The Role of Reality and Mysticism in Sándor Márai’s Füves könyv (The Book of Common Wisdoms’)

Attila István Pataki (Károli University of the Reformed Church, Budapest)

Email: dottore.faustus(at)gmail.com

 

ABSTRACT:

In Europe, almost each cultural historical period had – and has nowadays as well – its own specific way of thinking which is determinant in its approach to belief, knowledge, fight and power, superstition and experience. Through eras to possess knowledge meant to be a privileged person. However, what about those, who did not receive the privilege to become clerks, nevertheless, they are interested in wise views concerning the issues of real life, and the only thing they are waiting for is the answer to the basic questions of life provided with simple examples.

Sándor Márai, the Hungarian writer and publicist, who was ever-known and ever-acknowledged in abroad as well, in his book he embarks on, inasmuch as walking in the steps of the old books of wisdoms’, to lead his reader along countless contingencies, matters, and questions, temptations of life, which can be dominated only by the union of the heart and human sense.

In the light of Márai’s intention, the Füves könyv would like to be, first of all, sincere; and the writer cannot and does not want to tell more than his predecessors did: he is not talking about conceptions and heroes; he is talking about merely those things which can be connected to human life in the strictest sense. Since a human life is heroism in itself, which requires a great deal of wisdom.

The aim of my presentation is to catch and to interpret with proper examples, the sharp, both mystic and realist world concept, which does not endure any compromise. This world concept dominates in almost every piece of literary work of the writer.