“I had one or two songs for my nation” ARANY 200

In 2017, National Széchényi Library was among the first public institutions to join the Memorial Year of the 200^th anniversary of János Arany’s birth. The national library, one of the most important keepers of the Arany legacy, presented its rich collection including the most complete manuscript of the Toldi trilogy on its ”Others only get their laurels leaf by leaf” exhibition between April and December 2017. A row of events accompanied the main exhibition, including our Research Session at the end of November dedicated this year to the topics of the bicentenary. Following our tradition, not only renowned guest lecturers of literary history participated, but also researchers of our staff had the opportunity to present their results on János Arany and the coinciding bicentenary of Mihály Tompa. As the topics included several areas of research, the papers covered literary history aspects of the oeuvre and the life of the poet, his relation with the contemporaries and his reception in music and fine arts. The present volume, the 10^th in the Bibliotheca Scientia et Artis series that started in 2010, contains the essays based upon the papers presented at the conference.

The first group of these works explores documents and other sources that either were organized in Arany’s life or relate to the events of his life and career; the publication and presentation of these documents is described by Rita Szűts-Novák, Mihály Praznovszky and Dániel Kiss Domokos who focus on Arany’s social network and certain segments of his correspondence, and Balázs Mikusi who analyzes the musical reception of his poetry. The presentation of the Arany Album of 1868, by Zsuzsanna Rózsafalvi also belongs to this unit, as well as the paper by László Szörényi on the genre history and intertextual relations of Toldi’s Love.

The second unit is dedicated to the later reception of the Arany oeuvre: how the contributors of Nyugat, at the beginning of the 20th century, shaped the image of Arany in the Hungarian literature, and how his influence lives on in contemporary poetry. The first topic was elaborated by László Boka, and the second one by Beatrix Visy.

László Sárossy Deák shares his thoughts on the verse theory aspects of Arany, Kornália Vasné Tóth enumerates the Ex Libris of the poet and his environment. At the end of the volume, we find a unique report written by restorer Zsuzsanna Tóth on the present situation of a most important project of NSZL for the Arany Memorial Year: the evaluation of the manuscript legacy located in the Truncated Tower of Nagyszalonta, and the preparation of its shipment and restoration at the national library.