About the work

Words of the first scene in the manuscript

We know pretty much about the birth of Madách's work, the presentation of the manuscript to János Arany and the corrections made by the poet are also well-known facts. Thank God the original copy has also been preserved, and we are familiar with the correspondence and notes regarding the process of overhaul.

To trace back the spiritual circumstances and the preceding motifs in the world literature is a much more difficult task, because Madách's drama is a fine web of literary topoi and remarkably original solutions. And this takes us to the evaluation, which had seated hundreds of researchers in front of a paper in the past nearly 150 years to unstitch the exceptionally manifoldness and richness of this seemingly homogeneous, single-line literary work.