Poetry
Appeal
Szózat
Mihály Vörösmarty · 1837
Synopsis
The poet addresses the Hungarian and asks him to be faithful to his homeland without ever wavering: it is his cradle and will be his grave, and he has no other place in the world. He recalls this land where the blood of the fathers has flowed so freely, where the armies of Árpád fought, where Hunyadi's arms broke the yoke and where the bloodied flags of liberty were carried; after so many misfortunes and discords, the nation still lives, diminished but not broken. It then cries out to the wide world that a millennium of suffering demands life or death.
Context
The poem was born in the climate of the diet of 1832-1836, whose hopes of reform ran up against the government in Vienna. Completed in 1836, it appeared in 1837 in the almanac Aurora. It is made up of fourteen stanzas: the first two and the last two answer each other and frame the nation's past, present and future. Set to music by Béni Egressy, it was sung for the first time at the National Theatre in Pest on 10 May 1843, and it was long debated whether the nation's anthem would be this one or Kölcsey's.
Who it is for
A short poem, which can be read in a few minutes; an English translation by Watson Kirkconnell can be read in the online anthology Babel.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the second national anthem of the Hungarians, sung alongside Kölcsey's anthem, which remains the official anthem.
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