Mészáros Tibor (szerk.): Once I lived, I, Sándor Márai. Patterns from a globetrotting Hungarian's life (Budapest, 2004)
Once I lived, I, Sándor Márai
He analysed betrayal in Thirty Pieces of Silver, a work that appeared in 1983. Judas symbolizes the man of the masses, for whom Márai had always had antipathy. According to the novel, without Jesus, everyone becomes Judas, because there is nothing to shine light on the conscience, on base motivations. Anyone who chooses the other, clearly more difficult route has to contend with the punishments of power. His final diary to appear during his lifetime was for the period 1976-83, published in 1985. From this we learn what writing his diary meant to Márai. "For me these notes hove for forty years replaced the columns 1 wrote, the contact with every day reality. And they are also a kind of farewell, when I think that I'm still writing something." In the same year he lost his two siblings living in Budapest, his younger sister Kató and his brother Gábor. Márai spend the rest of his life confronting the inevitability of aging and loss. The diary that was published after his death deals from day to day with thoughts and events of this kind. In 1985 he finished a work he had begun before, the novel Love of the Heart, which he always described as a "crime novel". He devotedly cared for his half-blind wife, "...she is so beautiful at 87, just as she was when she was young - different, but 'beautiful'. I don't know how long I'll have strength, but until the last moment I want to be with her, to help, to care." He faithfully cared for and visited his wife in hospital, who died on 4 January 1986. She was cremated, and her earthly remains were scattered in the ocean, just as Márai's would be one year later. ("I have made sure that I shall be buried in the same way," he writes in his final diary.) After almost sixty-three years of life together, the lonely writer dealt ever more frequently with death, dying and thoughts of suicide. 'Two weeks ago I bought a handgun..." In September he has an operation; he begins to rewrite his earlier novels. In November he writes, "My brother Géza has died...He was an émigré. he returned home last year. He went home to die. Or he went home and died of it," His inner crisis deepened, according to his 1987 diary notes. He had few remaining contacts with the outside world. He received few visitors. "When one is old, one must decide what to do with loneliness. Perhaps it is better to be lonely on one's own than in company. But age is a problem on its own," he told a Hungarian journalist. On 23 April his adopted child János died. He summarises his thoughts increasingly often. "Death is not a problem, dying is." At the same time, he can see humour in his situation. "Since Lola died, several widows have turned up, because the widows have a very good news service. They know at once if a position is open." By 1988 there was increasing interest in Hungary in the writer and his works. Several bodies (the Academy, the Hungarian Writers' Alliance) approached him with letters offering republication of his works. He refused all these offers, just as he did with suggestions that he return home. He refuses to give up on the principle for which he had suffered 20
