 
                         20060620.00

     Reading Sandor Marai's Die Glut - Embers in the German
translation of the Hungarian and the English translation of
the of the German, where the original Hungarian must have
been an inaccessible to the tranlator into English as it is
to me, raises (mit einem Schlag, at one swoop) all the issues
of interpretation required of a literary work of art. Most
immediately the significance of the original, which where in
an inaccessible language becomes a literary Ding an Sich, of
which I know with absolute certainty that it must be there,
but yet in its qualities inscrutable to me.


The meaning of the text to the author. Wenn der Mensch in
seiner Qual verstummt, gab mir ein Gott zu sagen, was ich
leide.  Its ophidian therapeutic significance, as a brazen
image.  Its autobiographical/ self image qualities.  The
author looks as if into a mirror.  The book is a mirror.
Whom does I see. myself, hardly; the author perhaps, the
author's world, surely.  Does he see himself, his parents,
his family his friends, how is he related to Krisztina and to
Kristztina's fate.  Can something be pure invention? Without
any reference to experience at all? Where did he find the
Castle.  To what extent is the loneliness of the landscape
spiritual?  Is the author Henrik or Konrad? Konrad, I would
think.

The loss of the relationship to Konrad? Why did Konrad leave?
Because he sensed Henriks suspicion and hostility. He had
confided in Krisztina; he could bear it no longer, so he ran
away.  Krisztina's epithet coward refers to Konrad's
inability to confront Henrik's animosity.

These psychoanalytic interpretations all have their limits;
like asking what Hamlet studied in Wittenberg.  The
inclination, the temptation to extend  the story beyond the
author's limits, to complement and to improvise Testitimonial
to the force of the tale and yet disrespectful of the
indefiniteness and openness of the art.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
