„Szeresd a magyart, de ne faragd le”

Extending and reclaiming (?) the program of embellishment in Toldi and in Toldi estéje

Abstract

The paper offers a reinterpretation of Toldi within the context of the discourse on embellishment (“csinosodás”), more specifically, explores the relationship between the work and an early article of Arany on people’s education. The analysis of the text reveals a transitional process from savagery to cultivation, arriving to the conclusion that Toldi is more closely related to the embellishment discourse of the Reform Age than the popular-national paradigm, which was still a relatively new context at that point. In the Toldi estéje, the paper identifies an act of reclaiming these educational ideals, extended to the people now, together with the eventual dissolution of them in the immanent nationalist paradigm.