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I discussed Attila József here. To repeat, he was a proletarian poet and occasional journalist, respected both by high literarists and leftist political movements, who endured extreme poverty-related hardship in his short life. At a time he was literally hungering, he wrote this poem:

With a pure heart

Without father without mother
without God or homeland either
without crib or coffin-cover
without kisses or a lover

For the third day - without fussing
I have eaten next to nothing.
My store of power ere my years
I sell all my twenty years.

Perhaps, if no one else will
the buyer will be the devil.
With a pure heart - that's a job:
I may kill and I shall rob.

They'll catch me, hang me high
in blessed earth I shall lie,
and poisonous grass will start
to grow on my beautiful heart.
(Tr.: Thomas Kabdebo)

A note about the name: in some regions of historical Hungary, it was common to turn normal names into surnames (something different from patrinomials).

József's death at a young age was long thought to have been suicide. Would have been fitting to his pre-death mood. However, a new look ito the records suggested that this was a popular myth: he 'merely' made the fatal decision to spare his powers by crossing a stopped freight train between two wagons, and just then the train started.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Apr 10th, 2009 at 06:59:09 AM EST
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