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I don’t deny that when I was looking for quotes for this article, following a while I got too saturated with Márai’s thoughts. At the same time, there is no doubt that one or the other really “hit the spot” and stayed with me for a long time.
Nowadays, he often contradicts himself, for example, his insights regarding humility reflect this quite plastically, but the fact is that we all change, and the one who is always consistent is no longer a person, but rather a machine that just pours out more and more circular maxims. (We also know such authors nowadays.)
Márai lived a long and long life, he was born exactly five years before Attila József, and he outlived the equally tragic poet by fifty-two years. The older he got, the more bitter he became. His diaries, written in the late years, are poignantly moody and disillusioned. He no longer believed in life. He viewed the world and himself dispassionately. Although he spent much less time in Hungary than anywhere else in the world, he was unable to separate himself from his Hungarianness, his mother tongue and the fact that he was born a citizen. His intellectual superiority, deep and analytical observations show a lot of truth to the people of today. When read in moderation, it is truly both refreshing and moving.
An excellent chronicler of a bygone era.
1.
“You live humanly if you live justly. If the intention is at the bottom of all your actions and words: not to harm people. If you try to help people – without showing off and playing a vain role. Sometimes just by not listening to the simple truths. Sometimes just by not saying what other people are lying regarding. Sometimes just by not saying yes when everyone shouts: “Yes, yes!” For a lifetime, consistently, not agreeing to what is a lie of the people, is greater heroism than occasionally protesting once morest it loudly and clapping your chest.”
2.
“One must live and write in a final way, so calmly, very attentively, paying equal attention to the world and to ourselves, to our understanding and passions, to people’s intentions and to our relationships with the universe. This is the behavior worthy of the only human being: God does not require more from us. And there is no greater sin and more vain attempt than wanting more or something different than what God wants from us.”
3.
“Can we educate someone to be patriotic? It’s as if I were to say: “I will force you to love yourself with whips and spiked whips.” The homeland is not only land and mountains, dead heroes, mother tongue, bones of our ancestors in cemeteries, bread and landscape, no. Home is you, skin and hair, in your physical and mental qualities; he gave birth, he buried you, you live and express him, all the misery sat in great, blazing and boring moments, the totality of which is your life. And your life is also a moment of the life of the homeland. I cannot teach you to love your country: he who denies himself is mad.
Your country is a magnified and timeless personality on historical scale. Home is destiny, personally too. It doesn’t matter if you “like” it or not? You are one. But I see and experience that you – so, ceremoniously, in writing and on the podium – rather testify and profess your love of the state. You can’t expect anything from your country.
The homeland does not give merit, nor a job, nor greasy bread. There is only home. But the state gives you a nice stall, cheesy trinkets on your lounge jacket, a prime butt, if you serve it skillfully, if you walk around it with an incense stick, if you confess to the world that you love the state, even if they break the wheel. They usually don’t make a fuss regarding it.
That is why all patriotism is suspect. Whoever loves the state loves an interest. He who loves his country loves a fate. Think regarding that when you’re screaming on the podium and beating your chest.”
4.
“On human matter
Human matter has not changed for five thousand years, ten thousand years. Only the costumes, the systems and conditions of coexistence have changed. What a person is – the soul and the character – has not changed. In the city of Ur, in Babylon, the same people lived as in Budapest today: and in their souls they perceived the world in the same way and responded to the world in exactly the same way. They were just – without instruments – closer to the secrets of the world, to time, to the stars, to the sign language of nature. Their hearing was finer, their vision – even without binoculars – sharper, more perceptive, more foreboding, more gripping. Human matter has not changed, but man, thanks to a few flamethrowers and instruments, is blinder and more deaf in civilization than he was at the beginning of human time. It’s quieter and prettier. More informed and at the same time more ignorant. He thinks he controls the universe at the push of a button. This gigantic structure, civilization, has banished man from the great, secret, intimate community of the world.”
5.
“Avoid the company of smart people, because they excite you and eventually hurt you. Seek the company of the wise. You can talk to the smart ones. You can listen with the wise.”
6.
“Every wise man strives to gain some kind of human standpoint in the face of the horror of death. This industry is human, touching. That’s why it’s hopeless. Consider that the wise also die. And they uselessly say: “death is only change” – they cannot calm our hearts and their old hearts with this wisdom. Perhaps their understanding will recognize this truth; their hearts remain restless. Seneca died in captivity. Don’t roast the fear of death. Don’t be ashamed to admit that it hurts to leave this hideous and great certainty, life, for the unknown and ominously incomprehensible uncertainty that is death, cessation, nothingness. Don’t worry, don’t worry. Don’t worry, but be afraid. Otherwise, if it makes you feel better, you can also eat soup. Don’t want to die “with dignity”, i.e. a liar. Die as you lived: in a human way, so somewhat heroically, and also cowardly.”
7.
