The Hammer of the Village

This is not the Sándor Petőfi of required readings for school, the one that makes students yawn. We perform the humorous, taunting Petőfi, who is ingeniously inventive with language (the poet also appears in the production).

We want the youth of today to fall in love with the twenty-something rascally genius who wrote this brilliant work. A helység kalapácsa (“The Hammer of the Village”) was written in 1844, three months before Petőfi wrote János vitéz (John the Valiant). According to Petőfi’s definition, it is a heroic epic, but in fact it is a mock epic, a parody which even today offers an impudent but persuasive caricature of Hungarians, who are constantly quarreling with one another. Petőfi wrote the composition with considerable humor and affection in order to entertain.