A man... and a woman... and another man... all night long... together (Embers - Sandor Marai)

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Embers - Sandor Marai
Date:	19/03/02 (2225 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: magical

Disadvantages: a small chunk in the middle that could risk derailing the reader

Picture two male friends and a woman spending whole nights together, as one. And then, years later, the two men spend another all-nighter together, without the woman but feeling her presence nonetheless.

No, you have not stumbled into an adult channel review, nor is this my debut in the proposed (or has it materialised?) dooyoo Erotica category. I am talking about one of the most stunning and incredible books I have ever read: EMBERS by Sandor Marai.

I realise that, having just praised to high heavens another recent read, "Back Roads", I'm enthusing about too many books recently - but that makes a pleasant change, actually, from the too many disappointing books making the rounds at present. Yet EMBERS had me hooked, from beginning to end (admittedly it's not a long read, and for a hardback is not too convenient pricewise), to what is essentially a skeletal story. Now those attentive readers will know from my previous ops that I "need" a good plot in a book to enjoy it to the full. No matter how beautiful the prose, if this is not supported by a decent story then I'm bound to be disappointed. EMBERS is different, to a certain extent. Its story is very bare, in that not much happens; however the fragments of this story are brought to us tiny bit by tiny bit, as if it were an intelligent thriller, so we are kept gasping till the end, and we never feel that we're being dragged along by the author just so he can impress us with his vocab and philosophy.

And no, this is not a thriller. The genre is beyond classification really: it could conceivably be a love story; it could be, in certain parts, a classic thriller; it also examines some very pertinent facts of life, old age, experience, infatuation, classism, but always in a non-pedantic way. Especially for a Hungarian novelist.

Which brings me to the author. Sandor Marai, born in 1900 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lived and wrote during the last ga
sps of this dying empire. A fervent anti-Fascist, but subsequently chased even by the Communists, he fled his homeland first to Italy then to the United States, where he died - by committing suicide - in 1989. Considered during his lifetime one of the greatest authors of Hungary (apparently), he seemed destined to oblivion until his recent rediscovery in European literary circles, culminating in the translation of this first work, EMBERS (the original title would translate, roughly, into "The Candle Burns to the End"), first into other European languages (including German, from which the English translation has been made, incidentally) and then into English. Marai is fast becoming the literary sensation of the noughts (2000 onwards...)... and for good reason.

It has been said (I apologise if I'm plagiarising from a dooyoo op, but I can't for the life of me remember where I've read this) that Hungarians are a superior extra-terrestial race quietly and secretly infiltrated into Earth aeons ago, and successfully camouflaging themselves in a quaint land, their true nature betrayed only by their incredibly talented writers. Well, if Marai, is an example of this extra-terrestial race, then I subscribe to this theory!

In EMBERS we meet Henrik, a Count and a General, of inestimable wealth living as a recluse in an enormous castle at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, well into his seventies at the first rumblings of World War II. For forty-one years he has lived as a complete recluse, with his Castle being kept by his servants and by his old nurse, Nini, a woman who was there at his birth. This evening is special, though. Konrad - his one and only best friend, from whom he was inseparable for about 24 years - has written that he will be visiting the Castle for dinner. Preparations are made, and the dining area of the Castle - unused for 41 years - is restored to its exact semblance of 41 years earlier, awaiting the guest. For this
guest has been awaited by the lord of the Castle for all these years - his life has been consumed in the anticipation:

"A man who has signed away his soul and his fate to solitude is incapable of faith. He can only wait... He prepares himself for that moment for ... forty-one years the way one prepares for a duel... he practices... [w]ith his memories, so that he will not allow solitude and time to cloud his sight and weaken his heart and his soul. There is one duel in life, fought without sabers, that nonetheless is worth preparing for with all one's strength."

