Dictionary.net

An eminent Hungarian poet; born at Nagy-Szalonta, March 1, 1817; died in Buda-Pesth, Oct. 22, 1882. Educated in the college at Debreczin, 1832-36, he was employed as a teacher in his native place; in 1840 was appointed notary there; and won immediate success with his first epical production in 1845. During the Hungarian revolution he held a government position; then lived in needy circumstances in his native town until 1854, when he obtained a professorship at Nagy-Koros. Thence he was called to Buda-Pesth in 1860 as director of the Kisfaludy Society; founded the literary weekly Koszoru (The Wreath); and in 1865 was appointed secretary of the Hungarian Academy, of which he had been a member since 1859. Owing to his feeble health he resigned in 1878. As a national poet he ranks immediately after Petofi and Vorosmarty, his epical creations deserving to be acknowledged as ornaments not only of Hungarian but of modern poetry in general. He is a master of the ballad and a translator of highest merit, as proven by his versions of Tasso, Goethe, Shakespeare, and above all, his translation of Aristophanes (3 vols., 1880). Works: "The Lost Constitution", a humorous epic (1845, prize of Kisfaludy Society), depicting the doings at the county elections; "The Taking of Murany" (1848, prize); "Katalin" (1850); "Toldi", an epical trilogy (1851-54-80), exalting the deeds of the Hungarian Samson; "The Gipsies of Nagy-Ida" (1852); "Buda's Death" (1864, prize), "Prose Writings" (1879).