person
Dániel Berzsenyi
Berzsenyi
also: Berzsenyi, Berzsenyi Dániel
Dániel Berzsenyi (1776–1836), Hungarian classicist and Romantic poet; his stoic odes on mutability and patriotic duty are canonical models and his epigraphs recur throughout Madách's juvenilia.
Reading notes
- First Attempts (Juvenilia) §86 Berzsenyi
Dániel Berzsenyi (1776–1836), Hungarian classicist and Romantic poet; his odes on mutability and heroic endurance were influential models. The Swan-Song epigraph on earthly chains vs. autumnal roses is characteristic of his stoic register.
- First Attempts (Juvenilia) §96 The worthy fears not the mold of the ages
The Berzsenyi epigraph here — breaking from the coffin to demand heaven — introduces Bretizla, the imprisoned patriot-poet, and frames his endurance as a specifically Hungarian ideal of creative martyrdom.