A Szentivánéji álom és a magyar költészet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hungarian Poetry

Summary/Abstract: A Midsummer Night’s Dream was János Arany’s (1817–1882) first completed translation of Shakespeare, a work he developed in several stages since the 1840s. The Hungarian text reached its final form in 1863. Since the play had not previously been translated into Hungarian, Arany could not rely on earlier versions, as he could with Hamlet, for example. As a play unique even within Shakespeare’s oeuvre, it likewise abounds in experimental solutions, linguistic and stylistic play in its Hungarian rendition. Arany (surely consciously) drew many of his rhymes and poetic lines from the Hungarian literary language of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, incorporating elements of both elite and popular poetry of the time. The troupe of amateur craftsmen takes on a distinctly Hungarian character, and Arany also adapted the verse form to Hungarian tradition, using twelve-syllable rhyming couplets. This study examines the phenomenon of ‘cultural translation’ from the perspective of the history of poetic form.

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