Bitig Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Abstract

In Sándor Márai’s (1900-1989) novel Portraits of a Marriage, the protagonist Peter is revealed to be a multifaceted character who faces existential dilemmas, a profound sense of indifference and dissociation. Peter, who is practically born with a respectable bourgeois status and attempts to navigate his way through the social constraints imposed by this bourgeois standing, experiences a severe inner rupture between the identity that his society expects from him and the identity that he desires to be in his essence. In the course of World War II and the rigid structure of the social order that prioritizes conformity over individuality, Peter is trapped between his aspiration to reveal his true self and authentic existence and the artificial identity imposed on him. However, his search for authenticity is obstructed not only by external, societal pressures but also by his own inner feelings of insecurity, thus pushing him constantly towards inauthentic existence. In this context, the novel explores Peter’s existential struggle in detail, both through his inner monologues and through his relationships with the other characters who constitute the plot of the narrative. In particular, his marriage as a member of the bourgeois and his subsequent relationship that he strives to establish with Judit fuels his existential anxieties and reveals the tension between his search for escape from the restrictions of his social identity and the authentic self he believes to exist. As Peter attempts to construct an authentic identity, he realizes that this endeavour comes with a great responsibility and inevitably necessitates isolation and alienation. Hence, the narrative unfolds Peter’s existential struggle on the slippery ground of authenticity and inauthenticity. In this respect, this article examines the problematic of authenticity of Peter, the main character of Sándor Márai’s novel Portraits of a Marriage written in 1941, from an existentialist and psychoanalytic framework. For this reason, the study will generally rely on Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre on the axis of existentialism and will utilize Jacques Lacan’s concepts such as mirror phase and symbolic order where existentialism requires psychoanalytic readings.