Attila József


Attila József is one of the most famous Hungarian poets of the 20th century. Generally not recognized during his lifetime, József was hailed during the communist era of the 1950s as Hungary's great "proletarian poet" and he has become the best known of the modern Hungarian poets internationally.

Biography

Attila József was born in Ferencváros, a poor district of Budapest, in 1905 to Áron József, a soap factory worker of Székely and Romanian origin from Banat, and Borbála Pőcze, a Hungarian peasant girl with Cuman ancestry; he had two elder sisters, Eta and Jolán. When József was three years old, he was sent to live with foster parents after his father abandoned the family and his mother became ill. At the time of his birth, Attila was not a well known name; because of this, his foster parents called him Pista, a nickname for the Hungarian version of Stephen.
From ages seven to fourteen, József returned to living with his mother until she died of cancer in 1919, aged only 43. While also attending school, he worked many odd jobs and was a self-described street urchin. After the death of his mother, the teenage József was looked after by his brother-in-law, Ödön Makai, who was relatively wealthy and could pay for his education in a good secondary school.
In 1924, József entered Franz Joseph University to study Hungarian and French literature, with the intention of becoming a secondary school teacher. He was expelled from the university, deemed unfit to be a teacher, after he wrote the provocative and revolutionary poem, Tiszta szívvel. With his manuscripts, he traveled to Vienna in 1925 where he made a living by selling newspapers and cleaning dormitories, and then to Paris for the following two years, where he studied at the Sorbonne. During this period he read Hegel and Karl Marx, whose call for revolution appealed to him as well as the work of François Villon, the famous poet and thief from the 15th-century. Financially, József was supported by the little money he earned by publishing his poems as well as by his patron, Lajos Hatvany. He returned to Hungary and studied at Pest University for a year. József then worked for the Foreign Trade Institute as a French correspondent and, later, was the editor of the literary journal Szép Szó
A supporter of the working class, József joined the illegal Communist Party of Hungary in 1930. His 1931 work Döntsd a tőkét was confiscated by the public prosecutor. József's later essay "Literature and Socialism" led to indictment. In 1936, he was expelled from the Hungarian Communist Party due to his independence and interest in Freud.
Beginning in childhood, József began showing signs of mental illness and was treated by psychiatrists for depression and schizophrenia. In adulthood, he was sent by the state to a sanatorium and was diagnosed with "neurasthenia gravis." Modern scholars believe that he likely had borderline personality disorder. He never married and only had a small number of affairs, but frequently fell in love with the women who were treating him.
József died on December 3, 1937, aged 32, in Balatonszárszó. At the time, he was staying at the house of his sister and brother-in-law. He was killed while crawling through railway tracks where he was crushed by a starting train. There is a memorial to him not far from the location where he died. The most widely accepted view is that he committed suicide, which he had previously attempted, but some experts say that his death was by accident.

Poetry

József published his first volume of poetry A szépség koldusa in 1922; at the time of publishing, he was seventeen and still in school.
In 1925, József published his second collection of poems, Nem én kiáltok. József's works were praised by such internationally known Hungarian researchers and critics as Béla Balázs and György Lukács. In 1927, several French magazines published József's poems.
József's third collection of poems, Nincsen apám se anyám , showed the influence of French surrealism and Hungarian poets Endre Ady, Gyula Juhász and Lajos Kassák.
In the 1930s, József turned his focus from a search for beauty to the plight of the working class and reflected his interest in Communism. In 1932, Külvárosi éj, a mature collection of poems, was published. His most famous love poem, Óda, from 1933, took the reader for a journey around and inside the body of the beloved woman.
József's last two books were Medvetánc and Nagyon fáj, published in 1934 and 1936 respectively. With these works he gained wide critical attention. Ideologically, he had started to advocate humane socialism and alliance with all democratic forces. It was Attila József who first formulated the ars poetica of transrealism in his 1937 poem Welcome to Thomas Mann. József's political essays were later included in Volume 3. of his Collected Works.

Publications

Original works

Poems in English-language anthologies: