Amid the preparations for the abortive Russo-Ottoman peace talks at Fokschan in April 1772, Anton Wenzel Kaunitz instructed the Austrian Internuntius in Istanbul, Franz Maria Thugut, to elect a colleague to accompany him to the congress. Kaunitz, eager to maintain Austria's unique relationship with both belligerent parties, suggested two young orientalists, Bernhard von Jenisch and the Hungarian noble Karl Reviczky as suitable companions. In character with many thirty-somethings in the Habsburg bureaucracy in the 1770s, Thugut, Jenisch, and Reviczky were fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish and possessed an exceptional knowledge of Ottoman affairs. As members of the Austrian embassy to the Ottoman Porte, they had each spent long sojourns in Istanbul. The recruitment and education of such men had been one of Kaunitz's priorities since the 1750s. Thugut knew both candidates well, especially Jenisch, an old chum since their student days at the Oriental Academy in Vienna. Despite Reviczky's recent successes as a translator of an Ottoman treatise on government and some ghazals by the Persian poet Hafez, Thugut did not share Kaunitz's esteem for the young noble, explaining that Reviczky “is as ingenious as he is faint-hearted; he turns pale at the mere mention of plague and would take objection to travel over the channel with sharp winds.”Footnote ¹

A Hungarian noble, orientalist, bibliophile, and imperial envoy to Warsaw (1772–1779), Berlin (1779–1785), and London (1786–1790), Karl Emerich Alexander Reviczky de Revisnye (Károly Imre Sándor Revisnyei) provoked a wide disparity of opinion among his contemporaries. Whenever his name appears in eighteenth-century letters, newsprints, or diaries a belittling anecdote or laudatory remarks are almost certain to follow.Footnote ² Thugut's jibe at Reviczky's pathophobia was light in comparison with the derision of other contemporaries, including a Prussian envoy in Warsaw in 1772 who wrote to Frederick II of the Hungarian's pedantry, indecisiveness, lack of political acumen, and faultless command of Latin and Greek.Footnote ³

For all the canards that accompany Reviczky, contemporaries—even those holding otherwise disparaging opinions—were in nearly unanimous agreement that he was a scholar of considerable prowess. He was heralded in his time as a polymath who reputedly mastered German, Polish, Latin, Italian, French, English, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, in addition to his native Hungarian.Footnote ⁴ He gained particular renown as an orientalist, translating an Ottoman treatise on government by the Hungarian renegade Ibrahim Müteferrika and a number of ghazals (lyric poems) by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez.Footnote ⁵ His correspondence network encompassed nearly the entire European continent and expanded with his travels, embracing prominent intellectuals and politicians in London, Warsaw, Milan, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. Among his most famous correspondents were the orientalists Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, Johann Reiske, and Sir William Jones, with whom he shared a twenty-year correspondence.Footnote ⁶ Reviczky also amassed one of the most renowned personal collections of early printed works of the Greco-Roman classics, the contents of which he sold to the Earl Spencer in London in 1789.Footnote ⁷

The first extensive study of Reviczky's career and writings, this article examines the important role of a Hungarian in the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II and his contributions to late eighteenth-century orientalism.Footnote ⁸ In line with this goal, this article offers a reconsideration of the relationship between orientalism, Enlightenment, and Josephinism in the late-eighteenth-century Habsburg monarchy through an examination of Reviczky's education, early travels, and orientalist writings. It is hoped that a subsequent article will complete the picture by investigating Reviczky's diplomatic career and his activities as a book collector.

As one of only two Hungarians who served as an imperial ambassador for the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century, Reviczky's role in the reform programs and foreign policy of Maria Theresa and Joseph II is worth special investigation.Footnote ⁹ His achievements as a scholar were matched by a successful diplomatic career lasting more than two decades. He was promoted to the rank of Freiherrn in 1773, admitted by Maria Theresa to the prestigious Order of St. Stephen in 1775, and granted the rank of Graf (count) by Joseph II in 1783 for his services as imperial envoy to Prussia.Footnote ¹⁰ In this capacity, he made valuable contributions to the currents of Josephinism, orientalism, and antiquarianism, while always remaining an ancillary figure in all three intellectual movements. In character with other proponents of the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy, Reviczky was an imperial official rather than a philosopher, who in his role as a diplomat operated as a conduit for Josephinist enlightenment, reform Catholicism, and the economic principles of the physiocrats.Footnote ¹¹ Men like Reviczky formed a crucial stratum of the Josephist civil service, functioning not only as advocates for reform, but often as its primary transmitters and visionaries, participating in similar capacity as spirited contributors to both the Central European Aufklärung and the pan-European Enlightenment.

With his compatriots, Adam Kollár and Franz Dombay, Reviczky was among the most prominent and prolific Hungarian orientalists of the eighteenth century.Footnote ¹² He was born in 1737, in either Vienna or Hungary, into a Hungarian noble lineage of venerable status dating back to the thirteenth century. The family derived its name from the Carpathian seat of Revisné (Revisnye), today Žilina in Slovakia.Footnote ¹³ Karl's father, Johann, was a man of many talents. A member of the Hungarian chancellery, in 1732 he held the posts of Causarum Director and Consiliarius at the royal chamber of Pozsony (Camerae Posoniensis). In addition to his responsibilities in the chancellery, Johann pursued a career as a cartographer, completing a survey of the Hungarian county of Máramaros (today Maramureş in Romania) that was printed in Vienna in 1725.Footnote ¹⁴ A fragment from a panorama of Buda and Pest completed in 1713 by Johann and a team of others survives among the collections of the Moravian Library in Brno.Footnote ¹⁵

Following Johann's death, Pál Melczer and Sámuel Ondréjkovics, two members of the Hungarian chancellery, completed a deed of estate detailing an impressive family library. Among the 439 volumes in the family library were works by Grotius, Puffendorf, Justi, Guicciardini, Ortelius, Scaliger, and Melanchthon, as well as treatises on Hungarian and imperial law, Byzantine chronicles, and histories of the Turks.Footnote ¹⁶ Such a vast collection was typical among the libraries of high-ranking noble families from western Hungary in the eighteenth century.Footnote ¹⁷ Karl's own collection, accrued throughout his life, would eventually number in excess of 3,600 volumes. After his death, Johann's two sons continued the tradition of family service to the dynasty. Anton, Karl's elder half-brother, entered the Jesuits at fifteen, became a professor at the University of Tyrnau (Nagyszombat), and was later appointed superior chaplain for Habsburg armies in Bohemia during the war of the Bavarian succession.Footnote ¹⁸

Not much is known about Karl Reviczky's early life apart from the fact he received a meticulous education in his parents' house and displayed a penchant for learning foreign languages from a young age.Footnote ¹⁹ He spent a substantial period of his early life in the bishopric of Neutra (Nyitra), residing in the palace of Bishop Emerich Esterházy de Galantha (r. 1741–1762).Footnote ²⁰ The writer of Auf was Art der heutige kk: Gesante in Pohlen Fr: v. Rebizky zu dieser Grosse gekommen, an anonymous and factually dubious diatribe, maintained that Reviczky embezzled a large sum of money from the Bishop and then fled to Rome to pursue his studies.Footnote ²¹ Once in Rome, the young Hungarian's penchant for languages helped him earn renown as a skilled diplomat, albeit one beleaguered by accusations of fraud. Thereafter he approached a cardinal in the Papal Curia, who placed the Hungarian under his protection and provided Reviczky with adequate means to travel and continue his studies.

