Saturday 5 January 2002 01.41 GMT   

Embers

Sándor Márai, trans Carol Brown

Janeway 224pp, Viking, £12.99

'The world has no need of Hungarian literature," Sándor Márai noted in his diary in 1949. Considered by many to be the finest writer of prose in the Hungarian language, he was in exile in Italy. "Back home, literature has disappeared... the country has collapsed: in its place all that's left is a communist Russian colony." He believed he faced two forms of artistic suicide: tailoring his work for "foreign tastes" or writing for non-existent Hungarian readers in a "deaf nothingness". In the end Márai committed suicide for real; but it was in California in 1989, old, ill, poor, alone, having written to the very last.
Márai has become the talisman of the new, democratic Hungary. His extreme popularity is due to his work but also to his life, which mirrored Hungary's misfortunes in the 20th century. Born in Kassa in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, Márai grew up with war, revolution and exile, established himself as a writer, then had more war, exile and revolution.
At the time of his death, Márai was aware that the Hungarian Socialist Workers' party was going belly-up in Budapest; it is ironic, however, that in 1989 he was little-known in his homeland, although many of the younger, more aggressive opponents of the Soviets (such as the current prime minister, Viktor Orbán) looked up to him. Writers have always been more than writers in Hungary; they have been the guardians of the nation's soul. In general, the guardians didn't do a brilliant job in the last century. Márai is almost the only literary figure to come through the 20th century with his honour shining. Largely unconcerned with politics, he nevertheless infuriated both the Nazis and the communists, and refused to have his books published in Hungary while Soviet troops were present, thereby sentencing himself to obscurity and poverty.
But, like those of Hungary, Márai's fortunes changed rapidly in the 1990s. For the moment, Márai owns Hungary (somewhat to the annoyance of breathing novelists). The fashion might change, but the genius will endure. Márai started as a poet - and, it could be argued, remained one even when writing prose. But he covered the spectrum: he wrote plays, he wrote belles- lettres, he wrote memoirs, he wrote newspaper articles, he wrote his diary and he wrote novels (though I think he was mischievous in calling some of them novels; many are tweaked memoirs).
And now he's here. Embers is the first of his novels to make it into English (as usual, we lag behind the French, the Germans, the Italians and even the Americans). Yet London can lay claim to the publication of the first of Márai's works in exile, Peace in Ithaca in 1952, courtesy of a small consortium of Hungarians: Márai's fate for the next 30 years.
Describing the story of Embers is almost to do it a disservice. An elderly aristocratic general, Henrik, invites a childhood friend, Konrad, who disappeared 41 years ago in mysterious circumstances, to dinner in his castle. That's it for action. The meal doubles as a trial of Konrad, an almost mute defendant in the face of Henrik's prosecution, which minutely re-examines their schooldays at a military academy, the years leading up to Konrad's vanishing and his unmilitary character: "One cannot be a musician and a relative of Chopin and escape unpunished." The reason for Konrad's flight, after a shooting party when the general senses that the impecunious Konrad's intended prey has two legs not four, is linked to Krisztina, the rich general's beloved wife.
What about the style? Translation from Hungarian wasn't a problem, since this version has been translated from the German. This news caused me to throw furniture around my room, and I'd fear for the translator's safety if she ever went to Hungary. Yet the translation is, oddly, surprisingly faithful to the original.
Nonetheless, much of Márai's style and patterning has been lost. While Hungarian doesn't have as rich a vocabulary as English, Márai's use of some pet words in an almost incantatory manner is no accident. On the first page of the original chapter three, for instance, he uses various forms of the verb sértodni four times. They are translated as "suffers the wound", "wound", "offended pride" and "offended": words that convey the sense well, but hide Márai's arrangement from the English reader.
Saying that, I wouldn't like to have to translate Márai myself. At times, his ordering of words can be as intricate and polished as Ovid's. It is worth pointing out that the original Hungarian title of Embers is "Candles Burn to the End" - a little unwieldy, perhaps, in English, but a title better suited to a novel about how the important emotions never end until death.
Márai himself was sceptical about the translatability of his work into English; this, however, didn't stop him bombarding English and American agents with his books. It's a pity he didn't get to see this pay cheque. Viking has coughed up over £100,000 for Embers , almost certainly more money than Márai saw in his lifetime.
He considered Embers one of his lesser creations. But it should be borne in mind that writers are notoriously wrong about their output, and that many readers would disagree with him. Published in 1942, Embers is a product of Márai's most fertile period, the second world war, when he emigrated into himself as Hungary was destroyed by the Germans and Soviets. It has been a bestseller in Europe and the US, and it's easy to see why: there's a smidgen of Agatha Christie, a soupçon of Mills and Boon, topped off with graceful prose and a hint of Beckett avant la lettre. This edition is handsomely produced with good-quality paper (a rarity in hardbacks these days), but the margins are a disgrace: it's reassuring, as a writer, to see that publishers will always find a way of buggering it up.
Why I became a Márai addict is something I've thought long and hard about. My relatives have been sent out in the rain to godforsaken parts of Hungary to find rare Márai tomes. My conclusion was that his books really do, by some strange alchemy, make one feel a better person. Which makes it all the more of a pity that it has taken so long for him to be introduced to the English reader.