[In the following eulogy, Köpeczi describes the ideals, both social and political, that fed Illyés 's work and their lasting effect on Hungary.]

Gyula Illyés, the great poet, lived in an age in which the world and Hungary underwent epochal changes which were accompanied with anguish and sacrifice but which had their historic results, too. Illyés faced this age together with its contradictions and its aspirations to build the future. He was active in the working-class movement at the time of the Republic of Councils, he was all his life an advocate of the peasantry and of the entire nation, one who wanted and succeeded not only in writing but in acting in the interests of progress.

In 1939 he wrote that: "Man's business in this world is to be as perfect and as humane as possible, to be all the more sensible, the better and the more honest, to be all the freer without infringing upon the right of his fellowbeings to freedom. It is the nation's business also steadily to become perfect."

"Becoming perfect" meant to him first of all that he unhesitatingly struggled to see that social justice prevailed. As he himself said, "peasant experience" led him to seek "honesty" where the oppressed, the defenceless, the exploited were concerned. The writer of People of the Puszta described the pauperism of the Hungarian peasantry between the two wars with such force and such fervour of protest that he will for ever be remembered for his condemnation of an unjust social system and will set an example in the neverending struggle for the new. He cited also the revolutionary and literary example of his great predecessor Petőfi because he expected a radical social change to bring improvement in the lot of the people. This realization led the author of Ebéd a kastélyban (Luncheon at the Mansion) to identify himself with the historical judgement which socialism has passed on the capitalist Hungary encumbered with feudal vestiges. In Beatrice apródjai (Beatrice's Pages) he traversed with deep moral conviction the revolutionary path that has led to a change in the world and he remained—until death—true to the idea of social progress even though many things failed to come about as he had expected, even though he met with disappointments.

To him society was inseparable from the nation. He saw the nation as the community of working people who speak the same language, a community whose feature is the common work of shaping the future and to which language and culture also signify bonds which link even beyond the frontiers. His interpretation of the national idea was controversial even among his friends and companions-in-arms; his intention and the substance of his message, however, were unequivocal: he wanted equal rights and cooperation to prevail among nations. In 1959 he concluded an autobiographical piece thus: "I am sure that the peoples of this earth are travelling towards a classless society. The first stage of their organic union is full equality of rights. It is an absurdity to create equality of rights between parties showing mutual respect other than through understanding, that is in peace; indeed it is a contradiction in terms." Equality of rights through understanding and peace—this was the national and international programme of Gyula Illyés.

When taking stock of the national and national minority problems he always linked together his uneasiness and the idea of cooperation with neighbouring nations—in the 1930s as in the last years of his life.

Illyés did not lock himself up in the Hungarian microcosm, his experience as an exile helped him to see in politics and literature the whole world as well as his country. A hunok Párizsban (The Huns in Paris) shows the unparalleled comprehension of the fusion of national and international. All his work as a poet, but particularly his many literary translations, demonstrates time and again his search for universal connections.

These ideas are characteristic of all of his remarkably rich and many-sided lifework. He himself professed: "Without a good world-view … there is no kind of piercing the essence, stimulating action, namely 'genuine, great' poetry." "The surrealist of clarity" thought that literature ought to deal with everything of interest to man and the nation, and indeed he used his great poetic sensitivity to answer the questions which preoccupied the world and his homeland. This everyday commitment moved him also to profess a programme of poetic realism and of genuine artistic democracy. He knew all there was to know about literature, especially poetry, he knew every innovation of the avant-garde, yet by drawing on popular sources he became a modern classic who held that it was worth one's while writing only to be able to mould oneself and shape others as well, to stimulate to action.

Mihály Babits wrote of Illyés: "To resuscitate Hungarian and popular forms and to make them up-to-date, as the most essential possibility, the most difficult and most imperative of all tasks … With the people's verse, out of the people's soul, something comes in literature: greater simplicity, greater clarity, the spirit of 'meek poverty lasting for centuries'. Illyés is the poet of this spirit, who can belong to the people without repudiating culture, and to culture without repudiating the people …"

All his life Illyés wanted to tell the general public—and not the élite—what was "beautiful, good and useful" in plain, clear and succinct terms, in the finest and most informal language. His œuvre was and remains our companion, it makes us conscious of our thoughts and feelings, it prompts us to self examination by its high intelligence and by the simplicity of great truths.

Despite doubts, inner struggles and contradictions he professed historical optimism: "I have confidence in the Hungarian people's strength, I am certain that this nation progresses not towards its ruin but towards its improvement, no matter what trials it has been exposed to …" This was how he formulated the experience of the people to whom he always remained loyal and whose thoughts and feelings he expressed. The writer of the community made greater the chances of national and human advancement not only by what he produced but by creating around himself and his œuvre, with an unbroken consistency of ideas, a lively and constructive atmosphere for communal life. This is where poetry and politics meet, and this happened during the past twenty-five years or so in such a way that the creative energies in both spheres served the progress of the people. Illyés is a great artistic ally of socialist construction, which does not mean that politics or any person would or might make a claim to him. He is a writer of the Hungarian people, his œuvre belongs to the people, but any consistent policy or rather social activity imbued with the intention, the sense and loyalty serving the people can find in it a source of intellectual power.

Awe and pain fills us, taking leave of a great Hungarian author. To quote Horace his work is more lasting than brass. It is our responsibility to make common property of what he has bequeathed us, and to ensure that the generations after us will know it and be able to draw from it ideals, thoughts and feelings to the edification of the individual and the community.

May the poet's memory and works be surrounded, for the centuries to come, with the halo of the devoted affection of the Hungarian people, of the profound respect of the followers of socialism, and of the everlasting esteem of progressive men.