Such ambition and international pretensions were not uncommon among the scions of noble families from western Hungary, who were noted for their penchant for languages, their loyalty to the dynasty, an interest in linking the progress of their country with developments elsewhere in Europe, and for cultivating a new conception of the noble as a skilled professional.Footnote ²² Contrary to what Hungarian nationalist historians have often argued, Hungarians in Habsburg employ did not view service to the dynasty and to Hungary as a contradiction in terms.Footnote ²³ Despite their central importance to the reform period, very little is known about the role of Hungarians who served in the monarchy's central bureaucracy at the end of the eighteenth century. Credit for the origins of many reform ideas in the period have gone almost entirely to officials at the court in Vienna, even though many of these ideas came from Hungarians in the central government.Footnote ²⁴ In order to overcome the deficiencies in the central government's knowledge of Hungarian affairs and the divided loyalties of the Hungarian Diet, the crown's chief minister throughout the reform period, Anton Wenzel Kaunitz, actively recruited skilled Hungarian officials. From the end of the Seven Years' War, Kaunitz believed that the stabilization of Austria's status as a great power was possible only through the use of Hungarian sources of power.Footnote ²⁵ Pressed by his own ignorance of Hungarian affairs to incorporate experts on Hungary into the Council of State, Kaunitz increasingly turned to these men for advice, even compiling a list of Hungarians deserving of promotion and patronage. The core of this group included men such as Antal Grassalkovich, Anton Cothmann, Antal Brunsvick, Ferenc Koller, and Adam Kollár.Footnote ²⁶ As a Hungarian descending from a family with a notable record of service to the dynasty, Reviczky was a logical choice for a position within Kaunitz's Staatskanzlei. Through an examination of Reviczky's life and work, this article seeks to address Franz Szabo's appeal for further studies on Hungarian reformers, without whom “even limited reform would have been impossible.”Footnote ²⁷

The neglect of these individuals is a product in large part of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hungarian historiography, which has generally accepted that that the enlightened reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II were predicated on a cultural program of Germanization and the political aim of centralization. If Maria Theresa's policies “denationalized” the Hungarian nobility, Joseph II's measures reawakened their dormant patriotism.Footnote ²⁸ Within this narrative, the Hungarian nobility are represented as the protectors of Hungarian freedoms against royal despotism. Consequently, nobles like Reviczky who served the Habsburgs are deemed the highest careerists, or worse, traitors.Footnote ²⁹ Even magnate families like the Esterházy have fared poorly, condemned for their cosmopolitan outlook, their service to the dynasty, and receptiveness to foreign influences.Footnote ³⁰ Hungarian Marxist historians perpetuated this trend by defending the aristocracy's opposition to Vienna's efforts at centralization, regarding events like the revolt of the Hungarian Diet in 1790, as a crucial act in defense of the “nation.”Footnote ³¹ Not only has this event been regarded as an inevitable reaction against the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, but the events of the previous fifty years—the stalled 1764–1765 Diet, Joseph's declaration of German as the official language of administration—have often been seen through the perspective of the political crisis of 1790.Footnote ³²

The nationalist historiography of Hungary and the Habsburg successor states is matched in Austrian and Anglo-American circles by works based on a division between the center and the provinces.Footnote ³³ By ignoring lower officials in the administrative hierarchy, this historiography has painted a distorted picture of the bureaucracy as essentially German in character, imposing its will on the non-German provinces.Footnote ³⁴ As a figure rooted in Hungary, but who spent the greater part of his life in Vienna or abroad in an official capacity, Reviczky is an ideal microcosm through which the historian can bring together numerous competing historical narratives. This work seeks to overcome the shortcomings of the nationalist and center-periphery approaches, by drawing its inspiration from Grenzenlos (borderless) histories, which in opposition to the nationalist historiographical traditions of many Central European nations, draws attention to the monarchy's multicultural and multiethnic past.Footnote ³⁵ In similar fashion, this work seeks to answer R. J. W. Evans's appeal for a study of Hungarians living in Vienna in the eighteenth century, in the hope that such research will sharpen our understanding of the relationship of the Hungarian nobility to the Crown and various cosmopolitan cultural influences.Footnote ³⁶

Men like Reviczky regarded themselves first-and-foremost as subjects of the Kingdom of Hungary, and the House of Habsburg, seen as the guarantor of Hungarian rights and liberties, was acknowledged as the best means for the improvement of their country and their careers. As Rebecca Gates-Coon has argued, the participation of Hungarian nobles in the public affairs and social life of the monarchy and Vienna “demonstrated their belief in the permanence of the Habsburg connection in Hungary.”Footnote ³⁷ There exists no more appropriate moniker for these nobles then the Latin Hungarus, a term that denotes not the national categories defined by nineteenth-century Magyar nationalism, but the older estates-based concept of the Hungarian citizen rooted in a territorial notion of Hungary, rather than a linguistic or ethnic definition.Footnote ³⁸

Evidence of this comes from an early letter by Reviczky to Sir William Jones, which for its observations on the frivolity of the French, the effeminacy of the Italians, and the dullness of the Germans might well have been written by Usbek from Montesquieu's Persian Letters. Therein, Reviczky identified himself as a member of the Hungari:

His stress on the differences between Germans and Hungarians was at odds with the prevailing current of elite patriotism in the monarchy, expressed most vividly by Joseph von Sonnenfels, who championed the idea of a unified Austrian state (Gesamtstaatsidee). The dissimilarities Reviczky noted between Germans and Hungarians would in Sonnenfels's view be overcome through a common devotion to the fatherland, built upon a civic spirit championed by state officials.Footnote ⁴⁰ Rather than being “denationalized” or “assimilated”—and thus a “traitor” to his homeland—Reviczky's identity as a Hungarian was central to his self-conception. Contemporary observations corroborate this fact.Footnote ⁴¹ Seemingly none of these commentators have made the mistake, common to many modern historians, of stating that Reviczky was an Austrian or Polish man.Footnote ⁴²

