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     Embers makes explicit the contradictions that
potentially inhere in all relationships of love or
friendship, and demonstrates the proximity of love and hate,
of friendship and enmity.

     It is a mistake to assume that friendship or love are
functions of the will. No one is able to "decide" whether and
in what degree and in what manner he/she should "love" or
"hate" another individual.  In this perspective the Christian
admonitions "Love thy neighbor" is fatally misleading,
implying as it does that love might be something which one
can choose or reject.  If it is there, it will not be
quenched.  If not, it cannot be subpoened or conjured up.

     Love arises from the subject's need, be it physical,
emotional or intellectual, for another individual.  Hate is
the expression of the subject's need to preserve his/her own
identity in the face of encroachment by the other person.
Usually love and friendship enhance and stengthen the
identity of the loved person; however, on occasion, and
perhaps more frequently than one recognizes, they may also
threaten and prejudice that identity, thus paradoxically
giving rise to hate: and this, I think is what Marai
describes in his novel. And, appearances to the contrary, it
is not Konrad who hates Henrik, - perhaps he does, but
Konrad's hate, if it exists, is not displayed in the novel.
It is Henrik, the General, who hates Konrad; and says as much
in his monologue.

     The real issue in Marai's Embers is not whether
Krisztina and Konrad plotted to murder Henrik (the General).
Is not even the nature of the relationship between Konrad and
Henrik, be it of love or hate.  The over-arching question
raised by the novel: what is reality, what is truth?  And the
answer is obscure.  I read Embers as a latter day expression
of a Kantian argument, a variation on Kant's teaching about
transcendental apperception, which insists, in Kierkegaard's
words that subjectivity is the truth, and in Schopenhauer's
that the world is my idea.

     If Embers had been an ordinary detective story, the
point of the tale would have been the ingenious discovery of
"the smoking gun," providing the logical legal proof that a
crime had been committed.  In the story of Embers, however,
we have proof, eloquent and interminable to the point of
ennui, that the crime of murder, at least, has not been
committed: The 75 year old General, hosting his friend-enemy
Konrad, is very much alive.  Perhaps the moral of this
chronicle should be not that Konrad was so evil as to plot to
murder Henrik, but the contravening hypothesis that Konrad's
diligence in fact saved Henrik's life, - let us say, by
Konrad's dropping his gun when Henrik inadvertently
interposed himself into the line of fire.

     Consider the precept of Jesus:

     28  but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman
     to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already
     in his heart.      (Matthew 5)

     Surely what is true of lust is true of murder. The
General argues that murder is also susceptible of being
perpetrated in the heart; and that the exclamation which
rings everywhere in our ears: "I'm so angry, I could kill
him!" or even "I could kill you!", is not so innocuous, as
we, careless and insensitive in our speech, have come to
assume. That Konrad on more than one occasion might have had
hostile feelings, might have thought to himself, or even said
to Krisztina, "I could kill Henrik" is not only plausible: it
is almost certain. Such feelings are human, very human, and
bringing their significance to light, is one of the corollary
virtues of this novel.

     The indictment is a legal issue, and if it is to me
brought, must be precise. Contrary to Henrik's assertion, a
thought, an intention is never a crime, at least in secular
jurisprudence.  The crime would have been conspiracy, which
as the semantics of the word indicate, requires the
cooperation of two or more individuals.  There is no
suggestion that Krisztina ever did or said anything to aid or
abet the hypothetically murderous encounter.

     So much for the charge of murder, reduced to a charge of
murderous intent, and this charge in turn reduced further to
the charge of murderous thoughts, a charge to be summarily
dismissed.

     The Biblical citation:

     28  but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman
     to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already
     in his heart.      (Matthew 5)

obviously is pertinent also to the supposedly adulterous bond
between Konrad and Krisztina. Because given the situation in
which Konrad and Krisztina found themselves, it is
inconceivable that they should not, on occasion, have felt
drawn to each other. The threshold beyond which conventional,
socially acceptable affection becomes lust, beyond which
friendship becomes adultery, the boundary, in other words,
between philia and eros, is a shadowy no man's land, a danger
zone, that is in reality undefinable and remains forever
uncertain. Indeed, I find the lawyers' efforts to define what
constitutes sexual intimacy, a definition indispensable if
the activity is to be punished, unspeakably crude and vulgar,
and I give it wide berth, even at the cost of foregoing some
interesting argument.

     So, how should one define adultery. Surely an occasional
exchange of letters or social courtesies won't won't fill the
bill.  The degree of intellectual, emotional or physical
intimacy required to reach the threshold of adultery remains
forever uncertain.  Perhaps under the most critical
examination the term adultery loses much, if not all of its
meaning.  I mention it to emphasize that the world in which
Marai places the General, Krisztina and Konrad, is not all
that different from the world which we too inhabit.  To my
mind, the evidence, so preposterously obvious, that Konrad's
murder was not even an intent, was nothing more than the
thought, persuades me to the conviction that Krisztina's
adultery was similarly fantasy only.  I find no evidence at
all to the contrary.

     And that is the whole point: what is real, what is
compelling to us is not some objective world outside of us.
What is real and compelling is what we think, is what is in -
what is on - our minds.  The spoken and the written word, and
more generally the symbolic intellectual interchanges which
constitute our community of reason, and indeed the entirety
of our intellectual culture, "scientific" as well as
"humanistic", this is what we recognize and understand as
reality.  The ultimate value of Embers is that it reminds us
of the ultimately subjective nature of truth.  It seems to me
very much worthwhile to read this book as an exercise in
philosophy or more specifically, in epistemology.

     Given the General's definition of friendship as an
experience that could not be expunged by hate, even by
murder, there is a remarable contrast between Henrik's
treatment of Konrad and his treatment of Kristina. While he
waited 41 years for Konrad's return, he absented himself from
Krizstina immediately subsequent to the crisis, and would
have no contact with her for the eight remaining years of her
life.  That contrast surely says something compelling and
conclusive about the difference between the two
relationships.  Under the circumstances, is it conceivable
that the General, all professions of affection
notwithstanding, did not love his wife, but hated her?

     The ambiguity of love and friendship, their proximity to
hate and enmity, is everywhere visible in human relations, -
family relations especially. The General believed that during
the 24 years of their "friendship", Konrad hated him, but
that he cherished Konrad as a friend. To the extent that the
General's argument of unextinguishable friendship is valid,
the General's determination so eloquently expressed at their
Last Supper, to punish Konrad and to hurt him, suggests that
it was the General who hated, and that it may have been
Konrad who loved.


                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
