Jozsef Attila

I was born 1905 in Budapest and my denomination is Greek Orthodox. My father - late Aron József - emigrated, when I was three years old, so the National League for the Protection of Children sent me to foster parents to Öcsöd. There I stayed till the age of seven, working, as poor village children usually had to: tending pigs. With seven years, my mother - late Borbála Põcze - took me back to Budapest and had me enrolled in the second class of elementary school. My mother supported me and my two sisters with washing and cleaning; going to other families, she stayed away from morning to night, so without any parental supervision I used to play hookey and roamed about in the streets as an urchin. But in my third-class reading book I found interesting stories about King Attila, so I plunged myself into reading. I was not only interested in those fairytales because my first name also was Attila, but first of all because my foster parents in Öcsöd always used to call me 'Pista' (Note: pron. 'Pishta' - short f. Stephan). Being earwitness of their debate with the neigbours, I learned their opinion, that the name 'Attila' doesn't exist at all. I was all shocked by this, having a feeling as if my own existence would have been thrown into doubt. I believe, discovering those fairytales, decisively effected on all my further striving; maybe it just was this experience, that in the end lead me to literature, an experience, that made me a pensive, reconsidering man, one answering to the name of Pista as long as he had not proved, what he himself was thinking about, that is to say, that his name was Attila.

When I was nine years old, the world war broke out and our living was getting more and more worse. I only too well also had my part in lining up in front of the stores, where it could happen, that I had been standing in line in front of a grocery shop from nine o'clock in the evening till morning seven thirty, and then, when finally it being my turn, they - shutting the door in my face - would tell me, that lard had run out. I was helping my mother as much I could, selling water in the 'Világ' (Note: 'World') movie theater, stealing firewood and coal at Ferenczváros Station in order to get fuel for heating, making small coloured paper pinwheels and selling them to children from better-off families. At the covered market I would lug baskets and large packs etc.. In summer 1918 I was sent to Abbazia for recreation by King Charles' Vacation Operation for Children. My mother was already frail at that time, a cervical ulcer had appeared; I enrolled for it at the 'Liga' by myself and so came to Monor for a brief period of time. Back to Budapest, I was selling newspapers and dealing with stamps, then with blue, white and postal money like a little banker. During the Romanian occupation I was working as a 'bread boy' in the 'Emke' coffee-house. Meanwhile, having finished five years of elementary school, I was going to 'Civil School' (Note: about junior high school).

Around Christmas 1919 my mother died; the Office for Orphans appointed my brother-in-law, the recently deceased Dr. Ödön Makai, to be my gardian. A whole spring and summer I hired myself out to work on the tugs 'Vihar' (Note: 'Storm'), 'Török' (Note: 'Turk') and 'Tatár' of Atlantica Ocean Shipping Corp.. At that time I passed my private examination leaving the fourth class in Civil School. After it my gardian and Dr. Sándor (Alexander) Giesswein sent me to Nyergesujfalu to be a seminary's pupil at the Salesians. I only stayed there for two weeks, as, you know, I am Greek Orthodox and not Roman Catholic. From there I was taken to Makó, into the Demke boarding school, where it didn't take long to get a free place. In summer I taught for board and lodgings in Mezõhegyes. My sixth class' qualifications in grammar (high) school were 'excellent', although I had tried several times to commit suicide due to problems of adolescence, because wether at that time nor before I never have had anybody by my side, who would have given me a piece of advice as a friend. At that time my first verses had appeared already, the magazine 'Nyugat' (Note: 'The West') had published some of my poems I wrote with seventeen. They took me for a child prodigy, but yet I was only a child orphan. After having finished the sixth year, I left high school and the boarding school, because I was feeling myself very inactive with all my loneliness: I did not learn, but just kept the lesson's material in mind, after the teacher having explained it, as one can see from my 'excellent' qualification. I went to Kiszombor, working as a field guardian, a farm hand, and hiring myself out as a private tutor. Two dear teachers of mine urging me, I after all decided to still take my school-leaving exam (high-school diploma). The sixth and seven class' examinations then had been put together, so I took them in one go and thus ended school still one year earlier than my former classmates. I only have had a three months' period for studying, hence my seventh year's certificate entirely showing 'good', whereas the grades of the eighth class all only were 'satisfactory'. My high-school diploma then turned out better, getting 'satisfactory' only in 'hungarian language' and 'history'. At that time I was already charged with blasphemy on account of a poem I wrote. I was acquitted by the supreme court. I then worked as an agent for books here in Budapest for some time, later, during the period of inflation, as an employee at the private banking house Mauthner. When Hintz-system was established, I was employed there at the accounts department, and after a little while I was entrusted with the supervision of those securities to be handed over on the scheduled day - this incurring my senior colleagues' displeasure. My zeal was somehow deminished a bit by the fact, that, in addition to mine, my fellow employees were saddling me with extra work, being part of their own job, but apart from that not missing any opportunity to make spiteful remarks with regard to my poetry published in the magazines. Everybody of them was taking the chance as often he could to tell me: "When I was of your age, I also used to write poems". The banking house later went bankrupt.