The streamlining of the bureaucracy and the incorporation of Hungarians like Reviczky into the central government was accompanied by a newfound conviction among Vienna's political elite from the 1750s that an intimate knowledge of Ottoman affairs could provide considerable political advantage. In 1754, Maria Theresa had given her support to the foundation of the Oriental Academy (Orientalische Akademie) in Vienna, a language school created to train interpreters and diplomats for service in the Ottoman lands. Some of the most accomplished orientalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Bernard von Jenisch, Ignaz von Stürmer, Franz Dombay, Jacob von Wallenburg, and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall—were graduates of the Academy. Whether Reviczky attended remains uncertain.Footnote ⁴³ The pupils were from diverse backgrounds, but each came from families with a history of Habsburg service, which for Josef Franz, the Academy's first director, was a main criterion of selection.Footnote ⁴⁴ Like other institutions of higher education run by the Jesuits in the Habsburg lands, the intellectual atmosphere of the Academy was cosmopolitan and the curriculum heavily geared toward rhetoric and language acquistion. The students imbibed French and Italian theater, oriental prose and poetry, the Latin and Greek classics, and perhaps even ideas of freemasonry.Footnote ⁴⁵

With the foundation of the Academy, a trend developed in the late monarchy where knowledge of oriental languages provided greater opportunities for promotion within the civil service. From its inception in the fifteenth century, Habsburg orientalism had always had an “eminently political element,” as Hellmuth Lorenz argues.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Austrian Internuntius in Istanbul and the institution of the Sprachknaben were earlier manifestations of this. What changed with the founding of the Academy was that orientalism increasingly became co-opted by the state and was even considered a criterion for advancement in the bureaucracy. Alongside Thugut, Jenisch, Stürmer, Chabert, Dombay, and others, Reviczky embodied this new archetype.Footnote ⁴⁷ Many of these men would later become chief secretaries at the Viennese court, leading delegates in the Austrian embassies throughout the Ottoman lands, and well-regarded scholars of oriental literature.Footnote ⁴⁸

The instruction at the Academy conditioned the pupils' perceptions of the Ottoman Empire before they ever arrived, by providing them with a predetermined set of interpretative and analytical tools that shaped what they saw.Footnote ⁴⁹ The genre of the apodemic told the traveler what to look for and what questions to ask, thus facilitating the production of travel accounts that aspired to make impersonal and dispassionate scientific observations.Footnote ⁵⁰ Reviczky's writings contributed to the construction of this image in the minds of his European readers. He attempted to make Ottoman and Persian literature comprehensible to a readership educated in the classical tradition and well acquainted with the writings of the philosophes, but for whom the landscape of Persian poetry and Ottoman political thought remained untrodden. Reviczky mediated these differences by drawing upon tropes and allusions familiar to his audience, so that Müteferrika in French translation spoke much like Montesquieu.

Reviczky's works and those of his colleagues in the Habsburg bureaucracy merit a complete reevaluation of orientalism and the intellectual legacies of Habsburg enlightenment. By uncovering the previously obfuscated contributions of native speakers to what were once regarded as the original observations of European orientalists, modern scholars have successfully delineated orientalism's genesis amnesia.Footnote ⁵¹ Full disclosure of the dialogic process at the heart of oriental scholarship remains incomplete, as is a proper appreciation of authors from regions like Poland and the Habsburg monarchy—lands often deemed backward by the intellectual standards of the Enlightenment in Britain, France, and the German lands—who had a hand in the creation of a pan-European orientalist discourse. These scholars assembled and translated an extensive corpus of oriental literature that was read prodigiously by scholars throughout the continent. Despite having a wide readership in their own lives, posterity has condemned them to obscurity because they often wrote in Latin, a language oblique to many modern scholars of orientalism, and because these men hailed from countries once believed to have remained untouched by the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment.

In response, this article argues that many of the insights usually attributed to French, German, and British orientalists in the nineteenth century actually originated in the works of Habsburg scholars in the eighteenth century or even before. Furthermore, by drawing attention to Latin and French translations of oriental literature from the Habsburg monarchy, this article rejects the conclusion made by Edward Said in Orientalism that German orientalist scholarship, and by extension East Central European variants of the same, were merely a refinement and elaboration of information “literally gathered from the Orient by Britain and France.”Footnote ⁵² Many other historians of German orientalism have skillfully criticized Said's work and made many novel arguments for a unique Austrian brand of oriental scholarship.Footnote ⁵³ Nevertheless, studies on orientalism in the Habsburg context remain few and far between. Existing works predominantly focus on orientalist writings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while neglecting crucial eighteenth-century developments that gave Austrian orientalism its distinct character.Footnote ⁵⁴ None have made the effort to understand Habsburg orientalism as a discourse tied to imperial expansion into the Ottoman Balkans.

Reviczky's writings remain particularly underappreciated. Historians of Austrian literature and German orientalism have noted his important contributions to oriental scholarship, but only in passing.Footnote ⁵⁵ Ottomanists and Persianists have made some use of his translations.Footnote ⁵⁶ While the leaders of Hungarian literary and national revival in the Hungarian Leibgarde, like György Bessenyei and Ferencz Kazinczy, have warranted a great deal of attention, other Hungarian writers of the period like Reviczky have been neglected.Footnote ⁵⁷ In the past this has stemmed from the special pride Hungarian literary historians took in the statement that “Hungarian literature is the record of Hungarian patriotism.”Footnote ⁵⁸ A fine exception to the rule is the Hungarian poet and orientalist, Géza Képes (1909–1989), who lamented that historians and philologists have neglected Reviczky's translations of Persian poetry. Képes also demonstrated Reviczky's influence, via William Jones, on the work of Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, a key figure in the late-eighteenth-century Magyar literary revival.Footnote ⁵⁹ A brief article by the Polish orientalist Jan Reychman discusses Reviczky's correspondence with A. K. Czartoryski, but fails to discuss the full contents of their letters.Footnote ⁶⁰ No scholar has undertaken an exhaustive study of Reviczky's orientalist writings, his correspondence with fellow orientalists, and the reception of his works across Europe.

