István Gyöngyösi and Zakariás N. Tétsi – on the 1702 edition of Márssal társolkodó Murányi Vénus

Abstract

The present study examines the publication and reception history of István Gyöngyösi’s Márssal társolkodó Murányi Vénus (The Venus of Murány in alliance with Mars) After the first publication in 1664 the book was reprinted in Kolozsvár in 1702 with considerable revision which was not made by its author. All the publications in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries were based on this edition. The first time the original Gyöngyösi text was published after the first edition was the one which came out in the twentieth century edited by Ferenc Badics. From the end of the eighteenth century on, the generally accepted view concerning the 1702 edition of Gyöngyösi’s Murányi Vénus has been that the text was faked by the editor. However, it is important to distinguish between editorial practices at the beginning of the eighteenth century and in later periods. Editorial practice at the beginning of the eighteenth century allowed the publisher to freely modify or complete the text while the more autonomous concept of literature prevalent from the end of the eighteenth century provided a more central role to the author. It is only from this latter perspective that the 1702 edition can be considered as a fake and its editor as the one to blame for it. Recent literature on Gyöngyösi has named Zakariás T(s)étsi as the publisher of the Kolozsvár edition of 1702 but no other information on him has been provided. This name refers to Zakariás Tétsi N., a student of the Reformed Church in Kolozsvár, known for his occasional poetry in Hungarian and Latin at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When studying the 1702 edition, one should also state that it was the publication of the Unitarian Officina operating in Kolozsvár between 1697 and 1703.