Mészáros Tibor (szerk.): Once I lived, I, Sándor Márai. Patterns from a globetrotting Hungarian's life (Budapest, 2004)

Once I lived, I, Sándor Márai

Sándor, the oldest child, used the name Grosschmid until 1918. (Family legend has it that when Maral and his brother chose artistic careers, their father told them, "I don't mind your making fools of yourselves, but don't do it under my name." (Could this explain both artists' name changes?)

Márai's hometown of Kosice in Slovakia influenced his entire life and work, Kosice was then part of Hungary and known as Kassa. In 1941 he wrote an article about the town.

Our relationship with our hometown becomes ever more intimate and complicated as the years go by. We slowly forget all our feelings, and as with any intimate relationship, we do not notice the peculiarities or failings of the one who is important to us, interested only in the simple fact of its

existence. And that becomes more important than anything else after many years. With time, we go to our hometowns not to dig up memories, but in

order to recapture for an instant a sense of security in the midst of this moving, changing life and world...There is nothing more enigmatic and complicated than our relationship to our hometown. You're walking down the street in Chicago, you bump into a man and think to yourself. "That's interesting, he looks like Kornitzer." You see a building tagadé in Dijon and you think to yourself, "Just like the Felkais' house" We link everything back to that, distracted. The world is not infinite. For a person, the world is large only to the extent that it resembles his childhood memories. Everything else is foreign. it might be extraordinary, or sometimes fearsome, but it is always foreign. We can only sense and feel the world if it reflects the magical sunken world of childhood and home.

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