Memorial Ode in Ceremonial Context Mihály Tompa: Remembering Zsuzsanna Lorántfi

Abstract

With the help of the examination of the religous ceremony for which – as concluded by perusing contemporary journals – it was commissioned, the study analyses Mihály Tompa’s memorial ode from 1860. The ceremony itself had nationwide political significance, too: it actually celebrated the withdrawal of the imperial letters patent aiming for the demolishment of the autonomy of the Protestant Churches. In the speeches of the ceremony the political message is clearly discernible but not in the memorial ode. It is plausible that a socalled failure of a previous ode written for an academic request in 1859 was actually the cause why this memorial poem was trying too hard to appeal to the instructions of the Church – and missed the ceremony’s political meaning.