Marai Marai meets
Having been fascinated the reading of The Embers (1942), I'm reading back the other books published by Sandor Marai publisher Adelphi.
This order of reading back to the roots of the characters and lends itself to considerations of great interest. I dare say you can discover some of the obsessions and perhaps human suffering Mara.
Love with a capital A, it seems, at first glance, the major theme of his stories. Eternal love understood as a passion, "the fullness of life" between man and woman love understood as a great friendship and loyalty men. And only for men: the friendship between a man and a woman is not considered. The woman is the medium of love.
Actually Love is an excuse to lift a veil on ambiguity, on the rivalry, hate on, the most secret passions that dwell within us and that each of us exercises under the umbrella of love. They are ruthless characters who entrusts this task Marai, are often ugly (the Casanova de
For simplicity, I analyze the elements that connect the stories and intertwine in an unmistakable way.
Women
The Mara relationship with women, even with the Woman
The first Eszetr, a woman is passive, resigned, a love lived twenty years before he left the incurable wounds. Victim of his domain yet can not get rid of the arrogance of the man who has deluded "the unhappy love never ends."
The second, Francesca, while still loving Casanova aged , fat and poor, without any attraction, it feels the weakness of a great memory of love, but also feel the strength that comes from the consciousness of a time gone by.
Francesca has a glossy shine and this lets you control the passions. And while confessing - a Casanova vendutosi cowardly to count, her husband - a love that will never end, abandoned him leaving him in the squalor of its reality, in a cold room where the fire has died a long time. "to indicate that one day all the passions become ashes."
And 'the only woman, narrated by Mara, that for a long night talking and dominates with its passionate arguments about love, beauty, life, death, fate, a man who dares not answer because he signed a pact of treason: "It did not help to nothing I have offered you the pleasure and peace, purity and regeneration? " But he is silent.
The other women, while the protagonists of the events narrated in the novel do not live as if ghosts conjured by men who have loved and continue to consume their lives in the memory of that 'lost love.
Krisztina is the woman he loved The Embers. Noble, mysterious and treacherous, and emerge when it is spoken, dead for years, the two men who owned reunite old now but still need to clarify that betrayal. Their meeting, in an interview, which takes up practically the whole book, lays bare how this betrayal has left a deep wound to her husband, the general, and how much it was for Konrad's friend since the days of exclusive college , a way to clear social differences (which has unconsciously led him with great difficulty), and rivals that friendship so deep and generous that he never could reciprocate equally. Its social and economic conditions have not let permission and that weight has never abandoned. Betray his friend, making love to his wife, is the despicable act that allows Konrad liberating but to flee rebuild his life away, free of the comparisons, free from remorse.
Another woman, Anna, in Divorce in Buda, (1935) living dead in the long indictment which Imre, a middle-aged doctor, nail all night Kristof the judge. That court would have to say the day after their divorce. Imre but can not break his relationship with Anna except through death. Indeed, the causes and Kristof goes to confess to rebuilding, as in a dream, a hypothetical attraction that would feed the same Kristof for so many years ago by Anna Anna, unbeknownst to him, a woman contention.
Kristof's character would be General de "The Embers young: noble, perfect, with the responsibility of great traditions, like the character of Imre could be a precursor Konrad: experienced modest origins as a kind of frustration, against the noble class, while Anna Krisztina anticipates, immensely loved and lost. Divorce in Buda seems the plot, then developed and perfected, the masterpiece The Embers.
The social
Besides that The Embers, apparent gradient from the friendship and never expressed feelings and never dealt with fairly, Divorce in Buda and , that the difference of caste is another issue that Marai wishes to highlight in his books.
clear it very well The Rebels (1930).
A group of young people, united by belonging to the same school, rejecting the idea of \u200b\u200bactually living in a small town - devastated by World War I - decided to form a "band" to act and behave outside the rules imposed by their upbringing and their environment. Everyone feels bound in brotherhood by sharing this secret, do not feel any difference between them . From Abel, the son of a wealthy doctor, he feels "the effluvia acres penetrating ether and tincture of iodine that filtered of medicines from the cabinet," in Bela, son of the butcher , "around which floated an aroma of oriental spices, herring, and fresh fruit " to Erno, the son of a shoemaker, " that smelled of glue and leather unfinished, "at Tibor , son of a colonel in the war, with a very ill mother, in whose house "ruled the smell of poverty and disease full of lavender."
