After the death of his mother, the teenage Attila was looked after by his brother-in-law, Ödön Makai, who was relatively wealthy and could pay for his education in a good secondary school.

[3] In 1924, Attila entered Franz Joseph University to study Hungarian and French literature, with the intention of becoming a secondary school teacher.

With his manuscripts, he traveled to Vienna in 1925 where he made a living by selling newspapers and cleaning dormitories, and then to Paris for the following two years, where he studied at the Sorbonne.

During this period he read Hegel and Karl Marx, whose call for revolution appealed to him as well as the work of François Villon, the famous poet and thief from the 15th-century.

József then worked for the Foreign Trade Institute as a French correspondent and, later, was the editor of the literary journal Szép Szó (Beautiful Word.

[3] Beginning in childhood, Attila began showing signs of mental illness and was treated by psychiatrists for depression and schizophrenia.

József's works were praised by such internationally known Hungarian researchers and critics as Béla Balázs and György Lukács.

József's third collection of poems, Nincsen apám se anyám (1929) (I have neither father nor mother), showed the influence of French surrealism and Hungarian poets Endre Ady, Gyula Juhász and Lajos Kassák.