Mészáros Tibor (szerk.): Once I lived, I, Sándor Márai. Patterns from a globetrotting Hungarian's life (Budapest, 2004)
Márai's secret
Márai and his novel - until then almost unknown in Europe - became a symbol. To what can we attribute this success, given that between the two world wars and in the fifties and sixties a couple of the writer's works had been published, including Embers itself. The unparalleled success can be explained by several factors, of which we believe the following to be the most important. The time. European culture, and world culture more generally, is currently showing several decadent trends. We are living in a time when the defense of values is gaining great significance in the face of the gathering 'culture of death'. The world evoked by the writer and his lifestyle represent an ideal and pure way of thinking that no longer exist, but for which people still long. (He writes of the age he idealises in Dead Cemetery. "Oh happy dead! These were all rich dead people. Most of the graves are from between 1870 and 1890. They died in a happy time. One of the happiest moments in European history. Bourgeois happiness, gathering riches, peace, beneficence, serene pottering, extraordinary tasteiessness, great visions. / feel that I am walking in the grave of peace. These dead knew peace." However modern we consider ourselves and our age, there is a fundamental sense of absence in the people of today. "Something exploded in the world and in men," wrote Márai in one of his letters. This emptiness, even if it is not filled, is at least replaced by the values and figures in the world Márai describes. The outstanding example of this is Confessions of a Bourgeois, which provides perhaps the closest glimpse of the writer himself, of the age that he regarded as the most valuable, of his values and ideals. Remembrance 56
