Sándor Márai

[Stewart]

M?rai S?ndor (April 11, 1900 – February 22, 1989) was a Hungarian writer and journalist.

He was born in the city of Košice in Slovakia (Then Kassa in Austria-Hungary) to an old Saxon family. In his early years, M?rai travelled and lived in different cities: Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris and briefly considered writing in German. Finally, he chose his mother language, Hungarian, to write in. He settled in Budapest, Krisztinav?ros (1928). In the 1930s, he gained prominence with a precise and clear realist style. He was the first person to write reviews of the work of Kafka.

He wrote very enthusiastically about the Vienna Awards, in which Nazi Germany forced Czechoslovakia and Romania to give back part of the territories which Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon. Nevertheless, he was highly critical of the Nazis as such and was considered "profoundly antifascist," a dangerous position to take in wartime Hungary.

His 1942 book Embers (Hungarian title: A gyerty?k csonkig ?gnek, meaning "The Candles Burn Up to the Stump") expresses a nostalgia for the bygone multi-ethnic, multicultural society of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, reminiscent of the works of Joseph Roth. In 2006 an adaptation of this novel for the stage, written by Christopher Hampton, was performed in London.

He also disliked the Communist regime that seized power after World War II, and left - or was driven away - in 1948. After living for some time in Italy, M?rai settled in the city of San Diego, California, in the United States.

He continued to write in his native language, but was not published in English until the mid-1990s. After his wife died, he retreated more and more into isolation. M?rai committed suicide by a gunshot to his head in San Diego in 1989.

Largely forgotten outside of Hungary, his work (consisting of poems, novels, and diaries) has only been recently "rediscovered" and republished in French (starting in 1992), Italian, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Korean, and other languages too, and is now considered to be part of the European Twentieth Century literary canon.



BIBLIOGRAPHY (English)

• A gyerty?k csonkig ?gnek (1942) [Eng: Embers, 2000)
• F?ld, f?ld…! (1971) [Eng: Memoir Of Hungary, 2001)
• Vend?gj?t?k Bolzan?ban (1940) [Eng: Casanova in Bolzano, 2004)
• A zend?lők (1930) [Eng: The Rebels, 2007)

RELATED THREADS

• Embers
• Casanova In Bolzano

RELATED LINKS

• M?rai S?ndor on Wikipedia
• M?rai S?ndorblog
• American Journal (excerpts from M?rai's diary)
• M?rai at HunLit

(All text in this post is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)

[Stewart]

There's a few interesting snippets of information on this article from around the time Casanova In Bolzano was being published in English.

The first is that M?rai left Hungary vowing never to publish there again as long as it remained under Soviet control. And then, years later when he was living in the United States, he shot himself nine months before the fall of the Berlin wall. One wonders what he would have made of that had he just hung on a little longer.

Another is how his posthumous fame has come to be, being thanks to an Italian Roberto Calasso finding three M?rai novels in a catalogue of forgotten European masters, buying up the rights, and making them into bestsellers. Calasso then told Carol Janeway about Embers, translating it from a German translation herself, and it going on to be a sensation in English, too. (Perhaps in the US, as I don't remember much surrounding it back then.)

Of interest, though, is that he wrote over twenty novels and Janeway wants to go on publishing them as long as she can. So expect many more M?rai books in the coming years.

[saliotthomas]

A good news and a bad one.The good being the publishing of more of his works,the bad is that i did not know he shot himself.
I shall try to get as much of his books as i can while in France this summer.He seem's more widely translated in French for there is at least ten books available on a quick search.

[Stewart]

A good news and a bad one.The good being the publishing of more of his works,the bad is that i did not know he shot himself.

I think that's how I first heard of M?rai - through his suicide. I've a strange habit - more a coincidence thing, really - of going looking for authors, discovering a new name, and then finding out they killed themselves. It happened in the cases of Akutagawa, Mishima, and Stifter.

He seem's more widely translated in French for there is at least ten books available on a quick search.

Isn't that always the case. If Ismail Kadare and Arto Paasilinna are anything to go by, the French are far ahead in world literature tastes.

[Heteronym]

You can add Casares, Papini and Buzzati to that list.

I'd say the rest of Europe is always a bit ahead of the UK and USA in translation matters. It just seems inevitable, considering every country shares a border with one or more nations: communication becomes important; it's that or isolation. After reading Casanova in Bolzano in English I discovered there had been a translation in '92.

