Jozsef is thought by many to be Hungary's greatest poet, his poems
known by all school children. Yet in his lifetime he was scorned by
literary circles - at the age of 18 he was prosecuted for the
blasphemous 'Rebelling Christ' and later expelled from university
for the controversial 'With a Pure Heart'. This selection of his
best-known poems aims to introduce Jozsef to a wider
English-speaking audience. He was a tormented soul whose troubled
life was played out against World War I, Communism, Fascism, the
Depression and the Third Reich - Jozsef embraced Marxism, believing
that it was the role of the artist to create a better world,
intellectually transforming society. Abandoned by his father when
just five years old, his foster parents abused him and a suicide
attempt aged nine was just the first time he tried to take his own
life, eventually succeeding aged 32. These short, poignant poems
reflect his responses to political and personal upheavals, they are
a heart-rendering tribute to this little-known talent. (Kirkus UK)
Attila Jozsef is Hungary's greatest modern poet. His extraordinary
poetry is exhilarating in its power, transcending the scars of a
difficult life. Born into poverty in 1905, deserted by his father
and put out to fostering, Jozsef had a brutalised childhood, and
tried to poison himself at the age of nine. Mostly self-educated,
he was prosecuted at 18 for blasphemy in a poem, and expelled from
university a year later for With a Pure Heart, a now celebrated
poem which spoke for a whole generation. He is a genuine
revolutionary poet, neither simple-minded nor difficult, though his
thought and imagery are complex. A deeply divided man, his poetry
has a robust physicality as well as a jaunty and heroic
intelligence - Marxist in its dedication but fuelled in its
audacity by both Freud and Surrealism. Diagnosed as schizophrenic,
he underwent psychoanalysis, and yet continued to write magnificent
poetry which - although darker - drew upon highly exacting and
intricate structures and metres, and upon an eclectic but balanced
framework of ideas. By 1937 he was almost destitute, financially
and emotionally, and in deteriorating mental health. But he was
still writing some of his most compelling work, compulsive
guilt-ridden poetry whose glittering lyricism is at once personal
and mythic, even while receiving shock treatments and heavy
medication in a sanatorium. Finally, at the age of 32, he clambered
onto a railway track, and a train broke his neck and cut off his
right arm.
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