One of the wittiest compositions in the historical arcade places the two Miklós Zrínyis side by side. Here Bory Jenő recalled not two different members of the family, but two outstanding figures of the Zrínyi family who lived almost a century apart: the hero of Szigetvár and the military commander-poet.
The figure on the left is Miklós Zrínyi, captain of Szigetvár (1508–1566), who during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566 resisted the huge army of Sultan Süleyman I with a handful of defenders. When the defence of the fortress had become wholly untenable, he led his soldiers in a sortie and fell in battle. His steadfastness soon became one of the best-known examples of Hungarian and European resistance to the Turks.
Beside him appears his great-grandson, Miklós Zrínyi the poet, military commander and statesman (1620–1664). The seventeenth-century politician was not only an outstanding soldier, but also one of the most important creators of Hungarian Baroque literature. In his best-known work, The Peril of Sziget, he immortalised precisely the story of his heroic ancestor, thus transmitting family memory in literary form.
In Bory’s statue, the two figures are clearly distinguished from one another. The hero of Szigetvár rests his hand upon his sword, referring to his military role, while the poet Zrínyi holds a book. The sword and the book represent, as simple yet expressive symbols, the difference between the two lives. One served his homeland with a weapon, the other with the pen.
The composition is remarkable in linking the historical hero and the poet who immortalised his memory in a single sculptural group. In this way, Bory Jenő commemorated not only two significant personalities, but also the way in which an event of history becomes literature, and literature in turn becomes national remembrance.