Adalékok Körmöczi János emlékkönyvéhez
New Information Concerning János Körmöczi’s Album Amicorum

Summary/Abstract: The first half of this paper explores the friendship album (album amicorum) of János Körmöczi (1762–1836), which he developed as a student, while the second half covers a number of other albums and album entries which are connected to Körmöczi’s circle of acquaintances. The album contains 65 entries from the period 1794-1799. The original album is kept today in Kolozsvár (Cluj), in the Romanian Academy Library’s Cluj branch. Compared to other entries from the same period in Hungarian travelers’ albums which are catalogued in the Inscriptiones Alborum Amicorum internet database (~900 such entries are available), Körmöczi’s album is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is not entirely similar to the conventional travel album (almost all the inscribers are Hungarians or at least, people with “hungarus” identity). Additionally, it is scarcely ever in concordance with Körmöczi’s diary of his travels. It is also somewhat puzzling that inscribers tend to rely on the Hungarian language in a proportion that is unusual in the previous decades. A number of textual examples are provided for such entries, which are usually composed in verse form and are often comic in tone. Körmöczi was a translator of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). His album, as well as other albums from the same time, contain quotations from Fichte; in the last years of the 18. century, there are altogether 5 entries where Hungarian university students cite the author. These entries are also reviewed as well as a number of entries with a passage from Persius (A.D. 34-62): “quem te deus esse / iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re / disce” (Satires: 3. 71–73. “Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human aff airs you have been placed.”) This quote later became a motto in Körmöczi’s work, published in 1800 with the title: Divinity’s two daughters’: faith and reason – their mutual struggle and victory (Az istenség két leányainak a vallás és a józan okosságnak kölcsönös viaskodásai és győzelmei).

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