[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
"I found only some firewalls of my home standing.
During the siege, it took three bomb hits and more than thirty grenades.
I somehow climbed up to the second floor on the rubbish pile that rose
from the rubble, the remains of the stairs and the furniture fragments
where the staircase once stood, and I caught sight of my top hat and
a French porcelain candlestick on the top of the mushy pile of ruins
that was once my home. Photographs were strewn about in the rubbish,
including the one which long time ago, before the siege, hung above
my writing desk and depicted Tolstoy standing with Gorky in the garden
at Yasnaya Polyana. I put this photograph in my pocket and looked around
to see what else I could take as a keepsake. I made my way through the
obstacles to the room where my books had lined the shelves. I would
like to have found the bilingual Marcus Aurelius, then Eckermann's Conversations
and an old Hungarian edition of the Bible. But it was difficult to get
my bearings in the chaos. The blast had, like some paper mill, ground
the books into a pulp. Still, one book with an undamaged title page
lay on the rubbish pile right next to my top hat. I picked it up and
read the title: "On the care of a Middle-Class Dog," this
was its title. I stuck the book in my pocket and cautiously climbed
down from the rubbish pile to the ground floor. At this moment - I later
thought about this a lot - I felt a strange sense of relief."
(From Memoir of Hungary, translated by Albert Tezla)
"I once dreamt I was standing on a platform in a hall packed with people. I was dressed in a frock coat and held a top hat and a magic wand in my hand. I asked the esteemed audience for its kind attention, raised the magic wand, and with a single stroke chopped off my head, put it into the top hat, and then, serenely, with easy movements, I scratched the inside of the top hat with the magic wand, pulled out my head and put it back on my neck. I said: "Voilá!", I bowed and applause exploded. This was the dream." (From Memoir of Hungary)
Márai's exemplar was the individual who adhered faithfully
to the cultural obligations imposed by a purposeful life, whose ethical
values are created by personal discipline and whose "first principle
is the fulfillment of duty," a being that shapes his life by creative
work in which, Márai proclaimed, "the highest degree of pleasure
bursts into flame" and who, despite all evidence to the contrary,
continues to be enticed by the vision of human perfectibility. (Albert
Tezla)
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
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