author
Mihály Fazekas
1766–1828
A soldier, poet, and botanist from Debrecen, he is best remembered for giving Hungarian literature one of its most enduring folk heroes in Lúdas Matyi. His writing mixed wit, social feeling, and a clear dislike of violence.
1 Audiobook
Gróf Gvadányi József és Fazekas Mihály (Magyar remekirók 6. kötet)
by gróf József Gvadányi, Mihály Fazekas
About the author
Born in Debrecen in 1766, Mihály Fazekas became one of the distinctive voices of the Hungarian Enlightenment. Sources describe him as a writer and botanist as well as a former soldier: he served first as a private and later as a Hussar officer before returning home.
After military life, he devoted himself to literature and the natural sciences. Accounts of his work note that his poems often showed disgust with war and violence and drew attention to social injustice.
He is most famous for Lúdas Matyi, the comic narrative poem about a goose-boy who outwits and takes revenge on a powerful landowner. The work remained widely known in Hungary, and Fazekas is still closely associated with Debrecen, the city where he was born and where he died in 1828.