Burning to the Last – Sándor Márai’s Embers

Sándor Márai’s Embers is the second work of Hungarian literature that I’ve read after Satantango, but I’m not quite sure whether “Hungarian” is the best word for describing this short novel of ageing and decline. For though Embers was published in 1942, its attention is focused back towards the past, when Márai’s country (he was born in 1900) was Austria-Hungary and not the dislocated Hungary it became after the Treaty of Trianon. The sheer nostalgia for a Vienna that once was, for a life that once was, is unmistakable. Márai had even once considered writing in German instead of Hungarian, in the same way that Kafka, another citizen of an empire that disappeared, felt compelled to choose between Czech and German. They made different choices, but a common sensibility, a common heritage, ties them, and Hofmannsthal, and Rilke, and so many others, together. They were once all Austro-Hungarians.

The Plot of Embers

In the castle there lives an old general. The General (his name – Henrik – we learn later, but the sheer formality and seriousness by which he lives means that the text rarely refers to him by it) lives with his servants, chief among them Nini, a 91-year-old who once served as his nanny and wet nurse. He has lived, almost without any contact with the outside world, for many years. People come to his estate to hunt in the expansive grounds, but they stay in the hunting lodge and do not see the master. The general’s wife died young, and his only friend disappeared 41 years ago. His life is one of looking back. We are told early on that “he thought only in decades, anything more exact upset him, as if he might be reminded of things he would rather forget”.

But the things that we wish to forget are often the things that keep us going. The novel begins when the General’s peace is at last disrupted by a letter, informing him that this friend will be coming for dinner that evening. The scene is set for a walk through the past, an untangling of confused memories, and a working out of something akin to the truth. But when life is almost at its end it is precisely truth, hazy and unpredictable, that can be the most valuable thing in the world.

The original title of Embers, A gyertyák csonkig égnek, is literally translated as “Candles burn until the end”. And indeed, most of the story takes place by the fire, and each chapter mimics the slow decline of life as the red glow grows dim, before finally going out. At first the General and his friend deal with their common past in the military academy and service, both in dialogue and in reminiscences, but with time they move ever closer to the present, and to the questions that have been tormenting the General for all those years that they were parted. These questions, as he himself says, are perhaps what have been giving him the strength to stay alive all this time.

Male Friendship

It is a friendship that needs to be worked out. Konrad, the returning friend, tried – the General is sure of it – to kill the General on the day of a hunt, 41 years before the novel takes place. He tried to do this, perhaps, because of a secret relationship with the General’s wife. The day after the hunt Konrad disappeared and the General’s wife ceased talking with him. The General wants to understand what happened, and why, but as the one-sided interrogation is carried out by the fire – Konrad almost never speaks, even to defend himself – we get the strange feeling that the General is trying to save himself, just as much as he’s trying to save his friendship.

The novel is unusual in the focus it lays upon friendship, particularly male friendship. I can’t think of many other books that do so. Destructive forces, even love, always seem to take precedence over the banalities and subtleties of friendship when it comes to novels. No doubt because they’re much more dramatic. But friendship is an important topic, even if it’s one that is already in a way outdated in the way we encounter it in Embers. The two kids meet at a military academy, where they spend every day and night together. And though they have different backgrounds – Konrad is poor, while Henrik is wealthy – and share different worldviews – Henrik is martial and serious, while Konrad loves music – the friendship that springs up seems built to last forever.

The intensity of the arrangement is hard to understand for people who haven’t experienced something similar. I’m lucky, perhaps, in that I went to boarding school, and know the sort of thing Márai describes here. Of course, many of my friends were friends only through common experience, a weak bond; but for those friends who were friends for deeper reasons, the length of time we spent together means that even now, when we are all separated and scattered across the world, we remain close in a way that is hard to describe.

