Winter Night: Selected Poems by Attila József

by Attila József, John Batki (Translator)

In pure lyrics and longer elegiac poems this great Hungarian poet inscribed not only his own sad fate but that of millions in an Eastern Europe that only nominally "between the wars" during the '20s and 30s. Translator Batki demonstrates how contemporary this work remains.

Genres: Poetry

152 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

The son of Áron József - a soap factory worker of Székely and Romanian origin from Banat - and a Hungarian peasant girl with Cuman ancestry - Borbála Pőcze - was born in Ferencváros, a poor district of Budapest. He had two elder sisters: Eta and Jolán. When Attila József was three he was sent to live with foster parents after his father abandoned the family and his mother became ill. Because the name Attila was not well known at the time, his foster parents called him Pista.

His mother died in 1919, aged only 43. After this, he was looked after by Ödön Makai, his brother-in-law. Later he applied to the Franz Joseph University – his dream was to become a secondary school teacher – but he was soon turned out when a man named Antal Horger determined he was unfit for teaching because of a provocative poem he had written (With All My Heart).

After this he tried to support himself with the little money he earned by publishing his poems. He started showing signs of schizophrenia, and was treated by psychiatrists (now he probably would be diagnosed with 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.

He died on 3 December 1937 at Balatonszárszó. Crawling through the railway tracks, he was crushed by a starting train. The most widely accepted view is that he committed suicide, but some experts say that his death was by accident.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading anything by Jozsef and I loved it! Poetry written with a beautiful sadness that touched my heart and drew me right in. Very dog-eared, very marked-up, very much loved by me!


Thanks for recommending, Mike! ;)

[Evan Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is ugly to hold and look at, but the translations are tops. Get yr paws on earlier editions of Batki's translations if you want something prettier.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poems, but I couldn't help but wonder about the translations - how accurate are they? How do you translate poems from Hungarian so that they rhyme and flow as if they were originally written in English? I don't necessarily think that "accuracy" in a translation means word-for-word equivalency, but rather the meaning and feel of the poem. Still, I think Bátki did a phenomenal job bringing these poems to a new audience. I can't even tell you which poems to start with because I marked about half of the poems in the collection as stand-out poems.

I'll also say, these poems are primarily about communism, the pastoral, depression, love, idealism, etc., but József absolutely has some mommy issues that make some of the poems uncomfortably weird!!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agrarian/proletarian spirituals.