deviant art
ILLINY, György. Der Bettel-Dichter als Rechtsfreund, und die Gerichts-Pflege des Unterreichs; oder die jüngste Vekündigung, und die Verthiedigung eines angeblichenNarren. Erster Theil [all published]. Miskolcz, gedruckt bei Ludwig Tóth v. Csögle, 1845.
8vo. Uncut and largely unopened in later Hungarian marbled boards, original printed wrappers bound in; pp. 99; wrappers a bit dusty and with one small hole; title-verso with carefully removed 19th-century collector's stamp, otherwise a very good copy of an almost unrecorded publication.
First edition. The Beggar-Poet as Legal Assistant and the Legal System of the Nether World was written by a mentally deranged messianic Hungarian author, who at the time lived in the North-Eastern Hungarian town of Miskolc. This play, which contains Hungarian verses, although largely written in German, opens with a scene of social realism: An impoverished merchant and poet in his only room with his four children is having breakfast. Other scenes are situated in prison, a hotel, or at a law court 32 in hell, the fantastic and realistic are mingling, a mockery of authoritarian politics and the liberating foreshadow of free-roaming creativity are alternating in this sequence of scenes, which ought to be tried out on the stage. The final scene, entitled The provisional Victory of the persecuted Innocence is a relentless celebration of Hungarian independence with twelve men and women singing a patriotic hymn, whilst the bad guys, the magistrates and other bureaucrats of the regime are in chains. Curtain.
Not in MNE, Holzmann-Bohatta, or OCLC; KVK locates one copy, in the Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar.
#2116525