From the Embers

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When every lead turns up empty, Davyna is forced to seek help from the creatures that hide in the dark. Embers is a 1942 novel by the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai. The book was published in English in 2001. A good read and really a classic masterpiece. The author (1900-1989) published 46 books and so far only a half-dozen or so have been translated into English so hopefully we have many more to look forward to. The speech evokes a past love triangle between the two and Henrik’s wife, long dead, and a murder attempt. Henrik chose to stay silent about the double betrayal and to live on stoically. Konrad chose to escape to the tropics. Henrik’s wife chose to die.

Two old men, one dimly lit room, and the past awakening. That's pretty much the set up for Sándor Márai's solemn 1942 novel, which was originally titled 'Candles burn until the end' in Hungary. He has a growing popularity post-death, due to his work, but also his troubled life, that is mirrored by Hungary's grave misfortunes in the 20th century, and it's sad to think at the time he took his own life in California of all places in 1989, the literary world still knew little of him. Born in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, Márai grew up with war, revolution, and exile, before establishing himself as first a poet and then novelist, but then followed more war, revolution, and exile. He is not only regarded as one of the great Hungarian writers, but also a guardian of the nation's soul, a sort of talisman of the new, democratic Hungary. With a shining honour, and no interest in political games, he infuriated the Nazis and the communists, by refusing to have his work published in his native land whilst Soviet troops were present, thus sentencing himself to obscurity and poverty. At least he stood by his principles. I admire him for that.the beginning and the last 30 ish percent was pretty good, and I am interested in maybe reading the next book, I just hope the author decides to use more of their own story and words because this definitely had potential.

Fra di loro c'è l'impalpabile presenza di una donna, ormai defunta da decenni : un 'bel fantasma' che ha segnato la vita dei due. The time is during the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1899. An isolated man has been waiting 41 years for a visit from his former best friend from army days and now he has appeared. His 90-year old nanny and man servant run the household and even hold hunts on the property, but the main character, ‘the general,’ as he is called, does not appear in public. This is the last of the books I received as presents at Christmas 2020, and this novel, which I read in translation, is deservedly gaining the status of a modern classic. It’s based around the concept of two 75-year-old men, Henrik and Konrad, who are reunited after an absence of 41 years. In the novel Henrik is mostly referred to as “the General”. The two met as 10-year-old boys and stayed the closest of friends for 24 years, when suddenly Konrad resigned his Army Commission and disappeared. I’ve been on a binge reading Hungarian authors lately and Sandor Marai is the master. This is the 6th book of his I have read. Le braci (Italian for Embers) is a 2015 adaptation of the novel into an opera by Italian composer Marco Tutino.

This past June I was introduced to Richard Wagamese when I read his Medicine Walk, and when I saw this relatively short Audible ‘listen’ this morning, I reached for it, knowing that my last read of his was profoundly moving, I began listening to these contemplative musings.

After the affair and the fleeing of his ex-friend, the general never saw his wife again. She stayed at the house and he moved into the hunting lodge a mile away. She died eight years later. For 40 years he knew her intimate diary contained the answer to his question but he never opened it, burning it the night of the meeting with his ex-friend - thus the title. But by then we know the answer to the question. Marai writes how Henrik's and Konrad's lives moved on divergent paths. All these years later, the men do not desire to rekindle their friendship as the title may imply, but to find out the answers to questions that have lingered for this long. Styling his prose by alternating between posing questions between the two with Henrik's recollections of the past had me desiring to find out the conclusion to this complicated web of emotions. Marai also posed an intriguing view on friendships and relationships that left me captivated by the novel through its closure. Bree and Eason survive the fire that takes their partners – but neither of them are truly living after that fateful night. As a single dad with nowhere to turn, Eason moves in with Bree despite the old tensions and the new grief they share. If you receive others as worthy, lovable, spiritual creations - perfect just they way they are - you get to see the highest possible version of who you are. You get to be that. Experience that. And you become a gift to the world.As you know, one can look at things or a room in one of two ways: as if seeing them for the first time or seeing them for the last.” In seven sections, chapters, Wagamese shares his wisdom on a variety of connected themes, including Gratitude, Harmony, Stillness, Joy, Persistence, Reverence and Trust. Thoughts on our connection to our planet, the earth and all that lives and grows on it, as well as the creative side of life, imagination and inspiration.

It occurs to me that the secret of fully being here, walking the skin of this planet, is to learn to see things as though I were looking at them for the first time, or the last. Nothing is too small then, too mundane, too usual. When I surrender the delivery, along with the outcome, the anxiety and the expectation, everything becomes miraculous. It's a recipe for life, really.Anna Shapiro reviewed the book for The Observer in 2002, [2] and wrote: "Elegiac, sombre, musical, and gripping, Embers is a brilliant disquisition on friendship, one of the most ambitious in literature." Shapiro continued: "About a milieu and values that were already dying before the outbreak of World War II, it has the grandeur and sharpness of Jean Renoir's 1937 movie masterpiece La Grande Illusion, with which it shares, in both oblique and pronounced ways, some of its substance." Our elders teach that the dream world and the real world operate on the same energy. You link them through the power of choice. Choose action and the dream moves ever closer to the real.