Attila József

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Attila József (1927)

Attila József , Hungarian form of name József Attila [ ˈjoːʒɛf ˈɒtilːɒ ] (born April 11, 1905 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary , † December 3, 1937 in Balatonszárszó ) was a Hungarian poet who is one of the most important in the country.

Life

The early years

Attila József was born in 1905 as the sixth child of a soap boiler in a simple family. However, three of the five siblings had already died at the time of his birth. So he had two sisters, the older Jolán and the younger Eta. In 1908, when Attila was three years old, the father left the family and allegedly disappeared to America.

Attila's mother Borbála Pőce came from the Hungarian province. After her husband escaped, she became a laundress in Budapest and had difficulties to support the family. Therefore, between 1910 and 1912, Attila and his sister Eta had to spend two and a half years with foster parents in Öcsöd . There he was no longer called by his first name, Attila, which was rare at the time, but "Pista" (nickname for István / Stefan ). According to his own statements, József had a strong influence on this period, for example he began to research the origins of his true first name, Attila. After the children returned to their mother, they lived together in the Pest district of Budapest .

The First World War

Attila was nine years old when the First World War broke out. During this time he was already helping his mother around the house and at work. He describes this in his résumé:

“I was also allowed to queue up enough in front of the shops, although it happened that I had been waiting in line at a grocery store since nine o'clock in the evening and I was given at half past seven in the morning when it would have been my turn - immediately before my nose - declared that the lard was out. I helped my mother as best I could. I sold water in the 'Világ' movie theater (note: 'World'), stole wood and coal at the Franzstadt train station to get heating material, and made colorful paper pinwheels that I sold to children from better-off families. In the market halls, I carried baskets and packages, etc. "

- Attila József : curriculum vitae

In 1914, József tried to commit suicide after an argument with his sister Jolán. In the same year his mother becomes seriously ill. Four years later, in 1918, he was able to spend a few weeks in Abbazia as part of a child aid program . There he wrote his first poems. In the following year 1919 Jolán married the lawyer Ödön Makai. Attila moved to relatives in the country. The mother died in the same year. It appears in several poems by Attila József. From 1920 Attila attended the grammar school in Makó .

First publications

Statue of Attila József in front of the University in Szeged

In 1922 and 1923 the liberal and most important Hungarian literary magazine of the 20th century Nyugat published his first poems. He commented on this:

"I was thought to be a child prodigy even though I was only an orphan."

- Attila József : curriculum vitae

One of the poems brought him a lawsuit for blasphemy, in which he was acquitted. He gradually managed to graduate from high school. However, he had to work again and again in order to be able to make a living, once as a cabin boy on Danube steamers, once as a tutor, once as a day laborer.

In 1922 his first volume of poetry was published, with a foreword by the outstanding poet Gyula Juhász . At that time, Attila was still a sub-prime. The volume was entitled Szépség koldusa (= beggar of beauty ). Above all, his sonnet Éhség (= Hunger ) was perceived as independent and entirely new. His verses then appeared in the local newspapers in Szeged and Nyugat.

In 1924 he began to study Hungarian, French and philosophy in Szeged. His second collection of poems, Nem én kiáltok (= the one who shouts, I am not ) was published in Szeged. Even at a young age he got into trouble because of his poetry. Especially because of the poem Tiszta szívvel (= Pure Heart ) (1925), he was expelled from the University of Szeged by Professor Antal Horger . József reports on this:

“However, I was completely deprived of the pleasure that Prof. Antal Horger, with whom I would have had to take the examination for the Hungarian language, had me called over and in front of two witnesses - I still know their names today, both are high school teachers - meant that as long as he was there, I would never become a secondary school teacher, "because such a person" - literally - "who writes such poems" and he held a copy of the 'Szeged' under my nose " we cannot entrust the upbringing of the next generation "."

- Attila József : curriculum vitae
Statue of Attila Jozsef in Budapest

The following year he lived in Vienna , where he first made a living from smaller jobs. Then he got a free table at the Collegium Hungaricum and taught there. In Vienna he met Lajos Kassák , Tibor Déry , György Lukács and Lajos Hatvany . He kept coming back to Hungary for short periods, but then went to Paris.

From 1926 to 1927 József attended lectures at the Sorbonne . During this time he also read Marx , Hegel and Lenin . In Paris he translated Villon and Apollinaire and became a member of the Union Anarchiste-Communiste . He finally returned to Hungary in 1927, where he became a member of the illegal Communist Party of Hungary in 1930, from which he was later expelled because he was interested in Freudo Marxism .

In 1935 he became editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Szép szó . At that time he was already seriously ill: he suffered from severe depression , which is why he underwent psychoanalytic therapy, from late 1934 to late 1936 with Edit Gyömrői and finally with Róbert Bak . One year later, in 1936, his last collection of poems, Nagyon fáj (= It hurts badly ) was published. In January 1937 he welcomed the refugee Thomas Mann to his reading by Lotte in Weimar in Budapest with the poem How much longer will a hall be ready for you? , the Horthy censorship banned the lecture. In 1937 he was taken to a nerve sanatorium . At the age of 32 he threw himself in front of a freight train in Balatonszárszó.

The importance of his life's work

In Hungary, Attila József is one of the country's greatest poets. Since 1964, József's birthday has been celebrated as “Poetry Day” in Hungary, which testifies to the appreciation of posterity. Attila József's poetry is extraordinarily complex. The poet, who has broken out of a very humble background and has advanced to become an intellectual, hears and feels the complaints of the urban urban worker. At the same time, the intellectual questions of the time, such as the problems in the relationship between the individual and the community or the relationship between power and humanism , do not leave him unaffected. In his poems the stylistic notes taken from Hungarian folk songs and the features of modern European literature, from realism to abstract , are present side by side. Although József's political poetry is also important, he did not become a movement poet. He was only prepared to represent any ideology subordinate to the laws of poetry. Attila József appeals to everyone who longs for the beautiful and the human.

His works also enjoy recognition outside the country's borders. Its importance in world literature is compared to the role of Béla Bartók in music history.

In 1950 the Attila József Prize ( József Attila-díj ) was founded in Hungary . The literature prize has since been awarded to poets, writers and literary scholars. The medal shows a portrait of József.

In Hungary there is a street in every city and in almost every village that bears his name, in Budapest there are twelve.

Memorial to the 100th birthday of the poet in Miskolc

To commemorate his 100th birthday, UNESCO declared 2005 the "József Attila Year".

Posthumous prices

Translations into the German language

The dispute over Attila József's monument in Budapest

In 2011, the right-wing Hungarian government Orbán published plans to remove the post-1945 monument to the poet who was considered to be politically left-wing on Kossuth Square behind the Budapest Parliament building. Protests rose against this, especially from artistic and intellectual circles. The statue still stands near the parliament building today.

See also

literature

  • Ágnes Mária Csiky: József, Attila . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 2. Munich 1976, p. 309 f.
  • Miklós Szabolcsi : Attila József. Life and work (= Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Central Institute for the History of Literature [Hrsg.]: Literature and Society ). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1981.

Web links

Commons : Attila József  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Harmat: Freud, Ferenczi and the Hungarian Psychoanalysis Edition Diskord, Tübingen 1988, ISBN 3-89295-530-1 , p. 198
  2. ^ René Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933–1938 / 39) . Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001, p. 227
  3. ↑ This should be done as part of a major redesign of the square, cf. Budapest Newspaper, November 13, 2011
personal data
SURNAME József, Attila
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian lyric poet
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH December 3, 1937
Place of death Balatonszárszó on Lake Balaton