July 2008: Sándor Márai: Embers

[Stewart]

July 2008 Book of the Month
Embers by Sándor Márai

Amazon.com Review
In Sándor Márai's Embers, two old men, once the best of friends, meet after a 41-year break in their relationship. They dine together, taking the same places at the table that they had assumed on the last meal they shared, then sit beside each other in front of a dying fire, one of them nearly silent, the other one, his host, slowly and deliberately tracing the course of their dead friendship. This sensitive, long-considered elaboration of one man's lifelong grievance is as gripping as any adventure story and explains why Márai's forgotten 1942 masterpiece is being compared with the work of Thomas Mann. In some ways, Márai's work is more modern than Mann's. His brevity, simplicity, and succinct, unadorned lyricism may call to mind Latin American novelists like Gabriel García Márquez, or even Italo Calvino. It is the tone of magical realism, although Márai's work is only magical in the sense that he completely engages his reader, spinning a web of words as his wounded central character describes his betrayal and abandonment at the hands of his closest friend. Even the setting, an old castle, evokes dark fairy tales.
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Discussion on this book begins July 1st.​

 

[Stewart]

Ding ding! July's discussion is open.

 

[silverseason]

You probably won't like this, but here goes....

I find the structure of this book unsatisfying. The first half is background, an account of the early life of Hendrik and Konrad during which we are set up for the meeting of these two former friends after 41 years. Why did they separate? What is the source of the bitterness Hendrik expresses? Is some sort of dramatic revenge being planned?

We are set up for the meeting and for the conversation to come. But then we do not get a conversation. We get 100 pages of monologue by Hendrik, during which Konrad, like the disciple in a Platonic dialog, emits an occasional yes I remember or I agree, while Hendrik talks on. In a story apparently devoted to the interactions of three people, we get only Hendrik’s account. For example, he states several times that Konrad is “different” – and quotes his father to the same effect. Different from what? Not a soldier, not a wealthy aristocrat, perhaps guilty of being an artist. In Henrik’s world, most of the rest of humankind would have to be marked as different.

I have been in Hungary, and I picked up on a couple of things. One was the respect that lingers for the Emperor Franz Joseph, emperor of Austria but only king in Hungary. The pride of the Hungarian old families comes through clearly. Since in traveling to the estate, they pass over the plain and into the woods, this must be set in eastern Hungary or Transylvania, another aloof area, set apart from Vienna and the west.

At the end, I was very frustrated by hearing only Hendriks’ views of his wife and friend. He calls his wife independent and truthful, yet she deceived him and lived stubbornly on as his dependent instead of leaving. If he understood her so little, why should we trust his judgment of anyone else.? So maybe this is not a story of the relationship of the General and his wife and his friend. Maybe this is a portrait of a wealthy, selfish, and arrogant man who wasted his life in service to his pride.

 

[saliotthomas]

Well first of all,you seem to not have been touch by the style or if i may say the beauty of some of the allegories.You talk about it like of travel guide that fail to produce a judgement on a restaurant.Is there not more to the book than that.
The diatride of Henrick is long indeed but he poses himself has the judge,the one stating the fact,Conrad has defendant just acquiesce or deny.However there is a part where he talk about his life in the tropic and i personaly found it interesting.
From previous conversation about this book,i found that many would have like Conrad to be more offencise,or a least to take a greater part in the dialogue.I think it interesting to find the love for his friend through Henrick,even if different,maybe because of it,there is a deep ,sincere admiration for someone and something ha love but wil never understand.The hardest to Conrad is that,the guilt of a betrayal of a pure friendship.And that is why he comeback after all this years,to expiate before he dies in a judgement where both act as they should.
As for Isabella,did she not love him even more than Conrad,was this affair not a revenge on both of them on a to perfect figure.I don't know,but humain relationship are often far more complexe than what the eye meet,or a pue constat of logic.We all have our private hell and garden of eden.

Your maybe the first personne with interest in book to give such a flat description of this book.Surely the hunt is a beautifull piece of writing,Ninni the milk mother is an extraodinary caractere.I loved the description of music by someone who is not touched by it,the feeling of loss,the foreignness.I alway found music very abstrac an art,hard to grasp.
I hope some of you will have more to say,it's not i don't like it,i'm just disapointed.For nothing and no one could make me think differently about Embers.

