Verseghy's views on language and style in his last work, 'A Treatise on a Hungarian Translation of the Holy Scripture'

The author starts by expressing his appreciation for former chief librarian Erno Szurmay's achievements in the area of research on Verseghy. Then he goes on to point out that he has chosen Verseghy's Treatise as the topic of this paper because this was Verseghy's last and summative piece of work. He describes the preparations for a new edition of Kaldi's 1626 translation of the Bible and of the circumstances of Verseghy's book being written. He emphasizes the following characteristics of Verseghy's Treatise: (a) he was a genuine philologist in this work, too; (b) he thought that the most important requirements for a translation were accuracy, lucidity, and delightfulness; (c) he laid special emphasis on some unique features of Hungarian; and (d) he claimed that the Bible was a piece of poetry and that it had to be translated as such. In conclusion, the author discusses the extent to which Verseghy's corrections served the emergence of Standard Literary Hungarian.