What Henrik (the General) and Konrad discuss during the evening - a one-sided discussion that lasts all night - brings to a close events precipitated in that very room one evening 41 years earlier. We travel with Henrik and Konrad on this journey of (their) self-discovery, as one of the protagonists peels off, layer after patient layer, all the secrets of that night and all the contemplations that ensued, while the other protagonist listens, in near total silence, all night long.

Rarely has a near-monologue instilled such magic in me. Admittedly, there is one point, half-way down the road, where the ponderings and meanderings of this protagonist's mind veer dangerously towards over-philosophising, and nearly had me disappointed. However, once this mini-obstacle is surmounted (so there, you are warned, stick that bit out, it's worth it), the beauty of Marai's racconteur-powers is unleashed on us. Rarely have I read and cried so truthfully on such topics as solitude - for EMBERS is among other things an examination of solitude and what it instils in the heart of a man. The flip side of the coin of solitude is death - for those who survive death remain alone, for Marai:

"Thus I understood that a survivor has no right to bring a complaint. Whoever survives has won his case, he has no right and no cause to bring charges; he has emerged the stronger, the more cunning, the more obstinate, from the struggle."

It is a sad book. Not the sadness of current affairs, nor that of the death of a character in a novel. But the profound sadness of a raw nerve being hit, repeatedly, with vicious exactitude but at the same time - and this is what makes Marai's prose magical - with a depective calm. Try the scene where one of the protagonists disposes, calmly and coldly, of something both protagonists have been holding on to and searching for, respectively, for 41 years... if you read that and remain unmoved, unchilled, then Medusa might have paid you a visit earlier...

Poetry? Well no, unless you'd like to compare it to another lushly evocative book, "Fugitive Pieces" by Anne Michaels, in which case you might be near. A well-executed violin piece perhaps? Ok, hot. Indeed, music is a central part of this novel, seeing as the General's mother was related to Chopin, and both Konrad and the chateleine of the manor are music connoisseurs. Music formed, presumably (for many things are not fully explained in the novel - which of course adds immeasurably to its charm), an essential foundation of two of the protagonists' meeting of minds (and more).

Marai's talent - even in translation - for putting music into his words is, dare I say this?, unequalled by any other author I've read. Ok, maybe I'm being precipitous with such a sweeping statement, and perhaps I'll regret this and be back to change this phrase, but at the moment I cannot think of anything or anyone similar.

Just to give an idea, I've recently finished "Atonement" by Ian McEwan, and was already penning a favourable op on it, but when I got into EMBERS I had no option but to delete the entirety of the draft op, in order to start afresh another day when the comparison with EMBERS won't be so inevitable on my part. Chi vivra', vedra'...

"And when the longing for joy disappears, all that are left are memories or vanity, and then, finally, we are truly old. One day we wake up and rub our eyes and do not know why we have woken... Nothing surprising can ever happen again: not even the unexpected, the unusual, the dreadful can surprise us, because we know all the probabilities, we anticipate everything, there's nothing we want anymore, either good or bad. That is old age... Gradually we understand the world and then we die."

Keeping in mind when this book was written, we have a rare insight into the waning of one world - the ancien regime of starched collars and strict class hierarchy - and the waxing of the "new" twentieth century, with its sweeping away of classisms (to a certain extent) and the levelling of the playing field. One cannot but hear echoes of the bohemian revolution idolatrised in the recent film "Moulin Rouge". Konrad the bohemian, with his ideals of music, revolution, love - and Henrik the Count, the General, the last of a distinguished line of the highest-ranking nobility in a defunct empire, and his belief to the death of honour, respect, fidelity and obligations. Of his father's generation, the General thinks thus:

"A good generation, a trifle eccentric, not at ease in society, arrogant, but absolutely dedicated to honor [yes, ahime', the translation has American spelling...], to the male virtues: silence, solitude, the inviolability of one's word, and women. If they were let down, they remained silent. Most of them were silent for a lifetime, bound to duty and discretion as if by vows."


I cannot recommend this book highly enough - whatever your persuasions, whatever your taste in literature, set this book aside and read it someday.

Summary: A man... and a woman... and another man... all night long... together