Sandor Petofi

People best know Hungarian lyric poet and revolutionary hero Sándor Petöfi, originally Sándor Petrovics, for his patriotic songs and the epic poem

Janos the Hero

(1845).

This key national of Serb and Slovak descent figured in the Hungarian revolution of 1848.

Petőfi started his career as a poet with "popular situation songs," to which his first published poem, A borozó ("The Winery", 1842), belongs. This song of a drinker praises the healing power of wine to drive away all troubles. Despite this not unusual kind of pseudo-folk song in Hungarian poetry of the 1840s, Petőfi quickly developed an original and fresh voice, which made him stand. He wrote many poems like folk song on the subjects of wine, love, romantic robbers et cetera. The love poem A virágnak megtiltani nem lehet ("You Cannot Forbid the Flower", 1843) exemplifies many of these classic early poems, and Befordultam a konyhára ("I Turned into the Kitchen", 1843) uses the ancient metaphor of love and fire in a playful and somewhat provocative way.

Folk poetry and 19th-century populism very significant influenced work of Petőfi' despite other also present influences: familiar with the works of major literary figures of his day, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pierre-Jean de Béranger and Heinrich Heine, Petőfi drew on sources, such as topoi of contemporary almanac-poetry, in an inventive way.