Page - 376 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 8376 Excerpts of the Elegia were then included by Hell, with lengthy annotations and a celestial map of new constellations named after George iii and Herschel, accompanied by their eulogies, in the Ephemerides for 1789.116 Szerdahely was appointed in 1774 as the first professor of aesthetics at the University of Trnava (then Buda, and finally Pest) before being transferred to the position of director of the university’s gymnasium in 1784. He was the au- thor of the first comprehensive work on aesthetics in Hungary (Aesthetica [1778])117 as well as important studies on general poetics (Ars generalis poetica [1783]) and genre theory (Poesis narrativa and Poesis dramatica [1784])—and a fellow ex-Jesuit of Hell’s. Like Hell, Szerdahely was a strong devotee of the leg- acy of his order, often lamenting its demise in his poetry,118 and also like Hell he suffered denigration from “enlightened” circles.119 The significance of the two astronomical poems for Szerdahely himself is highlighted in the preface to the Silva Parnassi Pannoniae, in which their place is pivotal, and which is dedicat- ed to Hell in recognition of his encouragement to Szerdahely to compose and publish such poetry.120 “Poetry and astronomy have always been friends, as they have been brothers, too,” both of them “dwelling in heaven,” where al- ready Plato located the muse of poetry along with her sister Urania. Szerdahely expresses his conviction that Hell, who campaigned to rename the new planet Urania in the debate related in the Lis astronomorum, had a “poetic spirit” him- self, thanks to his outstanding inquiries into the “eternal worlds” jointly governed by the two muses and the arts they represent.121 The heavens are por- trayed as embracing a physical universe of celestial bodies as well as a cosmos of fiction, accessed and interpreted by human creatures with the means of a dual code: the one by astronomy and the other by poetry. Both of these are in need of resorting to a spiritus poeticus, which according to its original Greek 116 The three pieces are found in the Ephemerides 1788 (1787): 273–302 and 305–15; and the Ephemerides 1789 (1788): 332–56. 117 This work earned Szerdahely considerable international recognition. On this, as well as biographical information and a general reassessment of Szerdahely’s fairly neglected and under-appreciated contributions, see István Margócsy, “Szerdahely György művészet- elmélete,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 93, nos. 1–2 (1989): 1–34; and Piroska Balogh, Teória és medialitás: A latinitás a magyarországi tudásáramlásban 1800 körül (Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 2015), 13–102. 118 László Szörényi, “A latin költészet helyzete Magyarországon a xix. században,” Irodalom­ tudományi Közlemények 89, no. 1 (1985): 1–17, here 6. 119 Margócsy, “Szerdahely művészetelmélete,” 5–6. 120 The dedication and the two men’s relationship did not escape the attention of the re- viewer of the volume for the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, no. 257 (August 21, 1789): 508–9. 121 Cited in Balogh, “Sic itur ad astra,” 106.