Sándor Márai

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Sándor Márai
Márai in the early 1940s
Márai in the early 1940s
BornSándor Károly Henrik Grosschmid de Mára
(1900-04-11)April 11, 1900
Kassa, Kingdom of Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia)
DiedFebruary 21, 1989(1989-02-21) (aged 88)
San Diego, United States
Occupation
  • Writer
  • poet
  • journalist
LanguageHungarian
EducationEötvös Loránd University, Leipzig University
Period1918–1989
Notable worksEmbers (1942)
Notable awardsKossuth Prize (in memoriam)
SpouseIlona Matzner
RelativesGéza Grosschmid (father) [1]
Signature
Arms of the family Grosschmid de Mára[2]
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.

Sándor Márai (Hungarian:

Hungarian
writer, poet, and journalist.

Biography

Márai was born on 11 April 1900 in the city of

mother tongue language with the concept of the nation itself.[4] 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 that Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon, including his native Kassa (Košice). Nevertheless, Márai was highly critical of the Nazis.

Márai 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.[5]

He also disliked the

Radio Free Europe between 1951 and 1968.[6] Márai was extremely disappointed in the Western powers for not helping the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[7]

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, his Föld! Föld! was first published in the West in 1971, because it could not be published in the Hungary of the post-1956 Kádár era. The English version of this memoir was published posthumously in 2001. 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[8] 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

Urdu
and other languages too, and is now considered to be part of the 20th-century European 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

Gallery

  • Statue of Márai in Košice
    Statue of Márai
    in Košice
  • Márai's place of residence (today's Mäsiarska Street 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)
    Memorial plates of Márai installed on the front of his birthplace (in Hungarian and Slovak)
  • Márai's signature (detail of his statue in Košice)
    Márai's signature
    (detail of his statue in Košice)
  • Statue of Márai in Budapest's Mikó utca, Krisztinaváros
    Statue of Márai
    in Budapest's Mikó utca, Krisztinaváros
  • Márai's memorial on his former home in Krisztinaváros
    Márai's memorial on his former home in Krisztinaváros

Notes

  1. ^ | influences = Thomas Mann, Gyula Krúdy, Joseph Roth | influenced =
  2. ^ "Grosschmid János földmérő,a tengermelléki kerület sóbányáinak és kamarai javainak főfelügyelője n:Országh Borbála gy:János,Antal,Gábor,Cecília,Mária-Lujza t:Ferenc a királyi családi birtokok jószágigazgatóságának titkára | Libri Regii | Hungaricana". archives.hungaricana.hu. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  3. ^ Leslie Konnyu: Modern Magyar literature: a literary survey and anthology of the xxth century Hungarian authors -PAGE: 95, Publisher: American Hungarian Review, 1964
  4. ^ Márai, Sándor. "Egy polgár vallomásai." Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1935.
  5. ^ Billington, Michael (March 2, 2006). "Embers". Guardian Unlimited. Archived from the original on July 18, 2008. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  6. ^ "Search | Petőfi Literary Museum". pim.hu.
  7. ^ "The Life of Sándor Márai". May 12, 2014. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  8. ^ "Sándor Márai". Random House. Retrieved November 17, 2017.

External links

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