Mihály Csokonai Vitéz

Csokonai Vitéz Mihály

Mihály Csokonai Vitéz (born November 17, 1773 in Debrecen ; † January 28, 1805 there ) was a Hungarian poet.

Life

Csokonai took his first poetic steps in Debrecen, where he also went to school. He was educated at the local Reformed College , which was founded in the 16th century, the early days of the Protestant movement. In Hungary , ruled by the Catholic Habsburgs , this was a place of independent spirits.

Csokonai and his classmates founded a society for the study of Western literatures in 1790. Csokonai took over the work on the Italian one. He learned Latin, Italian, French and German and is said to have also studied Greek, English, Hebrew, Arabic and Persian.

In 1795, the Martinovics enlightenment movement in Hungary was accused of preparing a coup. Some members of this movement were hanged in Buda . As part of this repressive measure, all educational efforts were suspected of endangering Habsburg rule: Csokonai himself was forced to leave the College of Debrecen.

He then began to study law in Sárospatak . In autumn 1796 he published his poems in notebook form in Pressburg (now Bratislava ), where the Hungarian Diet met. He then went to Komárom , today Komárno , Slovakia in 1797, where in 1797 the nobility discussed an uprising against Napoleon. There he met Julia Vajda, a town's daughter who inspired him to write the Lilla songs.

Mihály Csokonai Vitéz had already written many songs in Debrecen that continued an old folk and student tradition there. His marriage proposal to Julia was rejected by her parents because of his lack of means.

In 1799 and 1800 he worked as an assistant teacher at the grammar school of Csurgó in western Hungary. He was unable to find permanent employment or to publish his works. He returned to Debrecen, where apart from a few Debrecen writers he did not seek company. At the age of 31, he died of pneumonia on January 28, 1805 (he had caught a cold at a funeral where he was giving his last lecture and could no longer cure himself).

Works

• Dorottya vagyis a dámák diadala a farsangon , comic epic 1804 (German Dorothea or The Triumph of Ladies in Carnival , Vienna 1914; incomplete)
• Lilla , cycle of poems, composed 1793–1802, published 1805 (Ger. Lilla , Budapest 1971)
• Poétai munkái , the poetic work, Vienna 1813, 4 volumes

German translations of the poems appeared in the following anthologies

• Magyar poems, Stuttgart 1825
• Flower picking from Hungarian poets, Pest 1828
• Album of one hundred Hungarian poets, Dresden 1854
• Hungarian Poets Forest, Stuttgart 1897
• Hungarian poetry from five centuries, Berlin / GDR 1970
• What could i call you Hungarian love poems from old and new times, Budapest 1971
• Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, poems (selection), Budapest 1984

The most famous poems that have also been translated into German include

• To the echo of Tihany
• The loneliness
• Constantinople
• To hope
• Poor Zsuzsi setting out from camp

Many poems were also set to music, e.g. B. by Gy. Kósa, Gy. Dávid, F. Farkas, I. Kardos, Z. Kodály, J. Kossovits, M. Pászti, T. Polgár, B. Reinitz, R. Sugár and M. Turay.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Csokonay, Vitéz Michael . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 3rd part. Typogr.-literar.-artist publishing house. Establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1858, pp. 62-64 ( digitized version ).

Trivia

• In 1865 the Csokonai Theater (Csokonai Színház) was opened in Debrecen , which was named after Csokonai Vitéz.
• In 2009 an asteroid was named after him, which was discovered exactly 195 years after his death to the day: (75823) Csokonai .

Web links

Commons : Mihály Csokonai Vitéz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Mihály Csokonai Vitéz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Poems in German