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“My homeland was a feeling, and that feeling was mortally wounded…What we swore to uphold no longer exists… There was a world for which it was worth living and dying. That world is dead”.
Sándor Márai: The Candles Burn Down

Quê Bắc của tớ là một cảm nghĩ, và cảm nghĩ này bị thương tổn trầm trọng… Điều mà tớ quyết tâm gìn giữ cho bằng được, thì đếch còn nữa…
Có một cõi Bắc Kít thật đáng sống, đáng chết vì nó. Cái cõi đó ngủm củ tỏi mất rồi. NQT
Cuốn này hình như trong nước đã dịch, và hình như có tranh chấp về dịch giả? (1)

“Tình cờ” cầm cuốn thơ Sandor Marai, thấy được quá, bèn bỏ vô túi luôn.
Ông này nổi tiếng như 1 nhà văn, nhưng hình như là, do đọc Coetzee, thấy chê, thế là bỏ qua, nhảm thế! (2)

(2) Quả đúng là do đọc loáng thoáng bài viết của Coeztee, về Marai, trong Inner Workings, nhất là đoạn kết thúc bài viết:

Conversations in Bolzano begins as historical fiction of a routine kind, but the busy filling-in of background and recreation of milieu is happily soon over and the book can settle down to being what Marai wants it to be: a vehicle for expressing his ideas on the ethics of art. Further translations from Marais fictional oeuvre are promised; but nothing made available thus far to readers without Hungarian contradicts the impression that, however thoughtful a chronicler of the dark decade of the 1940S he may have been, however bravely (or perhaps just unabashedly) he may have spoken up for the class into which he was born, however provocative his paradoxical philosophy of the mask may be, his conception of the novel form was nevertheless old-fashioned, his grasp of its potentialities limited, and his achievements in the medium consequently slight.
(2002)
Coetzee: Sandor Marai [in Inner Workings]

Để sửa sai, GCC bèn dịch bài trên Guardian, thực là tuyệt vời về Sandor Márai

The alchemist in exile

Tibor Fischer celebrates Embers by Sándor Márai, Hungary's greatest novelist

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.

DANGEROUS GAMES

A Sandor Marai novel about adolescence in a time of war.
BY ARTHUR PHILLIPS
Một cuốn tiểu thuyết về tuổi mới lớn trong 1 thời chiến tranh:
Ui chao, chằng đúng là cuốn tiểu mà GCC mơ tưởng viết ư?

Márai Sándor và tác phẩm

Nguyễn Hồng Nhung dịch

Sandor Márai

Tibor Fischer celebrates Embers by Sándor Márai, Hungary's greatest novelist

Note: Bài viết này cũng quá OK:

'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.

Thế giới đếch cần văn chương Mít... Ở bên nhà, văn chương Mít biến mất, xứ sở Mít tự nó sụm xuống nó, và cái còn lại là 1 tỉnh của Tẫu trong những ngày sắp tới... và sau cùng anh già tự tử, ở.... Cali, vào năm 1989, già, bịnh, nghèo, mình ên....
Ui chao lại nhớ đến cú tự mình tính làm thịt mình của Gấu, cũng ở... Cali, ở bên ngoài khu PLT!
Hà, hà!