Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Amsterdam Wereldbibliotheek 2011
User reviews
LibraryThing member John
Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Satantango
(David H, Maria S, Mariko, Susan C, Susan M, Larry, Martina, Oxana)
Satantango (1985) was Krasznahorkai's first major publication. It is, at one level, a stark metaphor for the crushing despair of life under the Communist regime, which no doubt accounted for part of
A jacket blurb from James Wood describes Satantango as "profoundly unsettlingly" and it is--unsettling in its bleak depiction of human nature, proclivities, and promise, and unsettling in its writing style. The action, such as it is, is set in the grounds of a derelict 'Manor' (some sort of failed collective) in the Hungarian countryside, post-WWII. It is essentially a small village of hovels masquerading as homes, wth the inhabitants masquerading as people with any real prospects.
The opening sentence of the novel sets the tone throughout: "One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rain began to fall on the cracked and saline soil of the western side of the estate (later the stinking yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Futaki woke to hear bells." The rain is unrelenting throughout the novel, soaking the homes, the countryside, and the people, washing out skies, colours, and hopes.
In the first couple of pages, Krasznahorkai uses short, trenchant descriptions and observations to set the mood of the place and the people: "mousehole-sized kitchen window....the only light to be seen was the one glimmering in the doctor's window whose house was set well apart from the others on the far side, and that was only because its occupant had for years been unable to sleep in the dark....burned out remnants of a locust-plagued summer...as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity...the east, once the home of a thriving industry, now nothing but a set of dilapidated and deserted buildings...first rays of a swollen sun broke through the topmost beams of a derelict farmhouse from which the roof tiles had been stripped..."
The Manor, as a physical and psychological space, represents a derelict past, a miserable present, and a parlours future. The half dozen or so protagonists live without harmony and without help, without wisdom or even much sense, prone to false hopes perpetrated by charlatans. And the charlatan appears in a character named Irimias, for whom everyone has been waiting for delivery from their blasted lives, but who might be a secret police agent, or a con-man or, maybe, Satan himself. I don't think it matters who, or what, Irimias is; the 'Satan' in the story is the ungraspable hopes of everyone in the novel; these provide the motors for mad decisions and actions. At the end of the novel we discover that the Doctor, who has been a close observer of all the players is, in fact, not just a reporter of activities (to the secret police?), not just a chronicler, but (in a post-modernist twist) the writer of the novel and, as such, he constructs and deconstructs the lives of the characters:
"He scribbled feverishly and was practically seeing everything that was happening over there, and he knew, was deadly certain, that from then on this was how it would be. He realized that all those years of arduous, painstaking work had finally borne fruit: he had finally become the master of a singular art that enabled him not only to describe a world whose eternal unremitting progress in one direction required such mastery but also--to a certain extent--he could even intervene in the mechanism behind an apparently chaotic swirl of events!" [Italics in the original]
So where and what is reality?
Krasznahorkai does not believe in traditional sentences and certainly not in periods; phrases run-on sometimes for pages, twisting and looping around, sometimes back on themselves. Krasznahorkai has argued that people do not think in sentences, so it is futile to portray their thoughts, or even to convey third-party descriptions, like that. He at least provides quotation marks to assist in tracking speakers as there are no paragraph breaks.
So, with this sort of synopsis, why read such a novel? Because, despite the bleakness, the people are real in their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and fears. Many people live such bleak lives, in many different circumstances, and understanding is a step towards empathy for their state, and understanding of the circumstances that brought them to it. There is a chapter entitled "Unravelling" that describes, with painful perception, the descent to death of a little girl, lost and unloved in life; unsettling though it is to read, it is psychologically acute in its depiction of one life that is wasted and that we know is multiplied time and time again in reality. The book is worth reading for the writing in this chapter alone.
Krasznahorkai can be a struggle, but he is an intrepid and intriguing writer who pushes the boundaries of how a writer can try to convey reality. Virginia Woolf called upon the novelist to find new ways to represent consciousness: "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness." Krasznahorkai aspires to the level of writing.
In his novel, War and War, Krasznahorkai echoes Woolf when he has the main protagonist posit: "The manuscript was interested in one thing only, and that was reality examined to the point of madness, and the experience of all those intense mad details, the engraving by sheer manic repetition of the matter into the imagination, was, and he meant this literally, Korin explained, as if the writer had written the text not with pen and words but with his nails, scratching the words into the paper and into the mind." This--"reality examined to the point of madness"--is a good description of Satantango.
