Beyond and behind the Iron Curtain: Sándor Márai crossing the borders between 1946 and 1948

Abstract

The time Sándor Márai (1900–89) spent in Switzerland, France and Italy in the winter of 1946–7 gave him the opportunity to observe and note the differences existing in ‘frozen, destitute Europe’ between East and West, Easterners and Westerners. The diary that Márai had already started to keep in 1943, Föld, föld!…, first published in Hungarian in 1972 in Toronto, and Európa elrablása (1947) represent interesting sources to reconstruct his experiences and thought about a Europe bisected by the Iron Curtain from the perspective of a ‘traveller venturing forth from the ruins of Eastern Europe’. In these works, he shares with us his impressions and depicts Western Europe, as represented by neutral Switzerland, France and a ‘defeated Italy’ in opposition to and in comparison with the East, represented by a ‘dismembered Hungary’. In analysing Márai’s account, the article focuses on the differences he perceived, on the way he reports them and also on how the West and Westerners viewed the East and the Easterners.