Sándor Márai

Sándor Márai [ˈʃaːndor ˈmaːrɒi] (originally Sándor Károly Henrik Grosschmid de Mára, archaically English: Alexander Márai;[1] 11 April 1900 – 21 February 1989) was a Hungarian writer and journalist.

Sándor Márai
Sándor Márai
Born(1900-04-11)April 11, 1900
Kassa, Austria-Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia)
DiedFebruary 21, 1989(1989-02-21) (aged 88)
San Diego, United States
OccupationWriter
LanguageHungarian
NationalityHungarian
Notable worksEmbers (A gyertyák csonkig égnek, 1942)
Notable awardsKossuth Prize (in memoriam)
SpouseIlona Matzner
Sándor Márai (detail of his statue in Košice, Slovakia)
The native form of this personal name is Márai Sándor. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Biography

He was born in 1900 on April 11 in the city of Kassa, Kingdom of Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia). Through his father, he was a relative of the Hungarian noble Országh family. In his early years, Márai travelled to and lived in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Paris and briefly considered writing in German, but eventually chose his mother language, Hungarian, for his writings. In Egy polgár vallomásai, Márai identifies the mother tongue language with the concept of nation itself.[2] He settled in Krisztinaváros, Budapest, in 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 Franz Kafka.

He wrote very enthusiastically about the First and Second Vienna Awards, in which as the result of the German-Italian arbitration Czechoslovakia and Romania had to give back part of the territories which Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon. Nevertheless, Márai was highly critical of the Nazis.

Marai authored 46 books. His 1942 book Embers (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, 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.[3]

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, Márai settled in the city of San Diego, in the United States. Márai joined with Radio Free Europe between 1951-1968.[4] Márai was extremely disappointed in the Western powers for not helping the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[5]

He continued to write in his native language, but was not published in English until the mid-1990s. 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 with advanced cancer and his depression worsened when he lost his adopted son, John. He ended his life[6] with a gunshot to his head in San Diego in 1989. He left behind three granddaughters; Lisa, Sarah and Jennifer Márai.

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), Polish, Catalan, Italian, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Danish, Icelandic, Korean, Dutch, Urdu and other languages too, and is now considered to be part of the European Twentieth Century literary canon.

Evaluation

“Hungarian Sándor Márai was the insightful chronicler of a collapsing world.” –Le Monde

"It is perhaps one of the [works that] thus impacted me a lot." Dilma Rousseff on the book Embers.

Bibliography

Translated into English
  • The Rebels (1930, published in English in 2007, translation by George Szirtes), Hungarian title: A zendülők. ISBN 0-375-40757-X
  • Esther's Inheritance (1939, published in English in 2008), Hungarian title: Eszter hagyatéka. ISBN 1-4000-4500-2
  • Casanova in Bolzano (1940, published in English in 2004), Hungarian title: Vendégjáték Bolzanóban ISBN 0-375-71296-8
  • Portraits of a Marriage (1941 & 1980, published in English in 2011), Hungarian titles: Az igazi (1941) and Judit... és az utóhang (1980) ISBN 978-1-4000-9667-1
  • Embers (1942, published in English in 2001), Hungarian title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek. ISBN 0-375-70742-5
  • Memoir of Hungary (1971, published in English in 2001), Hungarian title: Föld, föld...! ISBN 963-9241-10-5
  • The Withering World: Selected Poems by Sandor Marai (Translations by John M. Ridland and Peter V. Czipott of 163 poems, published in English in 2013) ISBN 978-1-84749-331-6
  • Statue of Márai
    in Košice
  • Márai's place of residence (today's Mäsiarska Street in Košice)
  • Memorial plates of Márai installed on the front of his birthplace (in Hungarian and Slovak)
  • Márai's signature
    (detail of his statue in Košice)
  • Statue of Márai
    in Budapest's Mikó utca, Krisztinaváros
  • Márai's memorial on his former home in Krisztinaváros

Notes
  1. Leslie Konnyu: Modern Magyar literature: a literary survey and anthology of the xxth century Hungarian authors -PAGE: 95, Publisher: American Hungarian Review, 1964
  2. Márai, Sándor. "Egy polgár vallomásai." Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1935.
  3. Billington, Michael (March 2, 2006). "Embers". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  4. Márai, Sándor
  5. "The Life of Sándor Márai". May 12, 2014. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  6. "Sándor Márai". Random House. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
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