One hundred and twenty-four years ago, on April 11, 1900, Sándor Márai was a posthumous Kossuth Prize-winning writer and one of the most significant figures of 20th-century Hungarian literature.
As a descendant of the Highland Saxons (cobblers), he was born into a bourgeois family in Kassia, named Sándor Grosschmid, and officially adopted the name Márai in 1939. His father was a lawyer, one of his younger brothers was the later film director Géza Radványi. He was tutored until the age of ten, he completed high school in Kassa, Pest and Eperjes, the reason for his frequent school changes was primarily his rebellious spirit, as well as the fact that – despite school rules – he sent his writings to various newspapers under a pseudonym as a teenager. At the age of sixteen, his first article, a short story, was published in the Pesti Hírlap under the pseudonym Ákos Salamon. In 1918, he began legal studies in Pest, and his first book of poems was published under the title Memoir.
In 1919, he took an active role during the Soviet Republic, so he went to Germany following the fall of the proletarian dictatorship.
He studied at the university in Leipzig and then in Berlin, while his articles were published in prestigious Hungarian and German newspapers.
It was at this time that Matzner met Ilona, Lola, who remained her faithful companion for more than six decades, until her death. They married in 1923 and moved to Paris, returning home in 1928.
Márai’s first novel, The Butcher, was published in Vienna in 1924. From 1925, he was a regular correspondent for the daily newspaper Újság, and with his writings he was an effective advocate of the bourgeois liberal spirit. In 1933, his newspaper sent him to Berlin, where he tracked Hitler’s takeover of power and reported authentically and courageously on the reality of National Socialism. In 1934, the first volume of his autobiographically inspired work, A Citizen’s Confessions, tracing the fate of the European citizenry, was published, with which he immediately became at the forefront of Hungarian prose. In 1935, the second volume also saw the light of day, but due to a lawsuit once morest him, he had to rework the book, which might only be presented to readers once more with the original text in November 2013. In 1936, he became an employee of the Pesti Hírlap, and his articles appearing in the newspaper’s columns under the title Vasárnapi krónika were very popular.
In 1938, he was elected a member of the Kisfaludy Society. Their son, Kristóf, was born in February 1939. He died of a hemorrhage at the age of a few weeks. Márai mourned him in his poem “Death of a Child”.
The 1940s produced a rich crop of writers in his oeuvre. He paid tribute to the memory of one of his masters, Gyula Krúdy, with his novel Szindbád goes home (1940). In 1942, one of his most popular novels, A gertyák csonkig égnek, was published, of which both stage and film versions were made. In 1942, he was elected a correspondent and then a regular member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1945. In 1943, Füves’s book, an aphoristic treatise on the basic truths of human life, was published, and it was then that he began to write his Diary, a chronicle of his everyday life, which he continued until the end of his life, in which he constantly reflected on the happenings of his spiritual life as well. After the entry of the Germans in March 1944, he stopped journalism and moved to Leányfalu with his wife.
They returned to Budapest in 1945, but the increasingly dictatorial spiritual and political atmosphere slowly made him decide to leave the country.
His decision was also influenced by the fact that his last volume, published here, was crushed.
In August 1948, he and his wife and their adopted son, Jánoska, left the country, first moving to Italy, near Naples, and then settling in New York in 1952, receiving American citizenship in 1957. He went to Munich on the news of the 1956 revolution, commented on local events on Radio Free Europe, and was the radio’s correspondent until 1968 under the pseudonym Candidus.
From 1967 they lived in Salerno, Italy, in 1980 they moved back overseas to San Diego, California. Márai did not participate in the literary groupings of Western Hungarians, and spent his last years in complete seclusion. His personal life was overshadowed by misfortunes: he lost his brothers, his wife in 1986, and their adopted son in 1987. He wrote his last diary entry on January 15, 1989: “I’m waiting for the call-up, I’m not in a hurry, but I’m not procrastinating either.” It is time to.”
He committed suicide on February 21 in San Diego. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
His academic membership, which he lost due to emigration, was reinstated following his death, and he received a posthumous Kossuth Award in 1990 and a posthumous Hungarian Heritage Award in 1996.
He traveled from Kassa Márai to the Pacific Ocean, but the Hungarian language remained his homeland, he wrote all his works in his mother tongue. His outlook, worldview, and value system were rooted in the bourgeois liberal tradition, the values of which he defended without compromise throughout his life. He started out as a poet, but with his novels, short stories, and essays he became one of the masters of Hungarian prose, and his plays and plays were also successful.
Márai stipulated that his works cannot be published in his native country as long as the Russian army is stationed in the country. His books were still present here and had an impact through the Canadian and Munich editions that bypassed official censorship. Since the regime change, his writings have been continuously published, and since 1995 a literary award has been named following him. In 1997, his legacy was transferred to the Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest.
His statue stands in Kassa and Budapest, and the Sándor Márai Memorial Tour map was completed in 2011, with which those interested can visit locations connected to the writer and his family in these two cities. In 2013, his hitherto unknown work, the essay novel I Wanted to Listen, which can be considered the third part of the Confessions of a Citizen, was published. In 2019, a permanent Márai exhibition opened in Kassa, in the former Grosschmid house.
Source: MTI
