BALASSA, BALINT, BARON OF KEKKO AND GYARMAT , Magyar lyric poet, was born at Kekko, and educated by the reformer, Peter Bornemissza, and by his mother, the highly gifted Protestant zealot, Anna Sulyok. He died of wounds at the siege of Esztergom. Balassa's poems fall into four divisions : reli gious hymns, patriotic and martial songs, original love poems, and adaptations from the Latin and German. They are all most original, exceedingly objective and so excellent in point of style that it is difficult even to imagine him a contemporary of Sebastian Tinodi and Peter Ilosvay. But his erotics are his best productions. They circulated in manuscript for generations and were never printed till 1874, when Farkas Deak discovered a perfect copy of them in the Radvanyi library. For beauty, feeling and transport ing passion there is nothing like them in Magyar literature till we come to the age of Michael Csokonai and Alexander Petofi. Balassa was also the inventor of the strophe which goes by his name. It consists of nine lines—a a b c c b d d b—or three rhyming pairs alternating with the rhyming third, sixth and ninth lines.
See Aron Szilady, Bdlint Balassa's Poems (Hung., 1879).