Sándor Márai / The dead poet is still working hard

 

Sándor Márai

The dead poet is still working hard

Sándor Márai: I wanted to remain silent

This newly discovered manuscript by Márai evokes historical events that sealed the destiny of the bourgeoisie and of Hungary, as well as personal tragedies and the writer's transition from a fashionable journalist to a writer who, on account of being faithful to his principles, took on a life of endless solitude and lack of recognition.

Zsófia Szilágyi
17th August, 2013

“The dead poet is still working hard, I would say: he seems to be at the top of his powers. Life and death are nothing. Only the creative spirit and the opus are what matters. If I wasn’t paying attention, I would finish this review by saying that we can expect great works from him.” This reviewer has already made use of these sentences by Márai more than once (Márai wrote them apropos of Kosztolányi’s posthumously published works) as they come in handy for anyone who deals with manuscripts of dead authors. It is the rarest case that one finds whole coherent, finished masterpieces in the estate of a writer (although philologists tend to daydream about such exceptional cases). But there is a good chance that one finds in the loft, in boxes, or eventually receives from the heirs variations, half-finished pieces, interesting pages that are worth publishing with some explanation.