This is a book that could be parsed to a considerable degree. It is worth the challenge and the reward.
(David H, Maria S, Mariko, Susan C, Susan M, Larry, Martina, Oxana)
Satantango (1985) was Krasznahorkai's first major publication. It is, at one level, a stark metaphor for the crushing despair of life under the Communist regime, which no doubt accounted for part of
Show More
its popularity in Hungary, if not why the authorities even allowed it be be printed. Krasznahorkai won the Man Booker International in 2015 for his body of work.A jacket blurb from James Wood describes Satantango as "profoundly unsettlingly" and it is--unsettling in its bleak depiction of human nature, proclivities, and promise, and unsettling in its writing style. The action, such as it is, is set in the grounds of a derelict 'Manor' (some sort of failed collective) in the Hungarian countryside, post-WWII. It is essentially a small village of hovels masquerading as homes, wth the inhabitants masquerading as people with any real prospects.
The opening sentence of the novel sets the tone throughout: "One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rain began to fall on the cracked and saline soil of the western side of the estate (later the stinking yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Futaki woke to hear bells." The rain is unrelenting throughout the novel, soaking the homes, the countryside, and the people, washing out skies, colours, and hopes.
In the first couple of pages, Krasznahorkai uses short, trenchant descriptions and observations to set the mood of the place and the people: "mousehole-sized kitchen window....the only light to be seen was the one glimmering in the doctor's window whose house was set well apart from the others on the far side, and that was only because its occupant had for years been unable to sleep in the dark....burned out remnants of a locust-plagued summer...as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity...the east, once the home of a thriving industry, now nothing but a set of dilapidated and deserted buildings...first rays of a swollen sun broke through the topmost beams of a derelict farmhouse from which the roof tiles had been stripped..."
The Manor, as a physical and psychological space, represents a derelict past, a miserable present, and a parlours future. The half dozen or so protagonists live without harmony and without help, without wisdom or even much sense, prone to false hopes perpetrated by charlatans. And the charlatan appears in a character named Irimias, for whom everyone has been waiting for delivery from their blasted lives, but who might be a secret police agent, or a con-man or, maybe, Satan himself. I don't think it matters who, or what, Irimias is; the 'Satan' in the story is the ungraspable hopes of everyone in the novel; these provide the motors for mad decisions and actions. At the end of the novel we discover that the Doctor, who has been a close observer of all the players is, in fact, not just a reporter of activities (to the secret police?), not just a chronicler, but (in a post-modernist twist) the writer of the novel and, as such, he constructs and deconstructs the lives of the characters:
"He scribbled feverishly and was practically seeing everything that was happening over there, and he knew, was deadly certain, that from then on this was how it would be. He realized that all those years of arduous, painstaking work had finally borne fruit: he had finally become the master of a singular art that enabled him not only to describe a world whose eternal unremitting progress in one direction required such mastery but also--to a certain extent--he could even intervene in the mechanism behind an apparently chaotic swirl of events!" [Italics in the original]
So where and what is reality?
Krasznahorkai does not believe in traditional sentences and certainly not in periods; phrases run-on sometimes for pages, twisting and looping around, sometimes back on themselves. Krasznahorkai has argued that people do not think in sentences, so it is futile to portray their thoughts, or even to convey third-party descriptions, like that. He at least provides quotation marks to assist in tracking speakers as there are no paragraph breaks.
So, with this sort of synopsis, why read such a novel? Because, despite the bleakness, the people are real in their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and fears. Many people live such bleak lives, in many different circumstances, and understanding is a step towards empathy for their state, and understanding of the circumstances that brought them to it. There is a chapter entitled "Unravelling" that describes, with painful perception, the descent to death of a little girl, lost and unloved in life; unsettling though it is to read, it is psychologically acute in its depiction of one life that is wasted and that we know is multiplied time and time again in reality. The book is worth reading for the writing in this chapter alone.
Krasznahorkai can be a struggle, but he is an intrepid and intriguing writer who pushes the boundaries of how a writer can try to convey reality. Virginia Woolf called upon the novelist to find new ways to represent consciousness: "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness." Krasznahorkai aspires to the level of writing.
In his novel, War and War, Krasznahorkai echoes Woolf when he has the main protagonist posit: "The manuscript was interested in one thing only, and that was reality examined to the point of madness, and the experience of all those intense mad details, the engraving by sheer manic repetition of the matter into the imagination, was, and he meant this literally, Korin explained, as if the writer had written the text not with pen and words but with his nails, scratching the words into the paper and into the mind." This--"reality examined to the point of madness"--is a good description of Satantango.
