Selected poems by Dániel Berzsenyi

We are celebrating a double Berzsenyi anniversary in 2006: the poet's date of birth is 1776, the year of his death: 1836. From a landlord who wrote poetry in an amateurish manner, he became one of the greatest masters of contemporary Hungarian poetry by the early 1810s, although his talent was clearly not recognized even by the famous judges Kazinczy and Kölcsey, and in fact, some of their letters and reviews actually discouraged the poet. However, the high-level embodiment of Hungarian contemporary poetry, which still delights and moves the reader in Dániel Berzsenyi's poetic oeuvre today, this world of grave words is the advocate and witness of the Hungarian Enlightenment to this day: it opened the door to the brilliant minds of Hungarian romantic poetry. Although our volume is a selection, it actually leaves out only a few larger compositions and one or two smaller works: thus, it guides you to the entirety of Berzsenyi.