of Debreczen. Debreczen is situated in the most purely Hungarian part of the country. Its inhabitants are Hungarian Calvinists. In the eighteenth century it was the largest town in Hungary, and from the time of the Reformation was the centre of Protestant theology and of national intellectual life in general. It is often called "The Calvinistic Rome." It was there that botany was first studied scientifically, and that the best Hungarian grammars were written. In the large, though village-like town, there was a huge ugly building like a barrack, the inmates of which wore long black togas. This was the most famous high school in the country during the eighteenth century, the college of Debreczen.
The most original poetic genius and the finest lyrist of his time was Michael Csokonai Vitéz (1773–1805), a student at that school. Strongly national in feeling and at the same time deeply learned, he represents the town in which he lived. His one shortcoming, a lack of elevated taste, he shared with all the writers of his school.
Csokonai was born in Debreczen and died there, but the greater part of his life was spent in restless wandering. It would seem as if the Muse of poetry bestowed the traveller's wallet on Hungarian poets. We have seen what a wandering life Balassa led. Csokonai's life was very similar. In his talents and taste, Csokonai resembles the German poet, Bürger. His earliest critic points out the similarity.
The ruling ideas and tendencies of the time had their effect on Csokonai's mind, but it is interesting to observe that despite all foreign influences, he remained thoroughly national. The eighteenth century liked the playful, pleasing, and sometimes yearning tones of anacreontic poetry, and thus Csokonai wrote poems of that character.
