The Hungarian P.E.N.-Le P.E.N. Hongrois No. 7. [antikvár]

THE HUNGÁRIÁN P.E.N. LE P.E.N. HONGROIS N° 7 * 1966 NOTES ON ATTILA JÓZSEF If I tried to compare Attila József with someone in the history of Hungárián poetry spontaneously I should think rather of Petőfi than of Ady. Not that I con-sider Attila József's class relations so much more similar to Petőfi's than to Ady's, but rather because I can feel a great resemblance between the sufferings and trials both Petőfi and Attila József had to endure. Let us just have a look at their portraits: as if the same soul were regarding us from the features of both! The same hardness and militancy in both of them, and in their lives, too, the same marks of destiny. Both of them arrivedfrom remote native soils; nineteenth cen-tury Hungárián peasant life was not more distant from the cares and awareness of the ruling classes than the Ferencváros district of Budapest of the twentieth century. Still, perhaps Petőfi was the "more fortunate" of the two; he was swept. away by a triumphant movement and did not live to see its suppression. But it was not granted to Attila József to see the new triumphs of the working class movement. Moreover, Attila József had to create much more from his own resources than did Petőfi. The latter imbued two great trends in literature—popularism and romanticism—with a new meaning. Although Attila József had absorbed the lessons of the twentieth century school professing növel modes of expression, he wanted to create with their assistance a poetry that differed from these schools. In his ideas Attila József was connected with his contemporaries and with somé of his predecessors by innumerable links but compared with them—or with others for that matter—his poetry was a bigger "leap" than that of Petőfi. Both from a humán and from a poeticái point of view Attila József's lyric poetry was born under circumstances harder than any other Hungárián poet of our century had to endure. The great poets of the Nyugat (The West) were defended and supported by the camp centred around this periodical. The poets belonging to the popular movement alsó had an extensive following. But Attila József's genuine camp is emerging only in our own days. He penetrated too deep and created