Ferenc Kölcsey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ferenc Kölcsey (August 8, 1790 — August 24, 1838) was a Hungarian poet, critic and orator.

Kölcsey was born in Sződemeter in Transylvania, during the Habsburg Monarchy. He was orphaned at an early age and handicapped by the loss of an eye. In his fifteenth year he made the acquaintance of Ferenc Kazinczy and zealously adopted his linguistic reforms. In 1809 Kölcsey went to Pest and became a notary to the royal board. Law proved distasteful, and at Cseke in Szatmár county he devoted his time to aesthetical study, poetry, criticism, and the defence of the theories of Kazinczy.

Kölcsey's early metrical pieces contributed to the Transylvanian Museum did not attract much attention, while his severe criticisms of Csokonai, Kis, and especially Berzsenyi, published in 1817, rendered him very unpopular. From 1821 to 1826 he published many separate poems of great beauty in the Aurora, Hebe, Aspasia, and other magazines of polite literature. He joined Paul (Pál) Szemere in a new periodical, styled Élet és Literatúra (Life and Literature), which appeared from 1826 to 1829, in 4 vois., and gained for Kölcsey the highest reputation as a critical writer.

From 1832 to 1835 he sat in the Hungarian Diet, where his extreme liberal views and his singular eloquence soon rendered him famous as a parliamentary leader. Elected on November 17, 1830 a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he took part in its first grand meeting; in 1832, he delivered his famous oration on Kazinczy, and in 1836 that on his former opponent Daniel Berzsenyi. When in 1838 Baron Wesselényi was unjustly thrown into prison upon a charge of treason, Kölcsey eloquently though unsuccessfully conducted his defence; and he died about a week afterwards (August 24, 1838) at Cseke, Hungary in the Austrian Empire, from internal inflammation.

Kölcsey's strong moral sense and deep devotion to his country are reflected in his poems, his often severe but masterly literary criticism, and his funeral orations and parliamentary speeches. His collected works, in 6 vols., were published at Pest, 1840–1848, and his journal of the diet of 1832–1836 appeared in 1848. The first collected edition of all his works appeared in 1886–87.

A monument erected to the memory of Kölcsey was unveiled at Szatmárnémeti on September 25, 1864. His poem Hymnusz (1823), evoking the glory of Hungary's past, became the national anthem of Hungary.

See G. Steinacker, Ungarische Lyriker (Leipzig and Pest, 1874); F. Toldy, Magyar költők élete (2 vols., Pest, 1871); J. Ferenczy and J. Danielik, Magyar írók (2 vols., Pest, 1856–1858).

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.