This is a book that could be parsed to a considerable degree. It is worth the challenge and the reward.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jlbattis
Much like the seven-and-a-half-hour Béla Tarr film it spawned, Satantango requires patience. Underlying this morass of atrophying humanity is a structure of subtle movements, the structure of the tango, a structure only apparent at a far remove. It is a structure I only recognized somewhere in the
Show More
seventh hour of the film and which, while immersed in the novel, seems ever elusive, although there are indications. Even if you don't have the patience for the gran mal, there are moments of Handkean brilliance in the minutiae. Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Satantango, or Satan's Tango, is a wandering, twisted, dark, exhausting snarl of a book. It takes six steps forward, and six steps back, leaving chaos and the blackest of humor.
The novel is an allegorical story of a dance with the devil - the characters in their bleak little rainy hole of a village
It's more than Eastern Europeans Being Depressed. Seriously. Just read some of the sentences out loud.
But the plot and all those things are secondary to the astonishing language and detail of the author. The sheer mass of the text is first intimidating, then wholly absorbing. Krasznahorkai has an astonishing grasp of the slowness of memory and time.
4.5 stars. To reread.
The novel is an allegorical story of a dance with the devil - the characters in their bleak little rainy hole of a village
Show More
futz around, and every time they try and move forwards, the inertia of their lives drags them back. They dream of the fool's prophet, Irimias, and regress further. Sink into the earth.It's more than Eastern Europeans Being Depressed. Seriously. Just read some of the sentences out loud.
But the plot and all those things are secondary to the astonishing language and detail of the author. The sheer mass of the text is first intimidating, then wholly absorbing. Krasznahorkai has an astonishing grasp of the slowness of memory and time.
4.5 stars. To reread.
Show Less
LibraryThing member parrishlantern
Satantango, starts in some mouldering Hungarian hamlet, the home of the workers of a collective long since closed and stripped of anything of worth, and like the inhabitants of the hamlet forgotten by the outside world. In fact the only growth market appears to be rot and spiders, very little
In Stu’s (Winstonsdad’s Blog) post, he states that “ I felt this book had a lot of central European mythology that has been brought to the modern age and also what makes myths..” This wonderful insight of Stu’s, I think rings true, in fact I would go further and state that the character of Irimias, is a great representation of a character not just of European mythology but of world, Irimias, seems to be a Trickster, who features in a lot of tales from around the world whether as Loki, Syrdon, Veles, Gwydion or as Coyote, Anansi or Crow. The Trickster, is an example of a Jungian archetype, defined as being an "ancient or archaic image that derives from the collective unconscious" (Carl Jung). The Trickster surfaces in modern literature as a character archetype often acting as a catalyst or harbinger of change, they may reveal unhappiness with the status quo through slips of the tongue or spontaneous and unusual actions, which is pretty much a pen portrait of Irimias.
Although this may be alluded to within the book Krasznahorkai, is not one for spelling things out. Irimias may be the devil/ trickster or just some cheap con man. With the action (?) confined pretty much to the hamlet, this book come across as really claustrophobic, everything cycles through like the seasons, but unlike the seasons nothing is resolved there is no growth everything appears thwarted, even stunted. The dance just goes on with no joy or release – just an increasing heaviness, everything simmers and yet the kettle doesn’t boil, the pressure cooker doesn’t release its pressure. There is no end.
This book has also been described as an indictment of Hungarian Collective farming in the dying days of communism and a reaction to the reality of the capitalist dream on a communist utopia. It has also been described as a book on the nature of storytelling. None of this is spelled out in the book, as stated above, very little happens on the page, like the stage direction “Offstage action”, most of what happens here, happens within your head and continues to do so long past the turning of the final page.
This post is a series of reactions to what is basically a very simple story and yet I cannot write a cohesive review of it. The obvious place to start would be that it is divided into 12 chapters, most consisting of a single paragraph, or that the book is split into two with the chapters in the first part going from one to six and in the second part from six to one, also the last chapter is named The circle closes, which is apt. The book is set in the twentieth century, although it’s shading would lends itself to some medieval setting, or anything apocalyptic. Referring back to my kettle analogy and taking it to it’s conclusion, the kettle boils dry leaving only the husks of what was once human, the threshings of humanity.