Reviczky's remarkable knowledge of oriental literature and Ottoman affairs was formed during his residence in Istanbul in the 1760s. With the reappointment of Heinrich Penckler as Austrian Internuntius to the Ottoman Porte in 1762, Reviczky traveled to Istanbul in July as a member of the delegation, just one of twenty-seven Austrian consulates in the Ottoman lands.Footnote ⁶¹ The Gazette de Vienne recorded Reviczky's participation in the ornate procession of Ottoman and European dignitaries occasioned by Penckler's first official audience with the Grand Vizier.Footnote ⁶²

Penckler's delegation took up residence in Pera, the European quarter. The year of their arrival was an eventful one. Plague was rampant and the Austrian mission was destroyed in a massive fire.Footnote ⁶³ Disasters aside, Pera was a vibrant, multilingual community. Lady Mary Montague had once written of it: “I live in a place, that very well represents the Tower of Babel; in Pera they speak Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Sclavonian, Walachian, German, Dutch, French, English, Italian, Hungarian.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Reviczky would eventually master nearly all these languages, and his time in Pera would significantly influence his later interests in the character of peoples.Footnote ⁶⁵ It was most likely during this time that Reviczky first met Thugut, who had already served as chief interpreter for the Austrian mission for five years.Footnote ⁶⁶ Reviczky stayed in the city for three years, according to fellow orientalist Bernard von Jenisch.Footnote ⁶⁷ Some years later, according to Viscount Stormont, Reviczky was offered the post of Austrian Internuntius, but turned it down.Footnote ⁶⁸ His “travels in Turkey” would later even win him the admiration of Frederick II of Prussia.Footnote ⁶⁹

While resident in Pera, Reviczky became an active participant in the social exchanges that occurred regularly between European and Ottoman officials and local inhabitants. Like many Europeans in the eighteenth century, he most likely had connections with numerous sahhafs, the secondhand booksellers of Istanbul.Footnote ⁷⁰ As his letters attest, he collected Turkish, Arabic, and Persian manuscripts, as well as a number of Turkish printed works during his time there.Footnote ⁷¹ He may have also examined the contents of several Ottoman libraries, including the library of Ayasofya founded by Sultan Mahmud I and opened in 1740.Footnote ⁷²

Perhaps Reviczky's most important contact in Pera was an unnamed Persian language teacher. He describes this teacher in one of his first letters to Sir William Jones, whom Reviczky met while visiting England in 1768. The twenty-two-year-old Jones was a recent Oxford graduate whose affinity for languages was so esteemed that King Christian VII of Denmark commissioned him to translate Mir Kwand's history of Nader Shah.Footnote ⁷³ The meeting between Reviczky and Jones was over in a quarter of an hour, but they would write to each other for over twenty years. Much of Jones's later work would be heavily indebted to Reviczky, including “A Prefatory Discourse on the History of the Turks,” a foreword to an uncompleted treatise that copied large excerpts from the preface to Reviczky's Traité de tactique.Footnote ⁷⁴ The two men exchanged their works regularly, and Jones even brought his copy of Reviczky's Specimen Poeseos Persicæ to India after he was appointed Chief Justice to the East India Company.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the segment on Persian poetry from his Poeseos asiaticæ commentariorum libri sex cum appendice, Jones quoted extensively from Reviczky's 1771 work on Hafez.Footnote ⁷⁶

As he explained in an early letter to Jones, Reviczky was first captivated by oriental literature when his Persian tutor in Istanbul “accidentally repeated” the following celebrated dobeytii (quatrain) from the Gulistan by the Persian poet Sadi.

One modern English translation reads:

This munshi served the same purpose for Reviczky as Jones's coterie of Indo-Persian and Brahminical “readers and writers” upon whom he relied throughout his scholarly career. Much of Reviczky's own exegetical acumen was born out of such interactions. A cursory glance through the mass of erudite, Latin footnotes in many Habsburg orientalist works reveals the authors’ indebtedness to native speakers and various Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript sources, including works like the Farhang-i Jahangirii.Footnote ⁷⁸ Of singular importance for Reviczky and his colleagues in the Habburg bureaucracy were a host of Ottoman commentaries and anthologies on Persian poetry and literature that they read in the royal libraries of Istanbul, Vienna, and the German lands.

As shown by Robert Lemon in the context of the works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka, and Veronika Bernard in her study of nineteenth-century Austrian orientalist literature, orientalism as it developed in the late Habsburg monarchy was a vehicle for authors “to express concerns about their own troubled empire.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Reviczky's writings were fostered by a similar inclination, serving as a platform for advocating reform and as a means for criticizing the problems of censorship, religious intolerance, and ecclesiastical authority. But scholars of Austrian orientalism have failed to fully appreciate that orientalism, and in the Habsburg context, was also an instrument of power that directly shaped Vienna's relations with the Ottoman Empire. Although Lemon's claim that orientalism in the Austrian context did not serve as a hegemonic discourse “to bolster Occidental imperialism” may stand true for the late empire, throughout the eighteenth-century orientalism in the Habsburg monarchy was “directly tied to colonial counter-expansion down the Balkan peninsula.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Whether it was bullying the Ottoman Grand Vizier into ceding Bukovina in 1775,Footnote ⁸¹ mapping Ottoman military installations in the Balkans,Footnote ⁸² translating Ottoman campaign accounts,Footnote ⁸³ or compiling a colloquial Turkish phrasebook for use by Habsburg military officers,Footnote ⁸⁴ graduates of the Oriental Academy did not limit themselves to expositions on oriental prosody and poetry. As it so often has been, orientalism and oriental diplomacy were mutually reinforcing.

With that said, the relationship between orientalism and Josephinist imperial ideology vis-à-vis the Orient was never constant. Changes in Vienna's official relationship with the Ottoman sultan often provoked changes in the character of Habsburg oriental scholarship. In the period 1740–1790, two general and seemingly contradictory positions can be discerned in Vienna's relations with the Porte. A succinct summary of the first position comes from a letter written by Kaunitz to Reviczky, while the latter was imperial envoy in Berlin in 1783:

The greatest peril to Ottoman survival was Russian expansion, a specter so troubling that Reviczky had once written to Kaunitz:

Vienna's view of itself as self-proclaimed protector of the Ottoman Empire was also motivated by a picture of the Ottoman lands as stagnant, backward, and desperate for European intervention, views that would later justify many nineteenth-century European interventions in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁸⁷

Coexisting alongside the first position were the constant temptations posed by the numerous “partition plans” drawn up throughout the reform period, including those by Reviczky's colleagues, Baron von Bender and Count Cobenzl. Emperor Joseph II and Kaunitz never rejected these plans outright and even gave added inspiration to Empress Catherine's more famous “Greek project.”Footnote ⁸⁸ For her part, Maria Theresia was reluctant to seize any territory from the Ottomans, seeing such a move as befitting only someone as amoral as Frederick II. She was equally doubtful of the utility of annexing “Unhealthy provinces, without culture, depopulated, or inhabited by perfidious and ill-intentioned Greeks …”Footnote ⁸⁹ Kaunitz's thinking was more mercurial, with perhaps nothing more unpredictable than his decision in 1769 to pursue an alliance with the Ottomans.Footnote ⁹⁰

