Epitaph for a Spanish Farmhand

The image is The Complete Works of Attila József which includes the poem Epitaph for a Spanish Farmhand (Egy spanyol földmíves sírverse), written in 1936. 

Hungarian intellectuals were sensitive to the Spanish Civil War, and some of the most famous poets of the time dedicated poems to the events during the war years. While some were avowed leftists, others were not influenced by ideology or political sympathies, but found it unacceptable that far-right forces would overthrow a democratically elected government.  

József Attila, perhaps the most famous Hungarian poet of the 20th century, volunteered for the International Brigades, but the Hungarian authorities refused to let him leave the country. Epitaph for a Spanish Farmhand describes the death of a soldier conscripted into General Franco’s army who did not dare to desert for fear of being shot, knowing until the moment of his death that he was fighting against justice and freedom.  

General Franco, enlisted me, ferocious soldier, in his ranks. 

I was afraid I’d be shot. It was impossible to flee. 

I was afraid: I fought against freedom, against the law 

Behind the walls of Irún. And thus death found me too.  

Miklós Radnóti was the other most important Hungarian poet in the first half of the 20th century. His poetry dealt with social injustice, but fate destined him for just such an end: during the Holocaust, he was murdered in a Jewish labor battalion and buried in a mass grave. His poem Hispania, Hispania, (1937) describes the senseless suffering of the Spanish people, as the waters of Spanish rivers become red with the blood of innocent young soldiers. Radnóti suggests that we must not give up, because “new armies will come, if necessary, from nowhere” and “the peoples cry out your destiny, Freedom!” 

Other Hungarian poets also expressed their despair or outrage at the events of the Spanish Civil War. Poet and communist activist Aladár Komját’s poem The March of the International Brigade (1936), which captures the emotion and determination of Hungarian volunteers, was also used as the lyrics of a Hungarian popular leftist revolutionary song, Defenders of Madrid in the same year. The poet and journalist Emil Madarász’s poem Harminc kis madridi gyerek (Thirty Little Madrid Children, 1937) commemorates the children slaughtered by German planes, while the avant-garde theoretician and poet Lajos Kassák’s poem Bilbao-Southampton (1939) commemorates the 400 Basque children sent to England. 

In addition to the intellectuals living in Hungary, Hungarian volunteers fighting in Spain also expressed their reasons for taking part in the war in so-called “freedom fighter songs”. The most famous of these is the following: 

Mother, mother, take my clothes, 

I'm going to a far country, don't be sad. 

Far away, in the land of Spain, the working people are in a bloody struggle. 

I'm joining the army, they need my help. 

Some intellectuals participated in the war personally: the writer and journalist Arthur Kostler (born Artúr Köstler) was sent to Spain as a war correspondent, and he also collected evidence to prove the involvement of the Fascists and Nazis in the war on the side of Franco; he was arrested several times by the Francoist forces, even sentenced to death, and was only released after complex negotiations led by the Republicans and the British. His book Spanish Testament (1937) is an important source among the memoirs of the Civil War.