Endre Ady

Biography

Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy County (part of Austria-Hungary at the time; now a village in Căuaș commune, Satu Mare County, Romania, called Adyfalva in Hungarian and Ady Endre in Romanian). He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family. Endre was the second of three children. The eldest, a girl named Ilona, died at an early age. The author and poet Mariska Ady (1888–1977) was a niece of Endre Ady.

Between 1892 and 1896, Ady attended the Calvinist College in Zilah (today Zalău, Romania). On 22 March 1896, he published his first poem in the Zilah newspaper Szilágy.

He later studied law at the Reformed College in Debrecen. After dropping out, he became a journalist. He published his first poems in a volume called Versek (Poems) in 1899. He soon grew tired of Debrecen (the town later became a symbol of backwardness in his poetry) and moved to Nagyvárad (today Oradea, Romania), a city with a rich cultural life. In articles written in 1902 for the local newspaper Nagyváradi Napló, Ady paid close attention to the social features of his time. "Wesselényi and a poor peasant! Perhaps unwittingly, master Fadrusz has carved a satire", he wrote, referring to the unveiling of the Wesselényi Monument.

Working as a journalist and spending time with like-minded people broadened his horizons. He published a new collection of poems in 1903, but remained relatively unknown. The turning point came in August 1903 when he met Adél Brüll Diósy, a wealthy, married Jewish woman who was living in Paris at the time but was visiting her home in Nagyvárad. Léda (as he called her in his poems) became his muse; his love for her and their visit to Paris, helped him to develop his talent. He visited Paris seven times between 1904 and 1911. When he returned after his first visit (which lasted for a year), he moved to Budapest and began work for the newspaper Budapesti Napló (Budapest Journal), where he published more than 500 articles and plenty of poems.

Being interested in politics, Ady became a member of the radical group Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century, or possibly Twentieth Brigade). In 1906 he published his third book of poetry, Új versek (New Poems), which is a landmark in literature and marks the birth of modern Hungarian poetry. His fourth collection, Vér és arany (Blood and Gold), brought him real success and critical acclaim.

In 1906 Ady decided to leave the country and went to Paris again. In 1907, he had to quit his job at Budapesti Napló.

In 1908, the first issue of a new periodical called Nyugat (The West) published a poem and an essay by him. He worked for this periodical for the rest of his life; from 1912 he was one of the editors. Also in 1908 in Nagyvárad, he was one of the founders of a literary circle called A Holnap (Tomorrow). The group published an anthology of poems of Ady and others including Mihály Babits, Gyula Juhász and Béla Balázs. The poems of this anthology met with disapproval and incomprehension. Many people attacked the anthology for containing erotic poems. In addition, Ady was criticized for his unpatriotic feelings in a poem in which he emphasized the contrast between the rich cultural life he longed for and the cruel realities of the Hungarian peasant world.

Ady disliked his name being linked with other poets, who he thought were jumping on his bandwagon. He wrote a short story, "The duk-duk affair", in which he mocked those who were following the trend he was setting.

Ady was an editor and leading figure of Nyugat (West), an important Hungarian literary journal. He also wrote political articles for other journals criticizing the political situation of the time. He did not like the nationalism of the leading parties, but also criticized the anti-nationalism of the social democrats; he knew how far Hungary was behind the more developed countries, but clearly saw the faults of Western countries too.

From 1909 he often needed sanitarium treatment for his health, which was undermined by syphilis. The political situation became critical: the workers were protesting against the government, and Ady saw a revolution approaching. His personal life was also in crisis; his affair with Léda became more and more burdensome. As Ady become a prominent poet, Léda lost her leading role in the relationship. He broke up with her in April 1912.

In 1914, he met the 20-year-old Berta Boncza, with whom he had been corresponding since 1911. In 1915 they married without her father's permission. In his poems he called her "Csinszka".