Sándor Márai (originally Sándor Károly Henrik Grosschmied de Mára) was born on April 11, 1900 in the city of Kassa, now known as Košice in Slovakia. He studied in Leipzig and as a young man, he traveled and visited the major European cities. He belonged to the Central European cultural circle. The characters in his works still value and respect true human values that were part of the humanistic culture of the bourgeois middle class in the first half of the 20th century. He was an extremely prolific writer and journalist, writing novels, essays, plays, and articles. By the age of 44, he had written over forty works. Between the First and Second World Wars, he was the most influential Hungarian writer.
As a person with an extremely liberal spirit and sensitive to human suffering, he was not acceptable to either fascists or communists, so in 1948 he emigrated from Hungary. In emigration, his literary fervor dwindled, just like the disappearing bourgeois class, the carrier of Hungarian and European culture. He only writes a diary anymore, which he started. In 1944, he wrote occasionally articles for Radio Free Europe. In his diary, perhaps more than in his other works, we can feel that he contemplates and judges external events from his inner, human perspective. He died on February 21, 1989, in San Diego.
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1. On the purpose of this book
So, dear reader, this book will be honest and will not speak It’s not about ideas and heroes, but only about what concerns the human being. Its writer doesn’t want to teach, but to learn. They want to learn from books written by wise and knowledgeable people who came before them, they want to learn from human lives to the extent they have been able to observe and understand them, they want to learn from signs of life, from letters, from human hearts, from plants and celestial signs at the same time. Because all of this together shapes the human destiny. (…)
12. On the importance of moving forward every day
and divine? Companions shout along the way, calling you to themselves, urging you towards a mischievous undertaking. (…) This is how life addresses you every day, at every moment – calling you to rest, surrender to sensuality, entertain yourself, and find satisfaction in vanity and power. But that simply isn’t your task! You are a traveler and every day you must go further. You cannot know how long you will live and whether you will even have time to reach the ultimate goal of your journey, the realization of your soul and the divine. Therefore, every day, go further, with bruised feet and impoverished. Because you are a traveler.
29. On clothing
Do not bother with clothing at all.
35. On real needs
(…) You need to know when it is truly you who wants something, you, your body, taste, temperament, and when you are hungry or thirsty, or sensually curious, due to insatiability, vanity, or boredom.
You need to live according to the real needs of your body and according to the measure of your character.
45. On the soul and power
It is a burning question for everyone old This is the oldest and only truth that human reason has known and accepted as an unconditional truth. Time, experience, observation, and reflection have not changed this truth. Only the soul is within our power, nothing else. But this power is unlimited. No one can hurt it, no one can take away the power we have over our own soul. No tyrant, social order, or natural law can prevent us from being free in our soul. This freedom is unconditional. And compared to this freedom, any other that society, power, and money can give us is incomplete and relative.
63. On waiting for things
To WAIT, and to do so patiently like an angel or a saint, until things – people, thoughts, events – related to you come to you. Not rushing towards them with any step, not hastening their approach with any movement or word. Because those certain people, thoughts, situations
92. About the great forests and pines
There is something touching in FORESTS, especially in pine forests. It is not only their dark and consistent silence, their deep shadows, church-like grandeur and devout posture that are touching. The will of life expressed by a great forest is also touching. Just imagine the forces and intentions that built thousands of fifty-meter pines. How lavish nature was in seed, pollen, hailstones, trials, the sowing of the Sun, rain, wind, until such a forest was created, and how consciously it aims and silently exists. which desires nothing else but to exist, grow and survive for centuries, fully expressing itself, breathing, responding to the world – and at the same time not attacking anyone or anything and providing a home and life for billions of living beings. How great and wise is the community of that fifty-thousand-acre pine forest. The pines, like ancestors, watch over life. At the same time, with their strong trunks, they respond to the sky and the earth. Whenever you can, go to the forest.”
129. About Masterpieces and the Fairy-like
In order for a human work to become a masterpiece and amaze and fascinate people with its uncompromising brilliance, besides talent, theme and flawless execution, something else is needed. In a masterpiece, there is also a certain fairy-like element that radiates from the whole with its magical light, so delicate and enchanting like the aurora borealis shining on a summer night, unreal yet luminous, because under it one can see and read. Let the masterpiece be true, accurate, intelligent, purposeful, proportional, carefully cultivated, faithfully executed – and let it preserve its originality. there to be something else. Let it also be fairy-like. And despite all self-awareness, let it be self-forgetting. Let it be created according to engineering rules, but let it also contain a spoonful of stardust with golden particles, which scatters following constellations. Without the fairy-like, works are only “great” or “flawless”. A true masterpiece is sometimes not so flawless. It simply radiates, it contains both “just a dream” and the brilliance of the stars, it is fairy-like. And the part of the task when the artist is no longer able to help their work, that final brushstroke, the fairy-like, is completed by God.
180. About what your task was on earth
In the end, you must know what your task was on earth. It is by no means to maintain the bone, flesh, fat, and innards of a certain mass, state, and quality in a chemical plant. Nor is it to collect titles and ranks or be the president of a society, to walk around in a decorated uniform and shake a bell. And nor is it – which is even more painful – to be happy; because there is no happiness, in fact, all your As soon as they were realized, ambitions distorted and became more of a burden than joy. Such is a man.
No, your only task, the only purpose of your existence on earth, is to understand the true nature of human and worldly things, the totality of human and worldly phenomena, and to behave honorably even when your loved ones behave dishonorably. That was your task on earth, nothing more.
About the world
And never forget that you were also a son of the world. Related to the stars, amphibians, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Gulf Stream and the Malays, earthquakes and Lao Tzu. All of this concerned you, you are made of the same substance, one soul created you, and the same soul will receive you back. That is for certain.
About myself
And with my last breath, I thank fate for being a man and for the spark of reason that shone in my unclear soul. I saw the earth, the sky, and the seasons. I experienced love, fragments of truth, longing, and disappointments. I lived on earth and gradually found clarity. One day I will die, that