Rather propitiously, that same year Reviczky had completed his translation of Usulü'l-Hikem fî Nizami'l-Ümem by the Hungarian renegade, Ibrahim Müteferrika, a work conceived within the traditional genre of the nasihatname.Footnote ⁹¹ Müteferrika had operated a short-lived printing press in Istanbul—“the first press with moveable Arabic type led and operated by Muslims”—from 1729 to 1742.Footnote ⁹² During his residence in Istanbul, Reviczky inspected the remnants of Müteferrika's press, something that made him an important contributor to the eighteenth-century debate about the provenance of the fonts. In the preface to his translation, Reviczky praised the mastery of Müteferrika's craftsmanship “I must say to [Ibrahim Müteferrika's] praise that the books which he printed in Constantinople, especially those in large format [folio], are very beautiful editions, and as for the beauty of the characters, they come closer to the beauty of Arabic writing, in fact they are preferable to the most beautiful ones printed by the Christians in eastern languages.”Footnote ⁹³

In his Litteratura Turchesca from 1787, the Italian orientalist Giambattista Toderini argued against the views of those who claimed the fonts were imported from Europe by citing Reviczky's opinion that the characters cast by Müteferrika were different from Arabic fonts produced in Europe.Footnote ⁹⁴ The Hungarian also refuted the opinions of some European commentators who said the press was shut down because of a revolt by the scribal class, arguing that the activities of the press ceased because there were no printers who possessed Müteferrika's expertise. He also suggested that the Turks disliked printed books because manuscripts, despite their higher price, more adequately captured the beauty of Turkish and Arabic writing.Footnote ⁹⁵

The main thesis of Müteferrika's work was that the Ottoman state had to learn and adopt from the Europeans to regain its former power.Footnote ⁹⁶ Reviczky's translation, Traité de la tactique ou méthode artificielle pour l'ordonnance des troupes, was printed by Maria Theresa's court printer, Thomas Trattner. It was one of only two works from Müteferrika's press translated in eighteenth-century Europe.Footnote ⁹⁷ Decades before, many of Müteferrika's printed works were added to the collections of the Hofbibliothek, the Imperial Library in Vienna.Footnote ⁹⁸ As a work that advocated greater understanding between the Turks and Europeans—if not full rapprochement—Reviczky's translation was evocative of a changing attitude among Vienna's political elite toward its relationship with the Porte.

The political component of Reviczky's work cannot be overlooked. Traité de la tactique appeared one year after the outbreak of war between the Ottomans and Russians in 1768, the first war between the two powers since the Porte's unexpected success against the Habsburgs and Russians in the wars of 1736–1740. In his explanation for why Müteferrika's work, which heavily praised the Christian powers, was approved for publication by the sultan in “this nation, always revolting against novelties,” Reviczky argued that the nearly fifty years of continual defeat suffered by the Ottomans in their wars with European powers “bid them to reflect on their faults, and on the defects of their principles of war.”Footnote ⁹⁹ According to Reviczky, the successes the Ottomans experienced in the last war had inhibited their adoption of these reforms and had reassured them of the strength of their traditional military system.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In reply to those critics who argued that a study of Ottoman military tactics would lead to an excess of confusion, Reviczky provided the experiences of the Roman armies as proof that even “the best disciplined troops of the world” can be defeated by “barbarians.” Order and tactics were only useful, according to Reviczky, when “one knows how to oppose them to disorder.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Drawing a comparison between themselves and the ancient Romans was a common trope among eighteenth-century European military officers when writing on the Russians and the Turks.Footnote ¹⁰²

Considered in this light, Reviczky's translation must be appreciated in the context of contemporary debates within the Habsburg army over suitable strategic doctrines in the event of war with the Ottomans. Leading generals in the Habsburg army had argued throughout the 1760s, and would continue to maintain up to the outbreak of war with the Turks in 1788, that “the Ottoman army because of its peculiar recruitment and administration system, was not suitable for modern tactical employment.”Footnote ¹⁰³ They held that any war against the Ottomans would be won with certainty provided Austrian forces could utilize the same tactical maneuvers and cordon system customarily employed against Prussia. In 1769, the same year as the publication of Reviczky's translation, the Habsburg army issued the Generals-Reglement to its officers, an operations manual composed by Field Marshal Moritz Count Lacy, which clumsily outlined the strategic and tactical doctrines of the unwieldy Habsburg military system, but which, in contradiction to the accepted wisdom in the Habsburg army, maintained that the Ottoman soldier was superior to the European.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Lacy's colleagues in the Hofrat who met in 1769 to discuss the inevitability of a Turkish war were of a different opinion, arguing that a war against the Ottomans would be easily won.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In response to the prevalence of such an idea, Reviczky's work had attempted to show that Ottoman armies were growing increasingly aware of European military innovations and in some instances adopting them with modifications. For all the advantages provided by the well-disciplined tactics of European armies, these could be neutralized by the havoc occasioned by an encounter with a disorderly Ottoman army. The Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1736–1739 had illustrated this point vividly. For Reviczky, the Ottomans were not the only ones who could benefit from paying greater attention to their neighbors' military developments.

While Müteferrika attacked Ottoman ignorance of Europe in his original work, Reviczky inverted the audience in the preface to his translation, criticizing the unenlightened attitudes that Europeans harbored toward the Turks. In turn, the interest of a Turk in the affairs of Europeans served for Reviczky as a foil for the ignorance of Europeans toward the Turks. Thus, he wrote that the reader “may perhaps be surprised to see in the course of this work the frankness with which the Turkish author enters into discussion” of European military tactics “and the liberty with which he explains all these points.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ He lamented that the Ottoman Empire, despite being on Europe's doorstep is “nevertheless little understood, and that among an infinity of books and of written relations on their habits and government, there is scarcely a single work which one can recommend reading.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ He contended that this was because travelers and scholars who visit the Ottoman lands “ordinarily lack the language which is the key, and without which it is difficult in any country to obtain astute notions” and that those who possess the requisite language skills “are usually not very curious, or deprived of insight.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Reviczky attributed the lack of interest among Europeans for oriental languages in part to a prevailing ignorance in which some “believe that it is not worthwhile to apply oneself to knowing the affairs of these beings whom we exclude even from the numbers of men.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹

In his effort to refute such claims, Reviczky stated that he found among the Turks “no people who are more curious, more passionate about the sciences, nor who apply themselves more to study, and where knowledge gives more esteem.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ As an explanation for the high degree of illiteracy among the Turks, he offered the following as an explanation:

This was quite judicious coming from a man credited with mastering fourteen languages.

