Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Sándor Pet?fi
    -INDEX: Sándor Pet?fi (YouTube)
    -INDEX: The page of Pet?fi Sándor, Hungarian Works (Visegrad Magic Cube))
    -INDEX: Sándor Pet?fi (Internet Archives)
    -ENTRY: Sándor Pet?fi Hungarian poet (Encyclopedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Pet?fi, Sándor (Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe)
    -ENTRY: Sándor Pet?fi, the revolutionary poet was born 200 years ago (Study in Hungary)
    -ENTRY: Sándor Petöfi (Encyclopedia.com)
    -ENTRY: Sándor Pet?fi (Enik? Basa, Literary Encyclopedia)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Sándor Pet?fi (eNotes)
    -PORTRAIT: Sándor Pet?fi (1823 - 1849) (Online Portrait Gallery)
    -INDEX: Sandor Petofi (All Poetry)
    -POEM: Pet?fi Sándor: The Tisza (A Tisza in English)
    -ETEXT: An Anthology of Sándor Pet?fi Poems by Miklós Nádasdi (Listed below are 22 poems written by Sándor Pet?fi and translated by Miklós Nádasdi from the original Hungarian into English)
    -POEM: I Would Be a Branch BY SÁNDOR PETÖFI TRANSLATED BY GABI REIGH (Modern Poetry in Translation)
    -POEM: National Song (Sándor Pet?fi)
    -POEM: The End of September - a Love Poem (Translated from Hungarian) (RJSADOWSKI, OCT 23, 2012, Hub Pages)
    -ETEXT: Selections from poems; by Petofi, Sándor, 1823-1849; Phillips, Henry, 1838-1895
    -
    -ETEXT: GEMS FROM PET?FI AND OTHER HUNGARIAN POETS: [TRANSLATED] WITH A MEMOIR OF THE FORMER, AND A Review of Hungary's Poetical Literature. (WM. N. LOEW)
    -ESSAY: Is This the Man Who Could Topple Viktor Orbán?: European elections have dramatically changed the political situation in Hungary. (H. DAVID BAER, JUN 20, 2024, The Bulwark)
    -ESSAY: Love and revolution: Sándor Pet?fi and Heinrich Heine (Laszlo Solymar, 11/24/21, The Article)
    -ESSAY: Sándor Pet?fi: The building of a Hungarian legend (Louise Ostermann Twardowski, 20 NOV 2020, Kafka Desk)
    -ESSAY: Remembering Sándor Pet?fi, Hungary’s National Poet (Emese-Réka Fromm, March 4, 2024, Wanderer Writes)
    -ESSAY: The Poetic Voice of a Freedom Loving People (Hungarian Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Sandor Petofi, as you have not known him before (Daniel Turner, Hungarian Hub)
    -ESSAY: Sándor Pet?fi, Hungary’s National Poet, Born 200 Years Ago (Mariann ?ry, 2023.01.03, Hungary Today)
    -INTERVIEW: Insightful Interview: Relevance of Revolutionary Hungarian Poet Sándor Pet?fi to Foreign Readers (The poets Ádám Nádasdy, George Gömöri, and Katalin Szlukovényi answered our questions, 19 Jun 2023, XpatLoop)
    -ESSAY: Sándor Pet?fi, (1823–1849) (MSW, JUNE 26, 2009, weapons and Warfare)
    -CHAPTER: CHAPTER XI: Comet of the Revolution: Pet?fi (LÓRÁNT CZIGÁNY< A HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN LITERATURE: From the Earliest Times to the mid-1970's)

WHEN a Hungarian is asked who, in his opinion, is the greatest poet his country ever produced, he will most probably cite Sándor Pet?fi. Pet?fi is known and respected wherever Hungarian is spoken; his name is associated exclusively with poetry, and he enjoys a place like that usually reserved for Shakespeare in English-speaking countries. His appearance on the literary scene was sudden and brief, yet he radically changed the dominant trends and created a new school. No one would write poetry again without feeling his impact. To be sure, his followers, known as pet?fiesked?k, were often only crude imitators of his style and the external paraphernalia of his poetic attitude, pestering editors and publishers in the second half of the century. Yet his influence did not only affect his contemporaries; it can be felt even today – some modern Hungarian poets have found it difficult to escape. The heritage and message of Pet?fi seem to be deeply imprinted on the national ego.

