Berzsenyi "A közelítő tél" című versének előtörténetéhez

Abstract

The paper does not search whose or what ideas influenced Berzsenyi when writing „Az Ősz" („The Autumn" — the poem wore originally this title); does not search for origins but for similar phenomenon in European — especially in German — poetry and thought. Berzsenyi uses Asclepiadic stanzas the same way Klopstock understands this form. But more than anything else, his elegies or elegiac odes — especially „Horác" („Horace") and „A közelítő tél" („The Approach of Winter") reveal congenial features with Schiller's aesthetics. Elegy as understood by Schiller is not a genre any more but one of the three possible relations between ideals and reality; and as such it is one of the basic feelings of poetry. On this ground Berzsenyi's poem is perhaps nearer to the idyllic as generally thought, its prevailing value being the great Platonic Eros lying hidden in the poem and coming to light in the last lines only. So the poem's bitterness over the transiency and momentariness of human lile and happiness should not be identified with the disillusionment and nihilism of Romantics.