It was the intellectual inflexibility of religious scholars and elites that Reviczky labelled as the cause of Ottoman stasis and decline. He had earlier praised the Abbasid Caliphs, al Mansur, al Rashid, and al Mamun, for their patronage of the arts, so “that one can almost say with right: if one saw any wisdom flowering over the entire world, it was with certainty in greatest bloom with them.”Footnote ¹¹² Centuries of decline, however, had made the Turks and Arabs inferior to Europeans in philosophy, physics, and mathematics—a reality, he contends, that Muslims admit themselves—with their entire corpus of texts limited “to the translations and commentaries on Greek authors which the Arabs of Andalusia made, which [the Turks] still study in their schools without having changed or added almost anything new.”Footnote ¹¹³ Reviczky saw the vilification of the sciences by the ’ulama and the opprobrium with which Ottoman officials regarded the study of European languages as a grave threat to the future survival of the Porte, a situation that “will render them less formidable than their neighbors for a long time.” He attributed this to “the arrogance and sovereign contempt with which [the Turks] regard all that comes from foreign people to their religion.”Footnote ¹¹⁴

With Jones, Reviczky held the beauty of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature in great regard, with poetry judged the finest art, surpassing the stale motifs of contemporary European verse.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Revicky believed that poetry captured “the vivacity, the imagination, and the delicacy of the spirit of these [Islamic] nations, qualities which can make them all capable, when they have changed their way of thinking.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Poetry was thus a corrective for what he regarded as the fanaticism and dogmatism of the scholarly and political elite in the Ottoman Empire.

This interest in poetry led him to complete Specimen Poeseos Persicæ, a Latin “paraphrase” of a number of ghazals, or lyric poems, by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez.Footnote ¹¹⁷ This work would establish his reputation as an internationally recognized orientalist and was cited frequently into the next century.Footnote ¹¹⁸ An English translation by Jones's associate, John Richardson, was printed in 1774 and a German translation by Johann Friedel in 1783.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Reviczky spent several years completing the translations and commentaries. He had attached a number of early translations of Hafez in his first letter to Jones in February 1768 and later inquired about extant European translations, especially that of Thomas Hyde.Footnote ¹²⁰ It is possible he had earlier inspected two manuscripts of Hafez's poems stored in the Hagia Sophia Library in Istanbul and dated 1410 and 1413.Footnote ¹²¹ He most likely also worked from several manuscripts in the Oriental collection of the Hofbibliothek.Footnote ¹²²

In his preface, Reviczky aimed to discover the origins of the Persian genius for poetry, which he says nearly every historian has ignored in his or her emphasis on the laws, religion, customs, and morals of the Persians. More to the point, he asked whether this genius was inherited by the Persians from their forefathers or brought by the Arabs who conquered Persia in the seventh century. For Reviczky, the Islamic conquest of Persia represented a complete cultural revolution, in which everything was “remodeled after the tastes of the victorious Arabs, so that every letter, which the Persians possess in their language today, has not the slightest trace of the old.”Footnote ¹²³ To his mind, no one received Arabic more enthusiastically in both its prose and verse forms than the Persians, who in their adoption of the language sought to “establish a new, purer art of writing,” which thus marked “the true and definite origin of Persian poetry.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Nowhere else was this Persian achievement in poetry greater than in the city of Shiraz, which Reviczky deemed “not without justice the Athens of Persia,” both for the subtleties and distinctive elegance of its dialect and for the geniuses it produced.Footnote ¹²⁵ For Jones, Reviczky, and many other eighteenth-century orientalists, the greatest of these geniuses was Hafez.Footnote ¹²⁶

The debate over whether to interpret Hafez literally or figuratively—which raged between Hafez's contemporaries, Reviczky and Jones, and scholars today—was something to which Reviczky devoted a great deal of attention.Footnote ¹²⁷ For any eighteenth-century orientalist, the vocabulary of translation and linguistic comparison was comparatively limited. Latin words like affinitas, similtudo, cognatio, and others were used interchangeably and their vernacular analogs were often equally vague.Footnote ¹²⁸ Reviczky's goal, as he explained in the preface to Traité de Tactique, was to convey the sense and the spirit of the text, “without following too obsessively the order of the sentence.”Footnote ¹²⁹

Reviczky was familiar with several commentaries on Hafez's poetry, including those of the Ottoman scholars Katib Celebi, Sudi, Sururi, and Sham'i and that of the Timurid scholar al-Taftazani.Footnote ¹³⁰ Reviczky also made use of European works like Francis Meninsky's grammar and Herbelot's Bibliothèque orientale.Footnote ¹³¹ Of paramount importance in his interpretation of Hafez was the commentary on the divan by Ahmad Sudi al-Bosnawi (d. 1598), a scholar originally from Ottoman Bosnia.Footnote ¹³² As Reviczky wrote to Jones, Sudi “professes to give a literal exposition of the text of Hafez, in opposition to the opinions of other commentators, and without questioning the purity of his intentions.”

For eighteenth-century scholars like Reviczky, with an obvious ax to grind with the clerical establishment, Sudi's interpretation was embraced because it was most compatible with their own religious inclinations. In the same letter where he praised Sudi, Reviczky had continued: “I am disposed to believe that when Hafez speaks of love and wine he has no recondite meaning … Nor can I avoid considering him a free thinker: and a hundred passages might be quoted, in which he ridicules the prophet and his Coran.”Footnote ¹³³ Hafez's poetry was deeply appealing not only for its beauty, but also because Enlightenment scholars saw something of their own predicament in Hafez's reoccurring conflicts with figures like the zahed, ‘ayibjoy, and the ‘ulama. The idea of Hafez as a pious, reverent Sufi was most unwelcome for scholars like Reviczky who supported the suppression of monasteries and who held disparaging opinions of Islam. At a time when monasteries were being suppressed throughout the Habsburg monarchy, Hafez's own conflicts with “monks,” as Reviczky termed them, served as a vivid illustration of the necessity of Vienna's clerical reform program. A sense of this comes from Reviczky's preface: “[Hafez] lived with the monks of his religion in steady disagreement and enmity. They did not refrain from maligning him everywhere with more envious tongues. On the contrary, [Hafez] took vengeance most sensitively, and revealed with every opportunity their hypocrisies and apish piety with undaunted courage.”Footnote ¹³⁴

Like Hafez, Reviczky would be no stranger to conflicts with the clerical establishment. He clashed most notably with Giuseppe Garampi, papal nuncio in Warsaw from 1773 to 1775, who found the Hungarian's commitment to the Catholic cause insubstantial and his zeal for religion almost non-existent, writing on one occasion: “I go about studiously cultivating Baron Reviczky, but I am frightened by the maxims of tolerance which predominate everywhere.”Footnote ¹³⁵