 

[oskylad]

I found Embers to be like a small garden - quiet, peaceful, confined, and full of small surprises. After the wasteland of A Farewell to Arms, it was refreshing to take time to stop and enjoy the flowers - what saliotthomas describes as the beauty of some of the allegories.

A confined garden can become confining if one doesn't move on after a while. But I am glad we chose this resting point, and look forward to our discussion this month.

 

[pontalba]

I am one that wished for more of a dialogue between Konrad and Henrik, but what you say Thomas makes sense, Henrik had set himself up as Judge, Jury, and I wondered if executioner as well. His bitterness is what carried him along all those years, there is nothing like idealistic friendship turned sour [for whatever reason] to fuel bitterness. The General was of the school that claims "revenge is a dish best served cold". He waited for Life to punish the pair, but in the end it punished him just as much if not more.

I loved Nini, she was in a way the best character in the book. Fierce and wonderful.

 

[Peder]

After I get a little organized here, I'll be in the discussion too, although I see it is hardly lacking for enthusiastic participation so far. :flowers:

 

[Libra]

I am enjoying this book, and I agree with Thomas.

Chapter 1You could almost visualize the General standing in front of the desk with the "unstained green felt". Reminded me of movies with the rooms full of dark wood furniture and expensive tapestries. The descriptions I think are fascinating.

Chapter 2Nini , everyone was wondering how this woman had a smile on her face after the man she loved and her baby died.
It tells of a strong woman, I felt she did not wallow in her misery(not that you forget or don't feel the pain of such loss)but she went to a household that took her in and had a chance to feel her void by taking care of this boy and she appreciated it.

Chapter 3This description was beautiful: "Time preserves everything, but as it does so it fades things to the colorless of ancient photographs fixed on medal plates. Light and time erase the contours and distinctive shading of the faces. One has to angle the image this way and that until it catches the light in a particular way and one can make out the person whose features have been absobed into the blank surface of the plate. It is the same with our memories"


My input for now

 

[silverseason]

I loved Nini, she was in a way the best character in the book. Fierce and wonderful.

Yes, and a great contrast to the General who cultivated his bitterness and pride for 41 years. Who had the better life?

My reaction to the book is a reaction to the General and the thinking and emotional paralysis he represents. The author is artful in making us see that.

But I still would have liked to have heard from the others involved.

 

[Robert]

I loved Nini, she was in a way the best character in the book. Fierce and wonderful.

I've only completed five chapters, but Nini does seem to be the only source of light in an otherwise emotionally dark work.

 

[pontalba]

Yes, and a great contrast to the General who cultivated his bitterness and pride for 41 years. Who had the better life?

My reaction to the book is a reaction to the General and the thinking and emotional paralysis he represents. The author is artful in making us see that.

But I still would have liked to have heard from the others involved.

I would especially liked to have heard from Krisztina, hear why she didn't ever bother to call out to Henrik until just before she died. Pride? Certainly misplaced if that is the case. Shame? Perhaps, but even shame must have an end if we are to live.

But really all of that is peripheral, this is the General's story, his reactions to the events that changed his life and deserve to be told from his view point, mostly because he was the offended party.

I agree that for his own peace of mind and happiness he should not have held onto the bitterness, but it was what it was, that was his way. His personality and his upbringing. I have to think that his father's view of Konrad to begin with affected Henrik's reaction, to the betrayal and cemented his attitude. He was unable to bend enough to admit how wrong he was about the ones he held closest to his heart.

 

[Peder]

Ah! I'm glad to see that not everyone has finished reading yet. That will allow some time for me to quickly re-read, or at least re-skim, to refresh my memory. And also some time to try to look at the book with a new perpsective. It is fair to say that it left me with very mixed reactions the first time through, and this time I want to try to figure out why the author wrote it in the unusual style he did. I am definitely missing something, like maybe the whole point of the book.

Pontalba, As you just posted, "He was unable to bend enough to admit how wrong he was about the ones he held closest to his heart."
That sounds like a very keen insight into his character, although it is not necessarily clear that they were people to be so wrong about. Just perhaps an ordinary pair of people whose hearts got the better of them. We find it hard to tell.