I had no idea M?rai had shot himself. When I read he died in '89 I assumed it had been old age. I can accept young writers killing themselves, but at the age of 89 it just seems rather pointless.

Anyway, has anyone read The Rebels yet?

[Stewart]

You can add Casares, Papini and Buzzati to that list.

I think we need a thread on that subject.

Anyway, has anyone read The Rebels yet?

I have a copy of it sitting on the shelves and I think, based on the enthusiasm I'm seeing for him, I'm going to have to read Embers and The Rebels sometime soon, once I've got a few other titles out of the way.

[saliotthomas]

I read Esther inheritance in august but didn't like it.I was not bad because the writing is excellent but i was hard to beleive.A novel about amorality in opposition to immorality.Interesting but a bit artificial.

Now i just finished what the French titled Metamorphosis of a wedding originaly Az Igazi followed by Judit...Es az Utohang.
The translation made very little sense.It could suite equaly Anna Karenina.But maybe i'm wrong.
Anyway the book is i three parts and epilogue,each the monologue of one of the protagoniste talking to a friend and each a bit further in time.
Frist Ilonka the wife followed by Peter the husband then Judith the maid truned segond wife.The epilogue come through Judith lover.
A link run through the three converstion,Lazar,a writer,obsessed with the disparition of a certain cultural standart,a lover of words, the true witness of the decadence of the times.

Each monlogue bring a new light on the precedent,(metamorphosis is maybe not to bad in the title,it's the wedding that i find very restrictive)the story change,twist.What was noble become deviant,what you admire you come to despise.Marai has a gift to bring perfectly simple thought,evidence,to dig in your mind for those unkown pillars of one personality.
Not an easy read,like meal to rich that you enjoy but is a bit hard to digest.The one you can't face every day.
My next is Confession d'un bourgoie.I could not find Rebel the time i was in paris,nor a Dog of charactere.Next time maybe.


Ps- I apologize for my bad spelling,grammar,writing you name it.

[titania7]

Stewart,
I'm reading The Rebels now. I don't like it quite as well as Casanova in Bolzano or Embers. The plot of the novel isn't as engrossing as either of the others. In fact, Embers may well be one of my top 5 favorite books. At the time I read it, it made an extraordinary impact on me. I read it in a single day. Once I began reading it I simply couldn't stop until I finished it. There are only two other books I believe I've devoured so quickly--Women in Love and Buddenbrooks. And maybe A Harlot High and Low (Balzac's follow-up to Lost Illusions).

When I finish The Rebels, I'll probably have more to say about it. At the moment I feel my opinions on this book are still in the embryonic stage.

By the way, I love this forum, Stewart. It is magnificent to finally find a place where there are other people to converse with who actually read classic literature (instead of just talking about it). I find myself discovering a new author or book nearly every day.

titania

"Only in the details can we understand the essential..."
~Sandor Marai, Embers

"Everything that is worth waiting for has its own season
and its own logic."
~Sandor Marai, Embers

[kpjayan]

Titania,

I have read all 3 translated works , Embers , Casanova...and Rebels in that order. And I have liked them in the same order. I too had the same opinion about Rebels ; didn't like it as other works. Embers and Casanova was brilliant.

Jayan

[saliotthomas]

Titania7
You might want to try Miklos Bamffy,i found his writing close to the style of Marai.They were counted is the first of a trilogie and a beautifull book.I could not get the others yet but i'm sure to do in the future.

[titania7]

Jayan,
I take solace in the fact that someone else agrees with my assessment of The Rebels. Reading a book is such a highly individualistic experience that a person cannot ever be sure how out
of the ordinary his or her opinion may be. I have read some glowing reviews of The Rebels online (in The Guardian and elsewhere), and so, I was starting to wonder one of three things: a). whether or not I had read the book at the wrong time, b). whether my expectations were too high based upon the other books by Marai I've read, or c). if I merely failed to perceive the inherent greatness in the work.

