258 HUNGAR IAN LITERATORE Critics have commented on this work from two different points of view. Some say that the dreams were recog nised by the poet bimself not to be in accordance with historical tr uth, and .were deliberately chosen by Lucifer with the diabotical aim of driving Adam to despair and suicide, and so destroying in bim the wh ole human race. Others explain the drama by saying that the great events and epochs of history appeared to Madách bimself in the gloomy light in which he depicts them. Aceording to those commentator!'l, Madách, the poet of disillusion, who even in his lyric poems generally tamented some disap pointment, saw in the hist ory of the world nothing but a constant shattering of the hopes which spring up from generation to generation. Every age has its ideals, but even whcn reacl1ed they prove delusive. Is man's history then really what Petőfi said of it, in a dark h our of doubt and hopelessness ? " We are like the tree which flowers and fades : like th e waves which rise and fali : like the traveller, wh o mounts a bill only to descend again. And so it goes on to ali eternity, up and down, up and down." If we take that view of The Tragedy of Man, its teaching is that the alternation of hope and disillusion, of ard ent enthusiasm and bitter disappointment, which in other of his works is Madách's favo urite theme, is the inevitable lot of mortals, and the wh ole drama may be regarded as an expan sion of Schopenhauer's well-known dictum, that history is a painful nightmare weighing down the mind of humanity. But is there then no consolalion in this long series of disappointments ? Does no stray, cheering sunbeam break through the darkness ? The poet answers in the words of God, words which, in my opinion, express the
