László Arany
1844–1898
Biography
László Arany was a Hungarian poet and collector of folk tales, and the son of the poet János Arany. He was born at Nagyszalonta on 24 March 1844 and died in Budapest on 1 August 1898. His father taught for a time at Nagykőrös, which in the years after the 1849 defeat sheltered many Protestant intellectuals, so the boy grew up among writers, teachers and reformers who prized the folk poetry of the people. He studied law at the university in Pest, but his real interests lay in literature and in the songs and stories of ordinary people. While still young he wrote short unsigned pieces for the journal Koszorú, helping his father. In 1872 he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
His folk-tale collection, Eredeti népmesék, appeared in 1862. It gathered tales that he, his sister and their mother had collected around Nagyszalonta and Nagykőrös. The title was not new: László Merényi had published a collection called Eredeti népmesék in Pest in 1861, so anyone searching the catalogue should check the author. Arany's later work included the verse novel A délibábok hőse (1873), whose hero, Balázs Hübele, is a Hungarian with no plan or direction, a reversed version of Pató Pál, the proverbial figure of passive complacency. Because of its theme, many readers counted Arany among the generation of the 1870s and 1880s who had lost hope.
After his father died in 1882, László Arany gave family relics to the memorial room opened at Nagyszalonta in 1885, and he edited János Arany's posthumous papers and letters, published in 1887–89. The book on this site is his Eredeti népmesék of 1862, where his interest in the oral tradition shows most clearly.
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Books
Eredeti népmesék
by László Arany
Hungarian folk tales collected by László Arany in the 1860s: blind kings, devils, clever girls, the hero Fehérlófia and tiny Babszem Jankó, ending with a set of riddles and their answers.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.