All that I’ve written are bullet points, headlining some points yet neglecting others, I guess like storytelling itself, in that you choose a certain path whilst omitting others, and even whilst on that path you do not see, or choose not to see everything - defining yourself and your tale by what you put forward. Satantango, circles on itself like some mythical serpent and within that circle the characters dance their own isolated geometries like marionettes in some brutal puppet play, whilst the story eats it’s own tail.
As previously stated, this is a book that happens more in the mind than on the page, this makes it all the more baffling and all the more interesting, what I didn’t state is that I have read three books since Satantango, and it still haunts me - still has me trying to comprehend what this paradoxically simple tale is all about.
Show More
happens here. Within the first few pages we realise that the rot has spread to all and sundry, there is not a single character of worth, all are, to varying degrees, corrupt, paranoid and full of loathing whether of self or of their neighbours. We also learn that they are waiting for Irimias, who may or may not be Satan, not that this matters as these individuals are so deep into the morass of all that’s bad about humanity, that Satan would be worried about contamination. The villagers wait at the inn for Irimias, who has been seen on the road heading their way with his sidekick Petrina, which is strange because Irimias, is supposed to be dead. Irimias has the ability to charm and mesmerise all to his way, even those who are deeply suspicious of him, still follow his bidding even parting with the collective’s small pot of money. This leads to a series of events that breaks what little bonds they once held and violence erupts, although this is brief as all are so ensnared by Irimias machination, that they can see little else.In Stu’s (Winstonsdad’s Blog) post, he states that “ I felt this book had a lot of central European mythology that has been brought to the modern age and also what makes myths..” This wonderful insight of Stu’s, I think rings true, in fact I would go further and state that the character of Irimias, is a great representation of a character not just of European mythology but of world, Irimias, seems to be a Trickster, who features in a lot of tales from around the world whether as Loki, Syrdon, Veles, Gwydion or as Coyote, Anansi or Crow. The Trickster, is an example of a Jungian archetype, defined as being an "ancient or archaic image that derives from the collective unconscious" (Carl Jung). The Trickster surfaces in modern literature as a character archetype often acting as a catalyst or harbinger of change, they may reveal unhappiness with the status quo through slips of the tongue or spontaneous and unusual actions, which is pretty much a pen portrait of Irimias.
Although this may be alluded to within the book Krasznahorkai, is not one for spelling things out. Irimias may be the devil/ trickster or just some cheap con man. With the action (?) confined pretty much to the hamlet, this book come across as really claustrophobic, everything cycles through like the seasons, but unlike the seasons nothing is resolved there is no growth everything appears thwarted, even stunted. The dance just goes on with no joy or release – just an increasing heaviness, everything simmers and yet the kettle doesn’t boil, the pressure cooker doesn’t release its pressure. There is no end.
This book has also been described as an indictment of Hungarian Collective farming in the dying days of communism and a reaction to the reality of the capitalist dream on a communist utopia. It has also been described as a book on the nature of storytelling. None of this is spelled out in the book, as stated above, very little happens on the page, like the stage direction “Offstage action”, most of what happens here, happens within your head and continues to do so long past the turning of the final page.
This post is a series of reactions to what is basically a very simple story and yet I cannot write a cohesive review of it. The obvious place to start would be that it is divided into 12 chapters, most consisting of a single paragraph, or that the book is split into two with the chapters in the first part going from one to six and in the second part from six to one, also the last chapter is named The circle closes, which is apt. The book is set in the twentieth century, although it’s shading would lends itself to some medieval setting, or anything apocalyptic. Referring back to my kettle analogy and taking it to it’s conclusion, the kettle boils dry leaving only the husks of what was once human, the threshings of humanity.
All that I’ve written are bullet points, headlining some points yet neglecting others, I guess like storytelling itself, in that you choose a certain path whilst omitting others, and even whilst on that path you do not see, or choose not to see everything - defining yourself and your tale by what you put forward. Satantango, circles on itself like some mythical serpent and within that circle the characters dance their own isolated geometries like marionettes in some brutal puppet play, whilst the story eats it’s own tail.
As previously stated, this is a book that happens more in the mind than on the page, this makes it all the more baffling and all the more interesting, what I didn’t state is that I have read three books since Satantango, and it still haunts me - still has me trying to comprehend what this paradoxically simple tale is all about.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
Thanks to the title, to the hip sort of publications that spruik this novel, the glorious cover art, the unpronounceable last name, and the publisher, I was expecting something like Pynchon for people who find Pynchon too easy to read, too plot-based, and too intellectually void. And yet I read it
Luckily, however, Satantango is just kind of a romp. A gloriously allegorical romp, yes, in which we're asked to consider huge questions about human history, social, economic and cultural; in which a few of the usual markers readers love so much are removed (it takes a few pages before you realize what a chapter is about), sure, but a romp nonetheless, with a fabulously snarky plot, great set pieces, terrors and laughs in their hundreds. We have a messiah who's really just a nark and a thug, and everyone else in the novel is worse than him. We have some possibly supernatural goings on. We have lots of drinking.
