Sándor Márai

The Poet's Grave

 

Attila József's ashes have been brought to Budapest and interred in an honorary gravesite at the Kerepesi Street cemetery. With this reverential gesture Hungarian officialdom and the friends of literature have honoured themselves. Attila József was one of our most important contemporary poets. Yes, only time can tell: was he perchance among the very greatest? This tragic poet, chased by fate and madness under an oncoming train at the age of thirty-two, was a proletarian. By mobilising his exceptional poetic talent in empathy with his companions in fate and distress, he consciously stood up for his social class. And yet he was no programme-driven bard: the willed strength of every line of his was illuminated by that glimmer of tenderness which deeper, more intuitive, true poetry radiates.
Legends are arising about his death and fate. He is mentioned as a victim of our social order. From a medical perspective, this allegation is preposterous. In the final years of his life, Attila József was insane, a victim of an incurable mental illness, of schizophrenia - which usually first emerges during puberty. There is no medicine for this terrible mental disorder, least of all is there an easy cure. Nor is there an explanation. We certainly cannot say that penury and society's indifference set alight the fateful psychological affliction in this genius of a man. I know of millionaire schizophrenics as well. No, mental illness is sovereign and picks its victims at random in the tenement houses of Angyalföld, where Attila József was raised and in the town houses of the magnates. His illness was decided not by the circumstances of his life, and neither can his suicide be explained by his loneliness and destitution. All this was fate. What is of course debatable is this: Might his gentle frame and tremulous, sensitive mind have wrestled more successfully against the illness, had his life circumstances been more fortunate, unruffled, a shade less wearing on the psyche? Had he had his "two hundred a month," as he complained in a famous poem, perhaps his constitution and soul would have been more resistant. Penury did not cause the illness, but it is partly to blame for his psyche's inability to shoulder the weight of life and illness simultaneously. Standing above the graves of dead Hungarian poets and calling society to account for the fate of one departed genius generally amounts to cheap demagoguery. I am not about to take on this role. But I knew Attila József well, I knew his genius, his pure soul, and his appalling destitution. And now that he has been granted an honorary grave, I cannot remain silent, for the indifference shown this poet was in fact shocking and heart-rending. Perhaps he couldn't have been saved, but he could have been helped, his destiny could have been allayed. Only a very few people did help.
This poet was an angelic creature, the purest human being and the purest writer. Sometimes he honoured me by stopping by with a copy of his latest, usually self-published, book. On such occasions I found it necessary to engage him in close combat until, bashful though I was about it, I finally managed to convince him that it is his responsibility to accept the price of the book even from me, a fellow writer. Invariably he then accepted only the price the book was selling for in the bookshops, and not a fillér more. He was proud as could be and yet as humble as Saint Francis of Assisi, il poverello, must have been. Indeed, whenever we met, went for a walk, or sat in a café he always reminded me of Sándor Petőfi and of Saint Francis. There is a haunting resemblance between the only surviving photograph of Petofi and the last photographs of Attila József. And indeed he could speak of birds, of flowers in the voice of il poverello. His loneliness, his fate, his agonising in the coffee-houses of Budapest; his terrible, implausible penury; his resounding isolation in the prison of poverty and illness; the insane and yet genius-laden glimmer of his eyes; his stare, simultaneously calling for help and calling to account; the excited yet intimate whisper of his voice; the deep magical current of his verse - all this ordained this poet as a formidable, unique phenomenon. His voice seems ever purer, ever closer to our hearts and our minds, and we are incessantly pained that he fell silent so early. Mourners will scatter flowers for a long time to come on his honorary gravesite - how painfully awkward, this term, "honorary gravesite," in connection with Attila József! For a long time to come - as long as Hungarian is read.

Pesti Hírlap, 7 May 1942

Translated by Paul Olchváry

Sándor Márai (1900-1989)
a novelist who left Hungary in 1948 and spent the rest of his life in exile in Italy and the US,
had also published important journalism in Hungary and Germany before going into exile.