By the Danube

Born ​in Budapest 11 April 1905, Attila József called himself a „son of the street and soil.” When he was three years old, his father, a factory worker from Transylvania, abandoned the family, leaving his three children in the care of their mother who struggled heroically to support them by working as a maid and washerwoman until her death in 1919. In spite of crippling poverty, József managed to finish high school, and published his poems in the leading literary periodical Nyugat. His first volume appeared in 1922...