And then, for no particularly good reason except that this novel was published in 1985, we have -- spoiler! -- a metafictional undercutting of everything that's more or less boredom incarnate. Wait wait wait, I want to say to these authors--you mean what I just read was written by someone? It didn't really happen? WOAH! MIND BLOWN DUDE! BECAUSE LIKE HOW CAN YOU WRITE WORDS ABOUT THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED?!*
So, as another reviewer suggested, maybe skip the last chapter. You won't lose anything, but you'll gain wonders.
* I just learned that '?!' (or possibly '!?') is known as an interrobang. That is all.
Show More
anyway, which suggests all sorts of Freudian things about me. Luckily, however, Satantango is just kind of a romp. A gloriously allegorical romp, yes, in which we're asked to consider huge questions about human history, social, economic and cultural; in which a few of the usual markers readers love so much are removed (it takes a few pages before you realize what a chapter is about), sure, but a romp nonetheless, with a fabulously snarky plot, great set pieces, terrors and laughs in their hundreds. We have a messiah who's really just a nark and a thug, and everyone else in the novel is worse than him. We have some possibly supernatural goings on. We have lots of drinking.
And then, for no particularly good reason except that this novel was published in 1985, we have -- spoiler! -- a metafictional undercutting of everything that's more or less boredom incarnate. Wait wait wait, I want to say to these authors--you mean what I just read was written by someone? It didn't really happen? WOAH! MIND BLOWN DUDE! BECAUSE LIKE HOW CAN YOU WRITE WORDS ABOUT THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED?!*
So, as another reviewer suggested, maybe skip the last chapter. You won't lose anything, but you'll gain wonders.
* I just learned that '?!' (or possibly '!?') is known as an interrobang. That is all.
Show Less
LibraryThing member BayardUS
This is the second Kraznahorkai book I've read, and like The Melancholy of Resistance I liked it without being able to fully communicate or even comprehend the reason why. Kraznahorkai creates an atmosphere in his books unlike any other author I've come across. The settings are dreamlike, yes, but
The story could be reduced to (spoilers) "a charismatic conman returns to a mostly abandoned manor estate and recruits its remaining inhabitants as a spy network" but to focus on the story itself misses the point. Satantango, like The Melancholy of Resistance, has a mood that seeps into you and that you'll likely remember for a long time to come. It's different in a very good, if undefinable, way.
Show More
lots of authors create a dreamlike atmosphere. What Kraznahorkai manages to create is somehow simultaneously dreamlike and viscerally material. In Satantango the setting is one full of resurrections, cyclical occurrences, the supernatural glimpsed through the darkness of the woods. It's also a world of mud, mold, decay, and all the most base human impulses.The story could be reduced to (spoilers) "a charismatic conman returns to a mostly abandoned manor estate and recruits its remaining inhabitants as a spy network" but to focus on the story itself misses the point. Satantango, like The Melancholy of Resistance, has a mood that seeps into you and that you'll likely remember for a long time to come. It's different in a very good, if undefinable, way.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DavidCLDriedger
Very different than Seiobo There Below. Very Dostoevskian. Almost had a brilliant ending.
LibraryThing member bodachliath
I picked this up purely on the strength of its intriguing title. It is a dark fable set in a hopeless backwater of communist Hungary, in which the residents are mostly hopeless drunks. The plot such as it is centres on a charismatic figure on whom the group pin their fading hopes of something
Show More
better. A bleak and elliptical tale. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheWasp
It took me right until the very end to get this story. And when i did get it, i realized how clever it really was.
Set in a remote village peopled with poor lazy characters who were all waiting for something to happen. I found it very hard to like any of the characters amd found their behaviours
This is not a very long tale and my advice would be not to give up - that the reward comes at the end.
Set in a remote village peopled with poor lazy characters who were all waiting for something to happen. I found it very hard to like any of the characters amd found their behaviours
Show More
quite frustrating, but i persisted to the end and 'got it'.This is not a very long tale and my advice would be not to give up - that the reward comes at the end.
