21, was a day of national mourning. His penniless children were provided for by a national subscription collected by Ferenc Deák, who acted as their guardian.
Some of his works have been translated into German, e.g. Gedichte (Pest, 1857);
Ban Marot, by Mihály Ring (Pest, 1879); Ausgewählte Dichte, by Paul Hoffmann (Leipzig, 1895).
See Pál Gyulai, The Life of Vörösmarty (Hung.) (3rd ed., Budapest, 1890), Brajjer, Vörösmarty,
sein Leben und seine Werke (Nagy-Becskerek, 1882).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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