So I decided once and for all to become a writer and also to find a bourgois occupation being close to literature. I enrolled at the philosophical faculty of Szeged university for the subjects Hungarian, French and Philosophy. Having signed up for 52 lessons a week, I passed the colloquium in 20 lessons with 'excellent'. I had boarding for free and with the royalties for my poems I used to pay the lodgings. I was proud of, my lecturer, Prof. Lajos Dézsi, having stated, that he was considering me to be capable for doing research on my own. But I lost all my interest in it, when Prof. Antal Horger, who would have had to give me the hungarian language test, sent for me and explained in presence of two witnesses - I still recall their names, both are teachers at junior high school now - , that as long as he was there, I'd never become a teacher at junior high school, because "a person like you" - literally he said - "writing such poems" - he was waving an issue of the 'Szeged' right under my nose, "never can be entrusted with the education of our coming generation". One often speaks of irony of fate, but here it's really the fact: this poem of mine, it's title is 'With Pure Heart' (Note: 'Tiszta szívvel'), became quite famous. Seven newspaper articles have been published on it; Lajos Hatvany called it a whole postwar generation's document for ages to come; yet Ignotus "was caressing, stroking, humming and murmuring this wonderful poem in his mind", he wrote of it in "Nyugat", referring to these lines in his 'Ars poetica' as a classic example of the new poetry writing.

The following year - I was twenty years then - I went to Vienna, enrolled at the university and made a living with selling newspapers at the entrance of the restaurant 'Ratskeller' and working as a cleaner at 'Hungarian Students of Vienna' boarding house. When director Antal Lábán got to know about me, he put an end to it, gave me free boarding at the 'Collegium Hungaricum', also getting me private pupils: I gave lessons to the two sons of Zoltán Hajdu, president of the Anglo-Austrian Bank. From Vienna - out of a dreadful hovel, where I didn't even owe a sheet - I got straightly to Hatvan, being guest in Hatvany castle. There the hostess, Mrs. Albert Hirsch, provided me with money for a summer trip to Paris. There I enrolled at the Sorbonne. I passed the summer in a fishing village in southern France.

Then I returned to Hungary, studying for two semesters at Pest university. Yet I did not take the teacher exam, because, thinking of the threatening remarks of Anthony Horger, I anyway didn't believe in getting an employment as a teacher. Later, after the foundation of Foreign Trade's Institute, I got a job there to be a Hungarian-French correspondent; president Sándor Kóródi will kindly allow me to mention his name in this connection as a reference. But then, unexpectedly, I was buffeted by fate in a way, that - although really hardened by life - was knocked down. Social Security Institute (OTI) first sent me into a sanitarium, and after it with diagnosis 'Neurasthenia gravis' gave me sick leave. I retired from my office, accepting, that I would have been a burden on this young institute. Now I am editor of the critical literary journal 'Szép Szó' (Note: 'Beautiful Word'). In addition to my Hungarian mother tongue, I am writing and reading French and German, am experienced in Hungarian and French correspondence and my typewriting is perfect. I also knew shorthand and would be able to refresh this skill within a month's time. I have knowledge on printing typography, am able to formulate precisely. I think to be honest, my perceptive faculty in my opinion is good and I am fast at work.

Attila József - 1937

(Transl. by A.W. Tüting)