Sándor Márai
Encyclopedia
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
.
Biography
He was born in 1900 on April 11th in the city of KassaKošice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(now Košice in Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
) to an old family of Saxon
Saxons
The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes originating on the North German plain. The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein...
origin who had mixed with magyars through the centuries. Through his father he was a relative of the Hungarian noble Ország-family. In his early years, Márai travelled to and lived in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and briefly considered writing in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, but eventually chose his mother language, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, for his writings. He settled in Krisztinaváros
Krisztinaváros
Krisztinaváros is a neighbourhood in central Budapest, situated just west of Castle Hill, north of Tabán. It is named after Archduchess Maria Christina, daughter of Maria Theresa, who interceded for buildings to be erected in this area...
, Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, in 1928. In the 1930s, he gained prominence with a precise and clear realist
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
style. He was the first person to write reviews of the work of Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
.
He wrote very enthusiastically about the Vienna Awards
Vienna Awards
The Vienna Awards are two arbitral awards by which arbiters of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to enforce peacefully the claims of Hungary on territory it had lost in 1920 when it signed the Treaty of Trianon...
, in which Germany forced Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
to give back part of the territories which Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
. Nevertheless, Márai was highly critical of the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
as such and was considered "profoundly antifascist," a dangerous position to take in wartime Hungary.
Marai authored forty-six books, mostly novels, and was considered by literary critics to be one of Hungary's most influential representatives of middle class literature between the two world wars. His 1942 book Embers
Embers (novel)
Embers is a 1942 novel by the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai. Its original Hungarian title is A gyertyák csonkig égnek, which means "Candles burn until the end"...
(Hungarian title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek, meaning "The Candles Burn Down to the Stump") expresses a nostalgia for the bygone multi-ethnic, multicultural society of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, reminiscent of the works of Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
. In 2006 an adaptation of this novel for the stage, written by Christopher Hampton
Christopher Hampton
Christopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
, was performed in London.
He also disliked the Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
regime that seized power after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and left – or was driven away – in 1948. After living for some time in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Márai settled in the city of San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
He continued to write in his native language, but was not published in English until the mid-1990s. Márai's Memoir of Hungary (1944-1948) provides an interesting glimpse of post World War II Hungary under Soviet occupation. Like other memoirs by Hungarian writers and statesmen, it was first published in the West, because it could not be published in the Hungary of the post-1956 Kádár era. The English version of the memoir was published posthumously in 1996. After his wife died in 1986, Márai retreated more and more into isolation. In 1987, he lived advanced cancer and his depression worsen when he lost his son, John. He ended his life with a gunshot to his head in San Diego in 1989.
He left behind three grand-daughters; Lisa, Sarah and Jennifer Márai.
Largely forgotten outside of Hungary, his work (consisting of poems, novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, and diaries
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
) has only been recently "rediscovered" and republished in French (starting in 1992), Polish, Catalan, Italian, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Icelandic, Korean, Dutch, and other languages too, and is now considered to be part of the European Twentieth Century literary canon.
Translated into English
- The Rebels (1930, published in English in 2007), Hungarian title: A zendülők. ISBN 037540757X
- Esther's Inheritance (1939, published in English in 2008), Hungarian title: Eszter hagyatéka. ISBN 1400045002
- Casanova in Bolzano (1940, published in English in 2004), Hungarian title: Vendégjáték Bolzanóban ISBN 0375712968
- EmbersEmbers (novel)Embers is a 1942 novel by the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai. Its original Hungarian title is A gyertyák csonkig égnek, which means "Candles burn until the end"...
(1942, published in English in 2000), Hungarian title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek ISBN 0375707425 - Memoir of Hungary (1971, published in English in 2001), Hungarian title: Föld, föld…! ISBN 9639241105
External links
- See discussion in the Book Club at Words Without Borders – an online magazine for international literature
- Official Marai site at Knopf, which is releasing Marai's novels in English
- Review of Embers
- Marai's American Journal – Excerpts (in English) from Marai's final diaries,
- Sándor Márai Blog – a fan blog with news, reviews, links
- Márai at Hunlit
- János Kőbányai,Sándor Márai: a smoldering within,"Eretz Acheret" Magazine
- 70 Years Later, A New Chance To Read 'Marriage' NPR story about new translation of "Portraits of A Marriage" (with link to excerpt)