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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  János Arany (1817–1882)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

János Arany (1817–1882)

Arany, János (or’ony). An eminent Hungarian poet; born at Nagy-Szalonta, March 2, 1817; died in Budapest, Oct. 22, 1882. Educated in the college at Debreczin, 1832–36, he was employed as a teacher in his native place; in 1840 was appointed notary there; and won immediate success with his first epical production in 1845. During the Hungarian revolution he held a government position; then lived in needy circumstances in his native town until 1854, when he obtained a professorship at Nagy-Körös. Thence he was called to Budapest in 1860 as director of the Kisfaludy Society; founded the literary weekly Koszorú (The Wreath); and in 1865 was appointed secretary of the Hungarian Academy, of which he had been a member since 1859. Owing to his feeble health he resigned in 1878. As a national poet he ranks immediately after Petőfi and Vörösmarty, his epical creations deserving to be acknowledged as ornaments not only of Hungarian but of modern poetry in general. He is a master of the ballad and a translator of highest merit, as proven by his versions of Tasso, Goethe, Shakespeare, and above all, his translation of Aristophanes (3 vols., 1880). Works: ‘The Lost Constitution,’ a humorous epic (1845, prize of Kisfaludy Society), depicting the doings at the county elections; ‘The Taking of Murány’ (1848, prize); ‘Katalin’ (1850); ‘Toldi,’ an epical trilogy (1851–54–80), exalting the deeds of the Hungarian Samson; ‘The Gipsies of Nagy-Ida’ (1852); ‘Buda’s Death’ (1864, prize), ‘Prose Writings’ (1879).