Jakab Farkas of Alistál’s First Greeting Poem for György Csipkés of Komárom (Utrecht, 1652)

Abstract

In my paper, I focus on a carmen written by a 17th-century Hungarian peregrine, Jakab Farkas of Alistál to his fellow student, György Csipkés of Komárom, on the occasion of this latter’s disputation Disputatio Scholastico-Theologica. De Speculo Trinitatis, in 1652. This carmen is one of those Utrecht poems which were written in Hebrew and created for Komáromi in the first part of the 1650s; chronologically it was written after István Ötvös of Szathmár’s, Johannes Leusden’s, Petkó János of Somos’ carmina and before the author’s second greeting poem (1654). In my paper, I publish the poem in a normative transcription, analyze it from the linguistic point of view, regarding the erroneous or extraordinary forms, and interpret it regarding the content-stylistic and poetic features. I take some notes about the translational solutions as well. At the end of my paper, I conclude that linguistically and in terms of the content it is a little bit obscure, peculiar creation, and doesn’t fit into the prevailing literary tendency of the age, the Baroque, or the dominant trend, the “Baroque-esque” style. But if we see it as a forerunner of the modern, expressionist poems, its oddities are immediately not so confusing.