Hungarian president opens Arany Memorial Year in Transylvania

Salonta (Nagyszalonta), March 2 (MTI) – Hungarian President János Áder opened the memorial year marking the 200th birth anniversary of Hungarian poet and writer János Arany (1817-1882) in native town of Salonta (Nagyszalonta), today in western Romania, on Thursday.

He said the message hinted by Arany’s statue in front of the National Museum in Budapest is that “those can be part of a heroic fight” who serve “not by standing in the front line,” but by writing works that would last forever.

Arany lived in a turbulent period of Hungarian history when “courageous and dedicated patriots striving for reforms decided to take their fate into their own hands,” Áder said.

Although reserved as a character, Arany still “became part through his writings of the greatest undertaking of the 19th century: the re-establishment of the Hungarian nation,” the Hungarian president said at a commemoration in the local Town Hall.