Friendship’s Decline

The General and his friend’s relationship is both the second sort, and not. Certainly, at first glance the friendship between the two of them seems to rely only on common experience. But that’s not true – there is a sense that they also have a shared internal world, which even though their interests are mismatched is nonetheless enough to bond them tightly. They make vows of chastity, and promise other monkish feats. The problem is that as time passes divisions between them grow, and what was once unimportant becomes unavoidable and painful.

Chief among these divisions is the problem of money. Though Konrad is at the prestigious military academy and a nobleman, he is there only because his parents are starving themselves for his sake. He says that whenever he spends money he is “expending a portion of their lives”, and though Henrik tries to understand this, their difference in backgrounds grows harder to bear. Henrik lacks the imagination for understanding – he is a military man. And once the two finish at the academy and start working, stationed near Vienna, their differing sensibilities become a further obstruction to understanding. Henrik goes carousing and lives the life of a young officer. Konrad, delicate and musical, cannot. And though he feigns indifference, “one could hear in his voice the need of a thirsty man yearning to drain life dry”. With time such feelings only get worse.

Music is also another point where the boys’ divisions are obvious. Henrik doesn’t understand music. He feels cut off from Konrad whenever the other listens. But for Konrad music is liberation: “When he listened to music, he listened with his whole body, as longingly as a condemned man in his cell aches for the sound of distant feet”. Music connects Konrad with Chopin, who is mentioned several times in the book as a figure of mixed identity, having a French father and Polish mother. Konrad and the General’s wife are both artistic and uncertain in their origins. Unsurprisingly, an affair forms, and it is for that reason that Konrad may have wanted to kill his friend.

End of an Era – Closed Spaces and the Politics of Embers

Embers takes place not long before its publication in 1942. But war is hard to hear through the castle’s walls. One thing I noticed early on is the use of space in the novel. The General’s world is one of closed spaces. He is out of touch with the times. In this he is very reminiscent of Stevens in The Remains of the Day. Just as Stevens (unknowingly) hides within Darlington Hall to avoid facing a world that has changed, so too does the General in the castle. He looks at portraits from the past and thinks of how good things were – “absolutely dedicated to honour, to the male virtues: silence, solitude, the inviolability of one’s word”. Yet he also keeps most of the castle closed down, unvisited, to avoid facing the memories locked within those rooms. And though he hunts, he never leaves the estate.

Like Stevens, he relies on silence to deceive himself. “Everything… had fed into his very bloodstream the tendency never to speak of whatever caused him pain but to bear it in silence”. Even his friendship with Konrad is described as “hermetic”. For Henrik the Austro-Hungarian Empire has not ended because within his own person – in the values he chooses to embrace – he can keep it alive, and because within his castle he can believe it still is safe. As much as he wants answers from the past, it’s seems more to complete a picture of it than to change the present.

Konrad is almost the exact opposite of the General in all this. His music serves to break down barriers. Music, of course, is a universal language. It connects him first to the General’s mother, herself a Frenchwoman, and then to the General’s wife. Only the General and his father cannot understand it – their focus is on the physical, rather than the sublime. When Konrad disappeared, he moved to England, and from there to the tropics to serve in the Empire. He doesn’t seem to have any loyalty to his past country. But he has come back. The General says this is because their friendship has remained strong, even through the years of separation. That’s true. But it’s also true that Konrad is just as trouble as the General is by the past. In his case, by the failure of his relationship with the General’s wife.

For both men, the evening is a way of working out what happened – both are old, and both are ready for the peace that can only, perhaps, be attained by resolving a lasting uncertainty.

Conclusion

Embers is not a long novel. Forty-one years of separation take up little time if all that time is spent in waiting. But though it’s short, it’s densely and beautifully written – hence why I’ve tried to include plenty of quotes. The ideas of friendship, of trying to hold onto the past, are just as relevant today as they were when the book was written, and leave plenty of food for thought. If you can find yourself a copy, it’s well worth the short time it will take you to read it.

The conclusion to Embers is also especially worth pondering. If you’ve read the novel, please do leave a comment, as I’d like to see what others made of it.