National Character and European Identity in the History Of

NATIONAL CHARACTER AND EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN HUNGARIAN LITERATURE: 1772-1848 Richard Louis Aczel Submitted for the degree of PhD. School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London ProQuest Number: U048192 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest U048192 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract My thesis examines late 18th and early 19th century Hungarian literature in its European context, demonstrating its complex fusion of nationally specific and fundamentally European elements. In comparing the social background to, and central ideas of, the West European Enlightenment with the conditions and aspirations of the Hungarian literary renewal in the years 1772-95, Chapter One challenges the conventional characterisation of this period in Hungarian literature as a "belated" Age of Enlightenment. Chapter Two argues the essential continuity between West European and Hungarian culture at the end of the 18th century, in a period b o m of the Enlightenment’s inner crisis, and draws on Schiller’s notion of the sentimental in characterising the new cultural moment in Europe. Chapter Three offers a detailed account of the 'sentimental dilemma’ in late 18th century Hungarian literature, while Chapter Four traces the origins of the literary preoccupation with folk culture which was to play a leading role in the development of the national literature throughout the 19th century. I interpret the growing identification with the 'simplicity', 'naturalness' and national character of folk culture as an attempt to resolve the sentimental crisis of identity. Here I draw on Schiller's concept of the naive and on Herder's distinction between natural and art poetry. Chapter Five considers the development of the 'naive' identification with folk culture in the Age of Reform, while Chapter Six examines the conscious 'literary populism' of the - 2 - 1840s which categorically rejects foreign influences and promotes folk poetry as the basis for an 'organic* and 'authentic' national poetry. Chapter Seven attempts to recover a series of profoundly European Romantic initiatives in early 19th century Hungarian literature which have been neglected by the popular-national tradition. My conclusion considers the survival of these tensions between European influence and national character in Hungarian literature after 1848. - 3 - Contents Abstract 2 Contents 4 Chapter One: Contrasts 5 Chapter Two: The Crisis of the Enlightenment 44 Chapter Three: The Sentimental Dilemma 83 Chapter Four: The Naive Resolution 120 Chapter Five: Naive and Native in the Age ofReform 166 Chapter Six: The Triumph of Literary Populism: the1840s 207 Chapter Seven: Repressed Romanticism 246 Chapter Eight: Perspectives 295 Notes 303 Bibliography 327 - 4 - Chapter 1: Contrasts There are few periods more decisive and formative in the history of Hungarian literature than the last three decades of the 18th century, which saw the birth of the national literature as a modem, autonomous and self-conscious discourse. And yet there are few periods which have been so unsatisfactorily described, explained and interpreted by Hungarian literary historians. Antal Szerb (1901-45), whose Magyar irodalomtc|rtenet (1934) continues to be the most engaging single-author history of Hungarian literature, came closest to transcending the key literary historical misconception preventing the proper analysis of this period in his refusal to adopt its conventional denomination as an "age of Enlightenment". His own characterisation of the period as "pre romantic" - developed most fully in his short book A magyar preromantika (1929) - was itself, however, for reasons which will be discussed in the next chapter, no less untenable. Since the Second World War discussions of the period 1772-95 have tended to take the notion of a Hungarian Enlightenment as a matter of course. "Miivelodes- es irodalomtortenetunk elso, tudatosan vilagi eszmei mozgalma a felvilagosodas volt,"^ run the opening words of Volume 3 of the most comprehensive history of Hungarian literature to date. "Bessenyei Gyorgy felleptevel," we read on the following page, O "1772-ben indul meg a magyar felvilagosodas mozgalma". The notion of a "Hungarian Enlightenment" is not only artificial and misleading, but also stands in the way of any meaningful - 5 - reading of the period in question. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the shortcomings of such a designation in order to facilitate an alternative description of the period 1772-95 in Chapter Two and Three. My method is essentially one of montage; I propose to contrast both the context and content of the Hungarian literary renewal with the background to, and aspirations of, the West European Enlightenment. Most of my examples are concerned with developments in England and France,for it was from these two countries that the 18th century Hungarian literati took much of their initial inspiration. Hungarian literary historians have, however, drastically overestimated the influence of French culture on late 18th century Hungarian literature. The following claim by Istvan Soter represents perhaps the most radical formulation of this position: ’’the ideological and artistic conception of Hungarian enlightenment is characterized by its adherence to the philosophy of the French enlightenment, even to the extent of full conformity with it". The contrasts depicted in this chapter should demonstrate the speciousness of such a claim. My first set of contrasts focusses on some of the key characteristics and concepts of the Enlightenment. I shall make no attempt to define this term; one cannot, in Burke’s phrase, with a single term draw up an indictment against a whole century. There are, however, certain social and intellectual constituents without which any broad concept of Enlightenment is meaningless. These would have to include a commitment to empiricism in scientific method, rationalism in the characterisation of Nature, universalism in the description of human nature, and cosmopolitanism in - 6 - intellectual formation and matters of taste. To this one would have to add: a fundamental rejection of the values, superstitions and "divine rights" of the feudal state and a faith in man's natural capacity to run his own affairs rationally with the least possible governmental interference. I shall illustrate the central place and significance of some of these notions in the writings of the philosophes, and their relative absence from the Hungarian context, in my first set of contrasts. My second set of contrasts attempts to localize and develop this comparative approach to "enlightened" values through the analysis of two key texts: Pope's Essay on Man (1733) and Bessenyei's "translation", or rather reworking, of the ideas of Pope's text in Az embemek proba.ja (1772). i). Light and Dark The view presented in this section is, as my heading suggests, a polemical one: that it is ultimately meaningless to speak of a "Hungarian Enlightenment". If I have generally chosen to focus on extreme areas of contrast, this is because of the extent and intensity of entrenchment my argument seeks to challenge. There were undoubtedly certain isolated figures and projects in late 18th century Hungary whose concerns and aspirations shared much in common with the values of the West European Enlightenment. Their achievements, however, do not provide a representative - 7 - interpretative basis for a comprehensive and coherent reading of the period. Movements in intellectual history rarely simply reflect the immediate interests of a social class. To note that Voltaire was the son of a notary, Diderot the son of a cutler and Rousseau the son of a watchmaker is not to prove that the Enlightenment was exclusively the ideology of a "rising bourgeoisie". All of these writers, however, were crucially aware of the changing social climate in which they lived, and their work was always firmly rooted in their experience of social reality. The Enlightenment, as both Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have convincingly argued, was above all an age of criticism rather than abstract philosophy.^ While this criticism took different forms in different national and social environments, its ultimate target can be seen as the values and limitations of feudal society. In England, therefore, where a civil war and a bloodless revolution had already secured the future of constitutional government, enlightened criticism was essentially a matter of consolidation. "In England [...] the realization of Enlightenment hopes was not thwarted at every turn by the existing order of state and society. Quite the reverse. In England after 1688 the constitution itself incorporated central Enlightenment demands, such as personal freedom under Habeas Corpus, representative government, religious toleration and the sanctity of property." (Roy Porter).-* In France, on the other hand, "the philosophes saw z: themselves as a kind of perpetual opposition" (Norman Hampson). - 8 - According to Montesquieu,

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