Inspiration and the Nation

Attila József: The Metaphysics of Art

Abstract

Shortly before the final interruption of his academic studies in the summer of 1928, Attila József began writing a significant essay in which he sought to summarize his theoretical understanding of his vocation. The manuscript survives in an unorganized and fragmentary state among the papers of his estate. This body of work was published in the 1958 edition of his prose under the title Aesthetic Fragments. The editors attempted to reconstruct the manuscript fragments, which had been mixed together in multiple layers. However, the result was a disjointed and incomprehensible collection of texts. Adding to the confusion, the editors mistakenly dated the theoretical experiment—written between 1928 and 1929—as an attempt to develop Literature and Socialism, written between the autumn of 1930 and 1935. This misinterpretation persisted until the mid-1980s, when a surprising discovery of a substantial new collection of Attila József manuscripts by Iván Horváth enabled researchers to separate the layers of the manuscript and attempt a more authentic interpretation. The newly uncovered material revealed the intended title of the study, along with its subtitle, which offers critical insight. József aimed to formulate The Metaphysics of Art as a kind of aesthetics of creation. The appropriate interpretation had to be reached from a new ideological-historical approach, completely different from the Hegelian-Marxian direction: that is from the philosophy of Benedetto Croce and Ákos Pauler. This paper undertakes an analysis of Attila József’s fragmentary early study in light of these insights, illuminating the theoretical foundations of his poetry, particularly the works from his Medáliák period.