In his work on Hafez, Reviczky found particularly galling the attempts by Oriental and European scholars to “purify their favorite poet, [believing] to find in the most impertinent parts of his poems concealed and oblique allusions to divine things and the highest secrets of religion,” criticizing the Turkish scholar, Ahmet Feridun, for suggesting that Hafez's songs of wine and drunkeness Hafez were simply metaphorical.Footnote ¹³⁶

Reviczky also disagreed with Jones on several points of translation, most noticeably over Hafez's famous “Shirazi Turk” ghazal. Persian, a language with no clear gender distinctions unless explicitly stated, makes the poet's meaning often wonderfully ambiguous to the translator.Footnote ¹³⁷ Jones effectively “heterosexualize[d]”Footnote ¹³⁸ the verse by referring to Hafez's beloved as “Maid of Shiraz.” Reviczky's rendering “Schirazi graecilis puer” left no doubt that the beloved was a boy. On another occasion the Hungarian berated Jones for a similar linguistic somersault.Footnote ¹³⁹ Reviczky also rejected the attempts by other commentators like Sururi and Sham'i to exonerate Hafez from the charge of blasphemy by including grammatical and critical notes in their collections of the poet's work.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ He also harangued European scholars like Thomas Hyde and Herbelot who had tried to uncover the hidden mysteries of Hafez's poetry, leveling Martial's classic aphorism at them: “It's a foul trick to make light verse difficult to appreciate and stupid to waste effort on silly trifles.”Footnote ¹⁴¹

Even if most found Reviczky's “paraphrase” a fine accomplishment, his work was not met with universal acclaim. Fortunately for Reviczky, the unflattering opinion held by the renowned German philologist Johann Reiske was the exception. Reiske wrote to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1771:

Reviczky's renown as an orientalist did not contribute merely to the growth of his literary reputation, but was an important factor in the advancement of his political career. It was most likely the Hungarian's extraordinary linguistic proficiency that led to his appointment as imperial plenipotentiary to Poland in 1772. Kaunitz appreciated that qualified linguists could provide Austria with a crucial advantage over Prussia and Russia in its relationship with the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ¹⁴³ They also could provide victories of a humbler sort. During a public audience in 1780, King Frederick II of Prussia asked Reviczky, then serving as imperial ambassador in Berlin: “From which language is the word aga derived? I do not know it, and no linguist ever gave me a satisfactory answer about its derivation.” In reply, Reviczky stated that aga was in fact originally an Armenian word, meaning master or superior, which was then adopted by the Saracens and Turks, from whom it passed to Spain “and there [has] been applied to the female sex, whence originated the sweet Spanish word Aya.” Frederick, whose delight in publicly embarrassing ministers from foreign courts had no doubt failed in this particular instance, is then said to have thanked the imperial envoy for his answer “as if it contained a discovery of the greatest importance.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Reviczky's reputation had certainly preceded him, as Frederick's earlier letters attest.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Though he only published two orientalist works, Reviczky continued to pursue his interests in oriental literature during his time as a diplomat. It was given added energy during his time in Warsaw through his contacts with Prince Adam Czartoryski, the scion of one of Poland's most important noble families. The extant letters written between Czartoryski and Reviczky are peppered with Persian and Ottoman poetry and often accompanied by Revickzy's Latin and French renderings of the same. It is clear that Czartoryski, like Jones, regarded Reviczky as a mentor in these matters, even sending his compositions to the imperial envoy for correction and criticism, including an unfinished work titled “Beğ zade.” A clear illustration of their association comes from a letter containing a small composition written by Czartoryski in Ottoman Turkish. At the time of writing, it appears the Prince had not quite mastered the rules of Ottoman orthography, leading Reviczky to provide a correct transcription at the bottom of the letter.Footnote ¹⁴⁶

A well-known dobeytii from the Gulistan of the Persian poet Sadi, whose verses first triggered Reviczky's interest in oriental literature, are found in yet another letter. Previously uncited and expressive of Reviczky's remarkable linguistic dexterity, the contents of this letter from the Czartoryski Library in Krakow bear quotation at length. The original Persian is accompanied by Reviczky's Turkish and French renderings:Footnote ¹⁴⁷

In yet another letter, Reviczky suggested that Czartoryski embroider the mantle of his war horse with this Persian verse from Sadi's Gulistan: “I am not one whose back you will see on the day of battle / If you see a head in the midst of the dust and the gore, it is mine.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸

The arrival of the Ottoman ambassador Numan Bey in Warsaw in 1777 was a matter of great excitement for Reviczky and Czartoryski. Upon discovering the Ottoman envoy planned to visit the Polish capital, Reviczky is said to have changed his travel itinerary and remained there until the envoy's departure, despite the fact that he had already sold his horses.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ A report from Warsaw in Journal de Politique et de Littérature, printed in the Austrian Netherlands, clarifies this episode. With the expected arrival of Numan Bey the following month, Reviczky was to remain in Warsaw to inform himself of the Ottoman envoy's propositions—matters that were of great interest to the court of Vienna.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

But more personal motives can be suspected in Reviczky's decision to meet with Numan Bey. His diplomatic career had prevented him from pursuing his interest in oriental languages, and the arrival of the Ottoman envoy provided a rare opportunity to showcase his talents. An indication of this is found in a letter to Czartoryski from 15 September 1777, wherein he complained: “I have only seen Numan Bey here from afar and I have not conversed with him either in Turkish or chrétien.” Reviczky concluded the letter with a snippet written in Ottoman Turkish, which reads: “Because the ambassador does not go to the tavern, [and] I never come to the mosque, it is not possible for me to meet him first without company.” In a final flourish, he signed his name in Arabic characters.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Whether Reviczky ever had his sought-after meeting is unknown. His protégé, Czartoryski, was more fortunate, as Numan Bey's interpreter recorded in his journal: “[Numan Bey] made the prince sit on the sofa, and since the prince knew a little Turkish they conversed and entertained themselves in a friendly manner for more than an hour.”Footnote ¹⁵² Through Reviczky's intervention, Czartoryski also initiated a correspondence with Sir William Jones.Footnote ¹⁵³

Reviczky's influence was not limited to Czartoryski and Jones. His legacy can be discerned in many German, Habsburg, British, and Russian orientalist works. The circulation and retranslation of Reviczky's writings demonstrates with particular cogency that, although orientalism is “never monolithic nor stable, but rather splintered into a vast plurality of discursive practices and ideologies,” it is also to some extent a common discourse, where scholars borrow from various “national” traditions.Footnote ¹⁵⁴

