Dezső Kosztolányi

Dezső Kosztolányi
Dezső Kosztolányi
Born	(1885-03-29)29 March 1885 Szabadka, Austria-Hungary (today Subotica, Serbia)
Died	3 November 1936(1936-11-03) (aged 51) Budapest
Occupation	Poet
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Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈdɛʒøː ˈkostolaːɲi]; March 29, 1885 – November 3, 1936) was a Hungarian poet and prose-writer.

Kosztolányi was born in Szabadka, Austria-Hungary (today Subotica, Serbia) in 1885. The city served as a model for the fictional town of Sárszeg, in which he set his novella Skylark as well as The Golden Kite. He was the child of Árpád Kosztolányi (1859-1926), physics and chemistry professor and headmaster of a school, and Eulália Brenner (1866-1948), who was of French origin. He started high school in Szabadka but because of a conflict with his teacher was expelled, and so he graduated as a private student in Szeged. Kosztolányi moved to Budapest in 1903 where studied at the University of Budapest, where he met the poets Mihály Babits and Gyula Juhász, and later for a short time in Vienna before quitting and becoming a journalist - a profession he continued for the rest of his life.

In 1908, Kosztolányi replaced the poet Endre Ady, who had left for Paris, as a reporter for a Budapest daily. In 1910, his first volume of poems, The Complaints of a Poor Little Child, brought nationwide success and marked the beginning of a prolific period in which he published a book nearly every year. He met the actress Ilona Harmos in the winter of 1910; they got married on 8 May 1913. Kosztolányi died in 1936 from cancer of the palate.