"The trades of the fathers of odors permeate their homes unmistakable." Marai says at the beginning of the novel to warn the reader that the differences between the "gang" there are and odors are a compelling track.
complicit in the war - parallel to that of their fathers - fighting against society; compact in the games that they invent and develop, they end up not seeing, in their innocence, the boundary between reality and game. They do not know the risks and go into a tragedy when they discover that unexpected Erno, the son of a shoemaker, has betrayed them by denouncing their secret games. And here it explodes, in all its tragic hatred, class conflict, never subsided and never born. Erno responds to allegations of his companions: "The thousands of times every single day, I kicked you in one way or another? No, it was not your fault. It is never to blame. You were and feel the goodness in person. I hated your touch. I hated your kindness. I hated you when handling a knife or fork. When you greet someone. When she smiled. When thank you for something, an object or information ... I hated your gestures, your look, the way you got up and I would sit. It is true that these things can be learned. I understand that there is money, power, strength, knowledge that can compensate for this. What can I live a hundred years and become a millionaire, and when you rot in the crypt some time - because you others also died there be in a building around you, dogs do not like us, that there are in the cellar already live - even then I feel unhappy because I will think of the way in which Tibor knew apologize to a passerby, who had accidentally hit with a wave of his hand and a smile ... I do not know how we can purify, but I feel cleaner just thinking of you all into the mud up to his neck. And in the end you die. "
Hatred hatched and eventually confessed, causes the suicide of Erno that fails to survive his own feelings.
representation
The recitation of the mask, is another of the themes beloved by Mara, in fact, as mentioned before, maybe the most popular theme. Treaty as psychologically deeper than we can say that this is in one way or another, in each of his books. Each character seems to have a form, each character seems to belong to a precise and sophisticated screenplay.
course it The recitation of Bolzano becomes crucial meeting between Casanova and Francesca. For a whole night confront, confess, speak of absolute love, dressed in costume and with their faces covered: she dresses in men's and women's clothing him. The roles exchanged reality and fiction, of disguise destinies.
Marai is to say to Frank: "And you ran away in vain, because now here we are again, facing each other, and look forward to when we take off the mask, my love : there are still many, many masks among us, and we will remove one after another before finally seeing each other with open face. Do not rush, do not panic, do not reach for the mask, do not throw it again! It is no coincidence that today, after so long, we are left with the mask on your face, when each of us is freed from his prison and we are here, facing one another, do not rush to shed the mask, because there's another below, made of bones, meat and skin, but is a mask just like silk. We will throw a lot of other masks before I can see and know your face. But I know that somewhere, far, far away , there is also your face different, and that's what I have to see one day, because I love you. "
And all what you say what you belong to? To recite or to life? The charm of fiction or the reality of suffering and abandonment?
Marai gives the reader all the reflections on truth.
It Rebels becomes fatal encounter between the "gang" and a failed actor who fascinates them ambiguous with its transformations, winning their trust, enter into their games by providing costumes scene, makes them believe free "from the tentacles of the discipline that had oppressed them in their childhood." Serve of their ingenuity and their fear for his shady dealings. "But the actor had the ability that no other was with. ... "He could talk to them like no adult had never been able to do. ..." The actor stated, driven by the same necessity that forced them to play well, distorting the reality behind the faces of a painful character, form. Play a part for him was a need, as well as they had a law. Perhaps the actor most authentic experience the movements of his life just as he was on stage, just as the boys had the feeling that their lives behind the screen of reality was more authentic than any reality. "
And it is he, the actor, the masked character, which leads them to tragedy, cynically.
It Confessions of a bourgeois (1934), autobiography of the writer, are found the roots of his novels. It 's the key to understanding the book by Mara.
They understand the important passages of his life, and, as in his books, the women accompany him but not seen. We do not know much about them, even if he loves a veil of modesty protects them from the reader's curiosity.
Unforgettable pages devoted to Berlin and Paris of the time. Beautiful city views and the experiences of a young foreign journalist in search of affirmation.
Last book published earth, earth (1969), no more complete an autobiography recounting the wanderings of a young ambitious bourgeois, but the suffering of a civilian during the occupation of Budapest by the Nazis before, the Communists, then. In the pages that talk about the humiliation of the beloved city, you hear the bourgeois in his wounded pride, after all, does not demand a living thing who does not belong to her class, but suffers for what he , the bourgeois, the intellectual is private. "The bureaucratic cruelty, mechanized and impersonal it is humiliating for men, while the individual is content to cause tormenti.E now, still in uniform, cruelty had come back to Budapest."
The interest of this book, passionate and painful, and also make us feel more like Mara belonged to Mittleuropa a great writer but a writer close, contemporary, belonged to our history.
Yes, Sandor Marai in his novels, makes us reflect on love, but there is a reflection deeper on truth and fiction which are owned in the same way, to our lives.
September 3, 2002
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