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba, As you just posted, "He was unable to bend enough to admit how wrong he was about the ones he held closest to his heart."
That sounds like a very keen insight into his character, although it is not necessarily clear that they were people to be so wrong about. Just perhaps an ordinary pair of people whose hearts got the better of them. We find it hard to tell.

The wife Krisztina I feel was thrown into a reclusive situation that grated on her nerves and she was not suited for in even the short run. Details escape me, I do however remember thinking that she was more of a social butterfly type that was not for the country life he provided for her.
Konrad resented Henrik's money and position in spite of Henrik's generosity, or perhaps because of said generosity. So here are the two people closest to the General and both have resentments boiling within, it was bound to come out somehow. Very wrong of them, but as you say Peder, they were ordinary people in situations they resented, they were bound to turn to each other. If only they had simply walked away....for her that would have been most difficult, but not for Konrad, he could have avoided the situation in any number of ways, at any number of times.

 

[Peder]

Thanks Pontalba. You do jog my memory with respect to key points of the plot (her being isolated out in the country, and the money), but still it seems to me, as I think you suggest, that Henrik's reaction was out of scale for the provocation. He was of course doubly betrayed, but where is that wisdom about putting things behind one? Maybe not to forgive, but at least to forget. I'll have to reread.

 

[pontalba]

The General really bit his nose off to spite his face I think. More's the pity, he had a lot to offer a woman and if he couldn't forgive her, he had every excuse to put her off, divorce her...however it was done then. I'm not sure, but I can't believe there was no way to separate.
They could have found happiness with someone else I would hope.

 

[Peder]

The General really bit his nose off to spite his face I think. More's the pity, he had a lot to offer a woman and if he couldn't forgive her, he had every excuse to put her off, divorce her...however it was done then. I'm not sure, but I can't believe there was no way to separate.
They could have found happiness with someone else I would hope.

That's pretty much what I have trouble getting the point of. There were easily imaginable alternatives for how the book might have turned out. Instead the author contrived the whole plot to put Henrik into that situation and stick him very firmly there, and I am left wondering why? What for? I will be rereading to see if he at least got satisfaction from his monologue in the end.

 

[pontalba]

That's true, but I think part of the point was to have a platform to consider all the nature of the friendship between the men. Betrayal of friendship and all it entailed. The scene in the forest was so strong, I could smell the forest, and feel Konrad's eyes on Henrik's back speculating.

 

[(D)w C0O\_]

as intriguging as this book may sound, do not be fooled by the appealing title.
about 200 pages into it i decided to put it down...in a dying fire.
i strongly do not recomend this book as book of the month because it lacks perception and looses the readers interest very early on into the plot.

if right now you are saying to yourself, "i have no friends and this guy does not know what he's talking about" im sorry you feel that way.

~just trying to provide some helpful advice. thanks

 

[Libra]

as intriguging as this book may sound, do not be fooled by the appealing title.
about 200 pages into it i decided to put it down...in a dying fire.
i strongly do not recomend this book as book of the month because it lacks perception and looses the readers interest very early on into the plot.

if right now you are saying to yourself, "i have no friends and this guy does not know what he's talking about" im sorry you feel that way.

~just trying to provide some helpful advice. thanks

Well DW, it's too late not to pick it for BOM.

 

[oskylad]

Already in Chapter 1 we see how confined the General's life has become. "He lived here as an invalid lives within the space he has learned to inhabit. As if the room had been tailored to his body. Years passed without him setting foot in the other wing of the castle, ...." For 32 years, he had shut himself off from anything that reminded him of his wife. He lived only with his grudges.

By Chapter 3, we begin to see how confined his soul had become as well. "One spends a lifetime preparing for something. First one suffers the wound. Then one plans revenge. And waits."

In chapter 3, we also see that in shutting himself off from the world and nursing his resentments the General was following in his father's footsteps. We get a glimpse of the relationship between the General and Krisztina (and maybe even between the General and Konrad) when we meet the General's mother and father. "The battle between husband and wife was fought without words. Their weapons were music, hunting, travels, and evening receptions, ...."