In Search of Lost Cultures: Sándor Márai, a Central European Post-War Traveller in the East
In Search of Lost Cultures: Sándor Márai, a Central European Post-War Traveller in the East

Summary/Abstract: The change of the Western travel culture in the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by the experiences of the First World War and the succeeding political, social and economic shocks. Sándor Márai (1900-1989) was one of the most important representatives of the post-war generation of Hungarian writers. He travelled to the Middle-East and to both Western and Central Europe, and captured his experiences of foreign lands in his works. In Search of Gods was Márai’s first travel account (published when he was aged 27), which summarized his memories about a journey across the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. In Márai’s travelogue, the disillusion of the post-war generation merges with the ironic and skeptical attitude and sensitivity of a Central European traveller. The main focus of my study is the way in which Márai reshapes the relativism of the Spenglerian anti-humanistic theory of crisis as a means of intercultural mediation and understanding of each other. The basis of his philosophy was the refusal of the hegemony of the Western “Faustian” culture, the turn towards foreign cultures and the effort to understand them, setting by this a good example for literates of today’s crisis.

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