“Éjfél van, az éj rideg és szomorú”

The refrain “Éjfél van, az éj rideg és szomorú” is the play’s final song: after the attendants withdraw and the golden apple falls, a voice sounds from afar, summoning a beloved into the night. Its bleak midnight imagery does not simply cancel the lovers’ happiness. Instead, the closing contrast makes love appear as the one thing that remains awake amid a darkening world, leaving the ending poised between achieved union and the larger cycle of night and change.

Form and Placement

The song arrives in the final stage direction, after the accompanying maidens have gradually gone away until they can no longer be seen. The golden apple then falls, and only from a distance is the refrain heard. This sequence gives the ending a carefully staged withdrawal: visible company recedes, the emblematic fruit drops, and sound takes over the space left behind. The song is not introduced as speech by a named character; its distance makes it an atmospheric, almost choral aftervoice.

The placement distinguishes the refrain from the play’s earlier songs and choruses. At the opening, the stage direction marks a song, while elsewhere a group speaks together or the Nemtők sing in the air. Those earlier vocal forms belong to the movement of scenes; the final voice comes after the main action has reached its resolution. Its function is less to advance an encounter than to reopen the ending’s emotional and temporal horizon.

Night and the Falling Apple

The first line declares midnight and describes the night as cold and sorrowful. The next line extends that mood to the sky, whose gloom sinks into mourning. The lyric thus moves from a specific hour to a broadening image of darkness: night is not merely a backdrop but a force that colors the world. Its measured descent gives the ending a shadow that persists even after the lovers’ happiness has been affirmed.

The falling golden apple makes that shadow concrete. The stage direction links the fruit’s fall directly to the distant song, without explaining the event further. Because the fruit is golden and its fall is the last visible action, the closing image sets brilliance beside loss of elevation: what had been above now descends as the song calls toward the night. The text does not state that the apple’s fall undoes the lovers’ union; rather, its placement complicates a simple, untroubled curtain ending.

The Beloved and the Awake Love

The refrain turns from lament to invitation. Its speaker calls a beloved to share joy in the night, so the darkness is at once sorrowful and a place where companionship may still be sought. That shift prevents the song from settling into pure grief: the night is cold, yet the invitation offers pleasure within it.

The final line gives the song its defining paradox: in wakefulness, love alone remains. Its claim is not that the world has vanished, but that love is singled out as the solitary presence that stays awake. Heard after the characters and attendants have receded from view, the line enlarges a private bond into a closing principle. The play’s fulfilled love is held against midnight, not outside it; the lovers’ happiness and the night’s sorrow are allowed to coexist.

The Refrain Across the Play

The final song’s emphasis on dream and wakefulness resonates with an earlier song that begins by repeating the words for dream and sweet dream. The play also gives collective voices to sharply different moods: the fox-chasing cry of a group in pursuit and the Nemtők’s song in the air. Against those more immediate and playful vocal moments, the final refrain is remote, elegiac, and placed after the action. The contrast makes its distance part of its meaning: the play closes not with another visible exchange, but with a song that leaves the audience hearing love in the night.