Whatever the case may be, I would re-read Embers and Casanova in Bolzano in a heart-beat, and I certainly don't feel the same about The Rebels. I look forward to reading Esther's Inheritance, which is going to become available in my corner of the world sometime in November. Earlier in this same Marai thread, Thomas mentioned being somewhat disappointed with this work. Thus, it will be interesting to see whether or not I like it.

titania


"....I believe in writing, because the power of writing
is greater than that of fate or time. The things we do,
the things we desire, the things we love, the things
we say, all pass away....Time's dust settles over all
we have done, over everything that once excited us.
But words remain."
~Casanova in Bolzano, Sandor Marai

[kpjayan]

All His World?s a Stage :

all his world’s a stage - bookforum.com / in print

[Liam]

Thanks for the link, kpjayan--very interesting, if biased.

I particularly disagree with the following:

Marai refuses to unmask the cliches of life and literature, on the grounds that there is no final truth beneath them. Yet however much Marai may have intended it to do so, his deliberately contrived art fails to repudiate its own falsities.

I think there's more going on in Marai's fiction than this or merely this. Even if his art is found guilty of setting up "falsities," as Benjamin calls them, surely it is not the artist's job to repudiate ANYTHING.

[kpjayan]

Liam, I dont agree with many of the points.

However, I liked the thought that there is an element of 'drama'tization in all his works. The setting , the lengthy dialogues and the importance of verbal( communicative) way of narration , instead of the general descriptive fiction writing. This is quite true for Embers and Casanova.. (and not in the case of 'The rebels' ; I haven't read the latest).

[Stiffelio]

Now i just finished what the French titled Metamorphosis of a wedding originaly Az Igazi followed by Judit...Es az Utohang.
The translation made very little sense.It could suite equaly Anna Karenina.But maybe i'm wrong.
Anyway the book is i three parts and epilogue,each the monologue of one of the protagoniste talking to a friend and each a bit further in time.
Frist Ilonka the wife followed by Peter the husband then Judith the maid truned segond wife.The epilogue come through Judith lover.
A link run through the three converstion,Lazar,a writer,obsessed with the disparition of a certain cultural standart,a lover of words, the true witness of the decadence of the times.

Each monlogue bring a new light on the precedent,(metamorphosis is maybe not to bad in the title,it's the wedding that i find very restrictive)the story change,twist.What was noble become deviant,what you admire you come to despise.Marai has a gift to bring perfectly simple thought,evidence,to dig in your mind for those unkown pillars of one personality.
Not an easy read,like meal to rich that you enjoy but is a bit hard to digest.The one you can't face every day.
My next is Confession d'un bourgoie.I could not find Rebel the time i was in paris,nor a Dog of charactere.Next time maybe.


Ps- I apologize for my bad spelling,grammar,writing you name it.

The title of this novel in French is not at all accurate. Nor is it in the Spanish version that I have, i.e. La Mujer Justa (meaning The Fair Woman). It appears that M?rai wrote this book meant to be published in three instalments. The first two wre published in Hungary in 1941 as Az Igazi, which means something like The Real Thing or The True Thing. It was not until 1980 that the third portion was published (or completed?). It's Judit's version of the events and it is titled Judit...Es Az Ut?hang, meaning something like Judit and the Echo or Judit and the Epilogue/Legacy. I've gotten all this information from the blogspot dedicated to M?rai.

Sandor Marai Blog

They mention there that the English version of the novel will be published in 2010.

[saliotthomas]

One of my favorite of Sandor Marai.
Often titles in French are a bit far fletch, the most obvious Revolutionary road becoming Fenetre panoramique is bafeling.(panoramique? window)
I thing the fact the those 3 are gathered in one book is very interesting and give real weight to the work.They could of course be divided easely but it would rob it of his strengh of contrast betwin social classes(big obsession of Marai) and characteres personalities.

I should have two other Marais coming at Christmass.

[altai]

I've only read a novel of his, published in Spanish as "La mujer justa". I don't know whether it has an English translation as well. It is a very peculiar and interesting novel as it deals with a topic I am very interested in, which is understanding between people. It has three characters living in three different personal worlds and the story is told as three consecutive monologues of each character. And all this happens against a historical backdrop of Hungary between the wars. The whole chunk of the book is dedicated also to a sort of personified historical portrayal of Hungarian bourgeoisy before the WWII. I found it very interesting how he managed to interweave particular historical, social and psychological narratives in this novel. It's like in Marai's world people, defined to a great extent by their social, economic status in the society enter into very intense personal relations of power so their personal worlds collide with force and they try to penetrate each other's world and sort of decode each other's mysteries and fail profoundly.