The “Year Without a Summer” in Hungarian Literature

Abstract

Today, thanks to the climate change and the bicentennial, the 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano and its effects on the Western World is a fairly well-researched topic. However, looking at Hungary, almost nothing is known about the impacts of the Tambora eruption, nor the cultural impacts of it. In this study, after listing the (mainly English) literary reverberations of the Tambora eruption, I deal with such works from Hungarian literature. Two contemporary and two classical authors’ works can be linked to the “Year Without a Summer”. In Janka Fábián’s historical novel, The Lovers of the Anna Ball, I present the determining role of weather and the appearance of further effects of the volcanic eruption. I briefly touch on the Villa Diodati Fragment cycle of the volume The Atlantis Tram by Zsolt Attila Pap, as it shows the atmosphere of the 1816 summer. In the case of the Eskimo scene of The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách, I describe the play’s connection with ‘Darkness’ and thus with the “Year Without a Summer” as a mistake. Finally, I discuss in more detail two late apocalyptic poems by Mihály Vörösmarty and their peculiar reception history, arguing that ‘The Old Gypsy’ and the ‘Prologue’ can be linked to the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816 for several reasons.