RUINS OF CASTLES

Sándor Kisfaludy’s novels in verse and the travel literature

Abstract

The three novels in verse (Csobáncz, Tátika, Somló) of Sándor Kisfaludy’s (1772-1844) Himfy, published in 1807, are not simply texts of Hungarian preromanticism, of romantic, individualistic ways of reading, but – according to my hypothesis – they also reveal communal, mediatized forms of reading. The old, Hungarian noble, communal, social gatherings are often found in verse narratives (the reges) imitating local sagas, as part of storytelling. Kisfaludy’s stanzas evoking social entertainment are reminiscent of the idyllic noble entertainments of the 14th and 16th centuries, but they are also descriptions, allegories and throwbacks to the past of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially of the excursionist parties who spent their time in their spa treatments at Balatonfüred in the 1830-40s.

Kisfaludy already uses this ‘touristic’ narrative genre in his own travelogues, but his thematic sources, the Gothic horror stories of Veit Weber and Joseph Alois Gleich, which have been researched by literary historians, are also full of these genres of imitative sagas. The Kisfa- ludy tales were also performed as theatrical productions (live pictures), and groups of excursionists gathered at the castle ruins indicated in the titles of the tales and read, recited and sang them together in the first half of the 19th century.