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     Concerning Sander Marai's Embers:

     It is unavoidable that one should try to expand a story
like Embers into biography and history.  It is desirable,
indeed necessary, in interpreting the story, to take it
seriously, in the sense of trying to understand the
individual protagonists as historical personages whose lives
are coherent and possess chronological continuity; and to
scan the novels for such items as will implement and fill in
the picture puzzle.

     At the same time we must be aware that the uncertainty
the ambiguity, the indistinctness is anything other than
inadvertent; it is an essential element of the composition,
much like the chiaroscuro of Italian renaissance painters.
Obscurity has an esthetic function analogous to the
impenetratble or sometimes semi-penetrable shadows that
envelop Rembrandts people.  Such ambiguity, indistinctness
adds depth and verisimilitude likewise to a novel, because in
real life feelings, knowledge, and facts are also commonly
indistinct.

     Thus having explored the various dimensions of the novel
as if it were an account of real life, we must move back and
try to recapture once more the old ambiguity, the vagueness
and uncertainty of the initial reading to be led by them to a
more conclusive understanding of the work.

     Having said that, the quality of the much touted
friendship must be reevaluated in the light of the
differences in temperament and culture of the two
protagonists, their different economic status, and especially
the absence of community of property between them.  True
emotional intimacy invariably leads to common possessions, if
only because money, wealth, property themselves are barriers,
separators between human beings, such as friendship will not
tolerate.  Hence the symbolism of giving "presents" to ones
"friends."  Significantly property seems to me also to be the
crux of the demand for legalization of gay marriage: the
distinction made by the tax laws between individuals who are
married and those who are not seems to have far reaching
implications.

     The title and its translations.

     From time to time I am embarrassed by having purported
to pontificate about some aspect of the German language; it's
the subject on which I have spent the most energy over the
years.  Occasionally I discover myself in error; then can
conclude only that if I don't know anything about that I
don't know anything at all.  When I skim the 11 densely
printed columns of Volume 8 (of 32) in Grimm's Dictionary,
(perhaps equivalent to 20 pages of ordinary print, devoted to
the term Glut, (as distinct from Aschenglut) and I see no
references to ashes; I'm left with the impression that Glut
is more significant of heat, ardor, glowing, fire, whereas
Embers is suggestive of such heat concealed in ashes,
possibly on its way out.  But I may well we wrong. Since the
word Glut has a pervasive domestic usage, .i.e. it is used to
describe the combustion heat in the stove with which people
keep warm in the winter, I assume inasmuch as all families
nourish their own vernacular, that its definition is more
susceptible to family idiosyncracy than for example the
bureaucratic idioms with which German abounds.  Hence it
wouldn't surprise me if usage varied widely.  I don't think,
however it matters.  I don't think the definition of a title
especially in translation, is ever a key to the meaning of a
text.  Remember all the todo about the Shakespearean
"Remembrance of things past" as a translation of Proust's A
la recherche du temps perdu?  The title of a book tells as
much or as little about the book as the caption of a painting
does about the scene depicted.

     A book, a text like this is invariably open to diverse
interpretation. There is no one "correct" interpretation, if
only because intrepretation is something that goes on in the
mind of the reader. There are as many interpretations as
readers, and even for a single reader the interpretation will
vary over time.

     The recapitulation of the past, as Henrik had in fact
experienced it. Konrad is emblematic of a fragment of
Henrik's personality. The hunting scene a midlife crisis
which changes everything.

     The opening scenes as an overture, full of tension and
anticipation, a parody of the familiar litany maledictus qui
venit.  The coming, the advent of someone which changes
everything.  The ultimate repudiation of the friend.  It
leads to a recovery of the past, to its (re)interpretation,
to its disassembly, to its destruction.  The need to have it
said, to translate feeling, intuition into language into
protocol senstences, into unambiguous statements.  As if he
were composing the judgment book liber scriptus proferetur in
qua omnis continetur ...  But one judges always only oneself.

     The loneliness and suffering of the Parisian mother in
the frigid, isolated Carpathian castle.

     The threat posed by Henriks father the officer of the
guards who hunted wild beasts because he couldn't destroy the
world.

     The emphasis on Nini's strength.  Nini as the
nourishing, life giving, life preserving all pervading force
which holds the world (of the castle) together.  Henrik's
need for love, exemplified by his illness in Brittany which
was caused by a spiritual starvation.

     Henriks epomym "the General" is emblematic for his
isolation.  One is not normally friends with a person known
(only as) "the General".

     Embers: what is glowing is his elan vital. The ashes are
of the life which time has taken way, which misfortune, or
his own folly has destroyed.

     Konrad not as the friend, but as in fact the alter ego
of Henrik.  A split personality. Which, as Nini predicted,
could not last.  Konrad's wrong, not that he tried to kill
Henrik, - that's (pure) symbolism, but that he abandoned
Henrik, symbolically destroying him. Evidently Henri needed
Konrad more than Konrad needed Henrik.

     The novel as (musical) composition, with overture, the
history, and the monomaniacal finale, in which Henrik takes
back (zuruecknehmen) rescinds his affection, his life.
Thomas Mann, Dr Faustus, Es soll nicht sein. Ich will es
zuruecknehmen.

     A novel of desperate loneliness, made more so by wealth
which so isolates. Not only was the attempted murder a
fantasy, but the friendship itself was fantastical.


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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
