Foreword

If the transplantation of foreign poetry into English were a matter of linguistical skill and ability alone, the achievement of Miss Nora de Vállyi and Miss Dorothy Stuart would not rank higher than many other similar translations from one language into another. But here we have before us a task of quite a different character. The Hungarians, as Orientals by extraction and Occidentals by education, have always retained in their poetry the peculiarly Oriental spirit of thought and fancy. Their poetical productions are generally arrayed in the gorgeous Oriental dress, and although sometimes foreign to the Westerner, still never fail to attract our attention and to delight our mind. Of course, the harmonising of the ideas of two different races is not an easy matter, and it is with the utmost astonishment that I have read the English version of the Magyar Poems. The translators have done full justice to the task before them, for not only is the rendering perfect and most faithful, but also the English, as far as a foreigner can judge, is faultless and flowing. Up to the present very few Hungarian poems have appeared in such a becoming and trusty garb as the collection before us, and the translators certainly deserve the credit of the English reader and the thanks of the Hungarian nation.

A. Vambéry.
Budapest.