Bálint Balassi

Valentine Balassi (1554-1594) was a Renaissance Hungarian lyric poet, regarded as the founder of modern lyric poetry in the Hungarian language. He wrote mainly in Hungarian, though he also used Turkish and Slovak. His importance lies in opening a poetic path that Hungarian literature would not match again until the Romantic era.

He was born in Zvolen, in what is now Slovakia, and was raised in a Protestant household, partly under the guidance of his mother. His first work was a translation of a German devotional book, meant to comfort his father, who was living in exile in Poland. Once he had accompanied his father to court, he joined the army and fought the Ottoman Turks as an officer at the fortress of Eger. There he fell hopelessly in love with Anna Losonczi, who later married another man, and that unrequited passion shaped many of his verses.

His life was shaped by captivity, since he was taken prisoner in 1574 and held for about two years, and by family troubles after his 1584 marriage to his cousin Krisztina Dobó. Her relatives pursued him with lawsuits and, when he converted to Catholicism in 1586, they falsely accused him of embracing Islam. He returned to military service and died in 1594 from a wound received at the siege of Esztergom.

His poems fall into four groups: religious hymns, patriotic and martial songs, love poems, and adaptations from Latin and German. His love poetry is the most original, with an intense and personal tone. The verses circulated in manuscript for generations until Farkas Deák found a copy in the Radványi library in 1874. His legacy includes the stanza that bears his name, nine lines rhymed a a b c c b d d b, and his recognition as one of the founders of Hungarian lyric poetry. Since 1997, Hungary has awarded a literary prize in his name.