the more we know about bálint balassi and his work, the more he seems to be a poet who transcended borders. he was literally born on a border, in the northern hungarian-turkish territory near poland. his mother-tongue was hungarian, but he probably learned slovakian and polish from his nanny first. there is no doubting the honesty of his religious emotions, although he belonged to several denominations during his life - raised by a lutheran, calvinist parents, and then the influence of jesuits during his adulthood. he lived for years with his father in the court of vienna and in the royal courts of transylvania and poland, perhaps becoming more familiar with the refined order of royal style and etiquette than any other hungarian. his religious verse dealt with the passion of romance while his romantic poems used theological terms and soared to religious heights. researchers have debated for years whether his descriptive language and place in hungarian literature was that of the first renaissance poet or that of the last troubadour. whatever the case may be, balassi was both archaic and ahead of his time, renewing contemporary fashion by reaching back to ancient sources and later incorporating features of mannerism and turkish poetic forms. moreover, he did so in hungarian, which offered no previous traditional model to follow. according to legend, he spoke seven languages in addition to his own: latin, german, italian, slovakian, polish, turkish and croatian. bálint balassi was not only the first, but also the most deeply european hungarian poet, and to this day his work continues to exemplify the openness of hungarian intellectual life to europe and the world.