Abstract

This short novel by the writer S´ndor M´rai, regarded by many as the finest Hungarian writer of our time, was published in 1942 but became known in the West only many years later and was finally translated into English in 2002. Its central subject is the importance and value of friendship between men and love between men and women, involving the three central characters, Henrik, Konrad and Krisztina. The men, who had been friends since their early youth, meet again 41 years later. Although Krisztina, Henrik's wife and Konrad's lover, is long dead, she is fully present in the memory of both. Like Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Embers is remembrance of things past, but with a difference. M´rai's novel plays on the contrast between their past friendship and their present broken friendship, and the contrast between Henrik's love for his wife, and her love for Konrad. But whereas Proust's novel is a recapture of the past, M´rai's novel is a recapture of the past through the present. What is left are only embers of friendship and love.