1831

1831 is the date attached to Mihály Vörösmarty’s five-act verse drama Csongor and Tünde. It locates the play historically, while its varied dramatic forms—philosophical dialogue, song, comic pursuit, and supernatural spectacle—give that date a literary context: a romance whose longing for an ideal world repeatedly meets mortality and uncertainty.

Publication and Form

The title page identifies Mihály Vörösmarty as the author, names Csongor and Tünde, describes it as a drama in five acts, and dates it to 1831. The date therefore belongs to the work’s publication record; the available evidence does not establish a more precise chronology of composition or performance.

The play’s five-act form encompasses sharply different modes of speech and action. A song invokes sleep and the uncertain paths of fortune, while a comic episode has a company chase a fox. Elsewhere, the Scholar reflects on the soul and the mind’s power to make the beautiful world seem like a dark night because it cannot bear to witness everything passing away. These contrasts show the range of dramatic material gathered under the 1831 title-page date.

Longing and Transience

The Scholar’s meditation turns the drama’s pursuit of an ideal elsewhere into a problem of perception. He argues that the mind, which thinks and wills, can darken the beautiful world rather than face its impermanence. The reply that this vision does not reveal Fairyland, followed by the wish that the beloved sleep because her dawn has not yet come, sets philosophical doubt beside an intimate hope for a future arrival.

That tension reaches a cosmic scale in Night’s account of primordial existence: darkness and nothingness were, she says, herself, and she gave birth to the world. The play thus places human longing within a creation story that begins in emptiness, while its recurring images of night, sleep, and dawn make fulfillment feel both desired and delayed.

Theatrical Sound and Ending

Song and stage direction help organize the play’s changes of tone. The sleep-song gives musical shape to the uncertainty surrounding fortune; the fox chase shifts into collective comic movement. Near the end, the accompanying maidens gradually withdraw from sight. As the golden apple falls, a song is heard from afar, beginning with the words, “Midnight is here, the night is cold and sad.” The visual retreat and distant voice make the ending resonate beyond the visible action, while recalling the drama’s persistent contrast between hoped-for happiness and the passage of time.