Arany János kötetszerkesztési gyakorlata és a Kisebb költemények (1856)
Composition Practices in János Arany’s Volumes of Poetry and the Manuscript “Kisebb Költemények” (1856)

Summary/Abstract: The study looks into the volume structuring practice of János Arany (1817–1882), one of the most important Hungarian poets of the 19th century. For this purpose, it employs a manuscript from 1856 of the Kisebb költemények (Short/Minor poems) preserved today at the University Library in Cluj, and compares it with two other of Arany’s extant manuscripts: one in which he collected his poems intended for publication (kept now at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest) and a collection of his old years, known in Hungarian literary tradition as the Kapcsos Könyv (The clasped book), which contains the most important works of his late poetry. Arany never published the complete collection in his lifetime, but there are clear signs that he considered it a cycle. The three manuscripts also offer a good grasp of the permanent and changing elements of Arany’s poetic practice. In the appendix, the study publishes a note from the 1850s in which Arany listed his published and unpublished works.

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