“When you learn something real regarding life, you become calm and single-minded. This single-mindedness does not complain. He doesn’t accuse, he doesn’t call to account, he doesn’t demand revenge, satisfaction, or explanation. Everything human is hopeless. Only the divine is complete, only the soul is not hopeless. What can man want other than single-mindedness when he turns to the divine with human desires? The initiate is quiet. You know it can’t be helped. The most you can do is to do no harm to others and yourself. He who lives towards death, who lives among men, therefore lives in injustice, what can he hope for? If you can train your heart to a kind of calmness and humility, it is almost comforting and serene.”
8.
“On misunderstanding
Two billion and a few hundred million people live on earth, so they say. So know: there is a two billion and a few hundred million chance that your words and actions will be misunderstood. As many people live on earth, there are as many chances and opportunities for misunderstanding. This is the great and the fearful in human life, this is the fatal in all human utterances and undertakings. You say: »white« or »black«. But there are whites and blacks in the world, right? And black in the eyes of a white person is different than in the eyes of a black person. And the world reflects infinitely differently in every human soul. Each spoken and written word has a different resonance in the souls of two billion and a few hundred million people. You should also know this, and you should never be surprised by the echo with which a person responds to the other person’s words.
Human life is the cycle of an eternal series of endless misunderstandings.
The root of these misunderstandings is the colorful, complicated, terrifying and magnificent miracle whose collective name is man.”
9.
“About myself
With my last breath, I thank fate that I was human and that a spark of reason shone in my dim soul. I saw the earth, the sky, the seasons. I got to know love, fragments of reality, desires and disappointments. I lived on the ground and slowly became enlightened. One day I will die: and that too is so wonderfully orderly and simple! Could something else, better, greater have happened to me? It mightn’t happen. I have lived the most and the greatest, the human destiny. Nothing else or better might have happened to me.”
10.
“There is no other weapon once morest the world but humility; not the flattering and breast-beating humility, but the other, which calmly and without movement looks wolf-eyed at the world.”
11.
“One should live like in the Stone Age: without a calendar, between life and death, only in time.”
12.
“How terrifying everything turns out following the first time together! There is just as little cheating in the fatal matters of the body and passion as in the fatal matters of the soul.”
13.
“There is no degree of love like tenderness, no degree of heat like love. Its content cannot be communicated in words; if they say it, it’s a lie. You can only live in love, as in light or air. An organic being may not be able to live in any other way than in heat, light, air and love.”
14.
“The day dawns in the life of every person and every nation, when it is necessary to understand that we cannot count on anything and no one in this world: we are alone. […] This is the moment when every person – sometimes gritting their teeth, once morest their will – becomes a hero.”
15.
“Don’t want to be a hero. Remain unbiased and considerate. That’s enough.”
16.
“Sometimes I think I’m waiting for love. This hunger is probably insatiable: once you have tasted it, you want to taste it until you die. In the meantime, I learned that love cannot be received; you always have to give, that’s the way. I also learned that nothing is more difficult than expressing love.”
17.
“Don’t expect humility from me; I’m not a humble person. I am unrestrained and observant, unfaithful and curious, sensitive and cruel.”
18.
“There is a kind of humility, which is also a weapon, there is a kind of bowing, which can only be answered by bowing. I’m not telling you to drop the sword. But don’t mess with it. […] Do you want to be strong? Stay calm, considerate and humble.”
19.
“The great, truly fatal dramas of life begin so quietly that we are already up to our necks in the dramatic situation, and we still don’t understand. Cancer, shame, failure, great disappointment don’t start like in literature: one day we notice a pimple, or someone calls and speaks so peculiarly into the phone, we don’t even really understand what they’re saying, or the woman we love , turns his head once, amused. This is how it starts. No. This has already happened. Doom is silent. Only the accident roars, screeches and jingles.”
20.
“My house. Two of your vowels are identical to the vowels of death. Because you are a deadly force, my country, a force that will not let you go. You are everything, everything is in you. I surrender.”
21.
“Only the hero can listen to what is protest and truth in him.”
22.
“Why is it that in a foreign country, every time I hear a child speak Hungarian, I feel an insurmountable sadness, and I have to hurry away, to some abandoned side road, to wipe away and hide my tears from the strangers?”
23.
“The meaning of life is the truth. Behind the wondering and the doubt, the research and the satisfaction, the errors and the delusions, the phenomena and the multitude, there is some common meaning that radiates and penetrates everything.”
24.
“I no longer wish for anything else but a garden where you can sit under a walnut tree with your head uncovered on a September morning. In the end, you just want clichés. The garden is a commonplace; let’s go home and sit under the walnut tree.”
Which of these is your favorite? Write it in the comments!
Fun fact
His most used words today in these 24 quotes: man (39), life (16), home (14), world (14), true, truth, really (14), love (10), destiny (8), death ( 8), hero (7), humility (7).
A Herb bookfrom 1–11, 20–22; The four seasonsfrom the 12th to the 19th and the 23rd; the Confessions of a citizenand quote number 24 from
Earlier, Éva Szentesi wrote two articles regarding Márai, read them both!
Featured image: Wikipedia / enciklopedia.fazekas.hu
Both Gabi