A clear sense of this—and of divergent priorities—is found in the preface to John Richardson's 1774 translation of Reviczky's Specimen Poeseos Persicæ. Richardson hoped that his translation would assist East India Company officials in the “the study of princes with whom we must treat, people with whom we must trade, subjects whom we must govern.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Regarding native interpreters as perfidious, ignorant, and a danger to British interests in India, Richardson believed that treachery could only be neutralized when “English gentleman can officiate as their own interpreters.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Through Richardson's translation, Reviczky's work would therefore help augment the East India Company's power in India—and continued to do so into the next century. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the future Governor of Bombay, recorded reading “Revisky on Hafiz” in a diary entry from Hyderabad in 1802.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ A British cavalryman, who later regretted his inglorious role in suppressing the Indian Mutiny in 1857, wrote to his mother from Simla in 1847 asking her to procure a copy of Reviczky's Specimen Poeseos Persicæ from a London bookseller.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Henry Wilberforce Clarke, a lieutenant colonel in the Indian army and a notable popularizer of Persian poetry, also praised Reviczky in his version of Hafiz's Divan.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Even Lord Byron may have discovered Hafiz through Richardson's translations of Reviczky's work.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

A similar situation occurred with Reviczky's Traité de la tactique, which was translated into Russian and printed in St. Petersburg in 1777.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Probably as a result of Russia's strong identification with the West, orientalism during the reign of Empress Catherine was alien to the intellectual life of the Russian intelligentsia, and the works of foreign scholars were the only orientalist works that appeared in Russia at this time.Footnote ¹⁶² The impetus for a Russian translation was most likely provided by the Russo-Turkish war of the early 1770s and Reviczky's regular contacts with Russian officials in Warsaw in the same period. The translation of the Hungarian's work was completed by Alexei Levashov, a sergeant in the Ismailovksy Regiment, and dedicated to Field Marshal Nikolai Repnin, the Russian commander in the war of 1768–1774 against the Ottomans and the lead Russian negotiator at the peace negotiations at Küçük Kainarji in 1774.Footnote ¹⁶³ Some years later, on the occasion of Repnin's victory against the Ottomans at Maçin in 1791, Reviczky wrote to one of his patrons, the Earl Spencer: “While you exhaust yourself in useless armaments, the Russians win one battle after another. Last Wednesday, a Russian courier again brought news of a complete victory over the Turks by Prince Repnin, with the whole camp taken, 4000 men killed, 30 cannons taken &c. &c.”Footnote ¹⁶⁴

Reviczky's impact on Central European orientalism was of a different character. His writings served both as a source for nineteenth-century scholars in their efforts to systematize knowledge of the Orient and also as an entry point for dilettantes like Herder and Goethe in their readings on Oriental literature. The significance of his work on German orientalism in particular has gone largely unrecognized, obscured by the exceptional impact of Jones's writings. Gottfried Herder was clearly familiar with Reviczky's work, both directly through Specimen Poeseos Persicæ and indirectly via the medium of Jones's Poeseos asiaticae commentariorum libri six.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Nevertheless, Herder does not appear to have read Reviczky's work during his first forays into Persian literature in the early 1770s.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ In a letter sent in June 1788 to Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Herder reminded his “liebster Freund” that he still had the copy of Reviczky's Specimen Poeseos Persicæ Eichhorn had sent him.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Possibly as a result of reading these works, Herder once remarked “We have almost enough of Hafiz's songs; Sa'di has been more useful to us.”Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Judging from the available evidence, it appears that Goethe was only familiar with Reviczky's work through the medium of William Jones and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Hammer-Purgstall, perhaps the most prolific of nineteenth-century orientalists, mentioned Reviczky in several works, on one occasion praising “The invaluable enterprise of providing the text with successive commentary, after the model of Baron v. Revitzki.”Footnote ¹⁷⁰

In Hungary, Reviczky's translations of Hafez indirectly contributed to the Magyar literary revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Hungarian poet, Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, whose poetry stands out as an exemplar of the new vernacular movement in Hungary at the turn of the century, was deeply inspired by Jones's work on Hafez. Vitéz's work provided a paradigm for Hungarian authors deep into the reign of Francis Joseph. As Géza Képes has observed, the point of departure and arrival in the transmission of Hafez centered on two Hungarian poets.Footnote ¹⁷¹

But in the final years of Reviczky's life and in the beginning of Vitéz's writing career, the politics of language in Hungary, and by extension the monarchy as a whole, was drastically changing. In 1791 János Farkas published his grammar of the Hungarian language in German, wherein he provided the intrepid student with a number of parallel sentences, one of which read:

The publication of Farkas's work occurred in the wake of the Hungarian Diet's revolt against Joseph II's reform program, which included an attempt to make German the administrative language of all lands in the monarchy. It was Gottfried Herder who noted that the emperor had offended his peoples’ “prejudice of language.”Footnote ¹⁷³ From the early 1790s, Latin and the other languages of Hungary were reduced drastically in favor of Magyar, which quickly became the language of Hungary's political elite and provided the voice for the nascent Hungarian nationalism of the nineteenth century. Latin had been a language of political inclusion in Hungary, but Magyar became a language of political exclusion.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

Unlike some contemporary Hungarian intellectuals and nobles, Reviczky appears to have had no interest in Magyar as a literary language. His brand of enlightenment found expression in the Latin argot of the Habsburg monarchy and Catholic Europe, in cosmopolitan, pan-European Francophone culture, and in the German used by Vienna in official correspondence. For him, language was the best means of appreciating the character of a nation, acting not as a solidifier of an alterist discourse, but as an instrument of inclusiveness. His was a very different worldview from the vernacular parochialism that characterized the Hungarian nobility after his death.

Archives and manuscript sources

• BL: British Library, London

  Add MS 76016—Althorp Papers, Vols. dccxvi. Letters from Count Reviczky, followed by a detailed catalogue of his books

• CML: The Czartoryski Museum and Library, Krakow, Poland

  Czartoryski Archives and Manuscripts, MSS 6050 nr. 39, 40, 41, 50

• HRC: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  William Jones's copy of Count Charles Reviczky's Specimen Poeseos Persicae

• JRUL: The John Rylands University Library, Manchester

  The Spencer Incunabules

• MRL: Moravian Library Brno, Czech Republic

  Revický, Ján František. Insig. Civ. Budensis. Et Pesthiensis Tom. III.

• NAS: The National Archives of Scotland

  Manuscripts Division, MS.23157, Letter No.56

• TNA: The National Archives, Kew, London

  FO 7/13—7/22: Foreign Office and predecessor: General Correspondence before 1906, Austro-Hungarian Empire (formerly Holy Roman Empire); Papers of Sir Robert Murray Keith

  SP 80—State Papers Foreign, Holy Roman Empire, 1578–1780