Pet?fi created a new world of poetry which bore little resemblance to restrained Classicism or to the often monotonous patriotic elegies of his predecessors, many of whom wrote under the influence of German Classicism and Romanticism. The pre-existing potentialities from which Pet?fi’s poetry in all its novelty was born were, on the one hand, the graceful and polished idiom of Vörösmarty, and, on the other, a tendency (present in many European literatures) to bring poetic diction closer to the natural idiom of the spoken language. The Lake Poets – Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey – were the pioneers of this trend; but their objectives were perhaps best attained, curiously enough, by their arch-enemy, Lord Byron, and on the Continent by Heine.

The natural ease of the spoken language appears to have been something Pet?fi was born with; he needed no foreign models. Instead, he turned instinctively to folk-songs, a treasure-trove of simple yet effective poetry. In this sense, he continued one of the most significant traditions in Hungarian literature, the népies trend, which had been developing ever since the Baroque poet Faludi experimented with the incorporation of features from folk-songs into his own poetic language. The népies trend reached its natural peak in Pet?fi’s poetry, for he was able to raise every subject to the level of poetry as naturally as if poetry were already inherent in the phenomena of the world. Nevertheless, the experiments of his foreign predecessors and contemporaries were known in the Hungary of the 1840s, and Pet?fi was conscious of their presence; yet he managed to add novelty to poetic self – expression on a scale that took him beyond the confines of Hungarian poetry. As one of his English critics observed, Pet?fi ‘was alternately likened … to Burns, Byron, Heine, Körner, Béranger … though it cannot be said that he entirely resembled any of them. He was like every true genius, thoroughly original …’.

Besides his poetry, his larger-than-life personality also contributed to the making of his image, for he perished amid revolution, fighting for the freedom of his people and for the most cherished ideals of Romantic Europe, a truly romantic death in the context of the revolutions of 1848 when young Europe clashed with the last remnants of the ancien régime. Small wonder that the memory of this twenty-six-year-old youth became built into an image of the poet as the spiritual leader and prophet of his own people, in which part indeed he cast himself. He is a committed writer par excellence of essentially Romantic mould who leads his people like a ‘pillar of fire’ towards a social Canaan, or fights with them on the barricades for freedom and independence. This image of Pet?fi is still predominant in Hungary, and the best poets of the country can aspire to nothing higher than to gain a place in the coveted ranks of his successors.

    -ESSAY: Celebrating Pet?fi Sándor at the “Museum Cafe” (Andy Meszaros, May 17, 2023, Cleveland Hungarian Museum)
    -ESSAY: Sándor Petöfi: Poet, Imagination, Nation (Illyés, Gyula, Summer 1973, Mosaic)
    -ESSAY: Rocking the Cradle: Making Pet?fi a National Poet (Sándor Hites, 2017, arcadia)
    -ESSAY: The “Giant Role Model”: the “Serbian” Pet?fi (Katalin Hász-Fehér, Hungarian Studies Yearbook)
    -ESSAY: THE RULE OF SÁNDOR PET?FI IN THE MEMORY POLICY OF HUNGARIANS, SLOVAKS AND THE MEMBERS OF THE HUNGARIAN MINORITY GROUP IN SLOVAKIA IN THE LAST 150 YEARS (Ivan Halász, Andor Mészáros, Gábor Schweitzer, Károly V?r?s, April 2016, Historia Teoria)
    -ARTICLE: Celebrating Sándor Pet?fi in the Partium — New Statue Erected to the Great Hungarian Poet in Szatmárnémeti (Ádám Bráder, Hungarian Conservative)
    -ARTICLE: Marking the Bicentenary of Hungary’s National Poet, Sándor Pet?fi (Lili Zemplényi, Hungarian Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Manifestations of Hungarian Identity in Literature (Janos Kenyeres, 2019, Hungarian Cultural Studies)
    -ARCHIVES: Sándor Pet?fi (Hungarian Conservative)
    -AUDIO ARCHIVES: Sándor Pet?fi (1823 - 1849) (LibriVox)

FILM:

    -FILMOGRAPHY: Sándor Petöfi(1823-1849) (IMDB)
    -">-FILMOGRAPHY: Now or Never! (IMDB)
    -ESSAY: Filmmakers Fight Back Against Deepening Chill in Viktor Orban’s Hungary: ‘People Have Nothing to Lose’ (Christopher Vourlias, 9/2/22, Variety)
    -FILM REVIEW: NOW OR NEVER! – LAUGHABLY SILLY PROPAGANDA DISGUISED AS PERIOD PIECE (Herpai Gergely, The Geek)
    -FILM REVIEW: Sándor Pet?fi Overseas — A Review of the Movie Now or Never! Screened in New York (Ildikó Antal-Ferencz, Hungarian Conservative)
    -FILM REVIEW: Now or Never! *Hungarian Conservative)
    -FILM REVIEW: Now or Never! (Peter Schulz, Budapest Reporter)