Show Less
LibraryThing member albertgoldfain
Gray and bleak humor typical of a communist allegory, this book nevertheless has a vital intensity and urgency to it. I'm sure the translation is high quality but still feel I missed a thread of connotations or lived-through historical experience that are only available to the Hungarian.
LibraryThing member jonfaith
A powerful open text, one rife with both fire and human failures. As I quipped early, it's a Faulkner noir in the Magyar mud. What ripens and stings is more akin to Beckett: a waiting for IKEA, with ideological trappings.
The novel opens essentially with a bell in the night. Then it rains.
The
The novel in translation appears in the wake of Bela Tate's imperious adaptation. The language is a live wire amidst the sodden decay. This should be pursued at all costs.
The novel opens essentially with a bell in the night. Then it rains.
The
Show More
contemporary reader will ascribe a historical arc to the symbolism, unfortunately the novel was written in 1985. INXS didn't script the Velvet Revolution. Many phenomenon are repositioned after the fact.The novel in translation appears in the wake of Bela Tate's imperious adaptation. The language is a live wire amidst the sodden decay. This should be pursued at all costs.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lethalmauve
An absorbing work of magnificent fiction that trudges the muddy grounds of Communism. The promise of a utopian society collapses in, washed away by the endlessly pouring and pelting rain of violence and despair in an isolated, seemingly inescapable, godforsaken Hungarian village. The hands of the
The false prophet Irimiás thus speaketh:
"What I want is to establish a small island for a few people with nothing left to lose, a small island free of exploitation, where people work for, not against each other, where everyone has plenty and peace and security and can go to sleep at night like a proper human being..." (p182)
The people tremble with gratitude, pack their bags for an almost biblical exodus, only to set foot in another isolated, seemingly inescapable, godforsaken Hungarian village.
Krasznahorkai's prose presses with adequate claustrophobia, teetering finely between humour and horror, between loose morals and tight motives. Non-linear with its approach, it flips from a dream into a nightmare, capturing the immersive illusions of its (any) failed ideology, even the dangerous appeal of any dogma to the emotion instead of reason.
My first Krasznahorkai, and definitely won't be my last.
Show More
clock stagnate in waiting there. Its residents gather at a bar, conversing about their aimless, stranded lives, until they drift into an outlandish orgy to cope, where everyone covets each other, and everyone craves for something. Children themselves adapt through bizarre means. A place morally purloined; nihilistically incarcerated; deathly perfumed. Sacrifices are inevitable in the name of these people's anticipated salvation. So it goes, this also becomes a story of fanaticism as they look ahead to the arrival of their so-called messiah, the crook Irimiás, and his deceitful doctrine, which carries and validates their faith.The false prophet Irimiás thus speaketh:
"What I want is to establish a small island for a few people with nothing left to lose, a small island free of exploitation, where people work for, not against each other, where everyone has plenty and peace and security and can go to sleep at night like a proper human being..." (p182)
The people tremble with gratitude, pack their bags for an almost biblical exodus, only to set foot in another isolated, seemingly inescapable, godforsaken Hungarian village.
Krasznahorkai's prose presses with adequate claustrophobia, teetering finely between humour and horror, between loose morals and tight motives. Non-linear with its approach, it flips from a dream into a nightmare, capturing the immersive illusions of its (any) failed ideology, even the dangerous appeal of any dogma to the emotion instead of reason.
My first Krasznahorkai, and definitely won't be my last.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jonbrammer
The epigraph by Kafka is illuminating: the influence is everywhere in this mysterious and bleak novel, especially in the section near the end where bureaucrats are attempting to translate each character into official government idiom. There is also some of Beckett's absurdism, and the tone is very
The religious aspect of the story is most striking. The residents of the farm collective are trapped in a type of purgatory, as they wait for Irimias to arrive and redeem them. There is a Mary Magdalene character (Mrs. Schmidt), and Irimias supposedly returns from the dead, which is never fully explained. At the end, the characters are spread to the wind by Irimias as they wait for paradise to come at the manor, much like Jesus' disciples are scattered to spread the word of the Gospel.
Which makes me wonder about the title and the source of evil in the story. The doctor at the end is writing the novel as it cycles back to the beginning, and it is notable that he along with Esti's family are the only characters left behind at the collective. The symbol of the bell ringing at the beginning of the end was evocative, especially once the doctor finds out that it is just an "idiot" making the noise (Macbeth allusion?). The doctor returns to his chair, his drinking, and his writing. He embodies the malaise that trapped the other characters in the village. That he is writing the story means that he has some omniscience and power over the characters' lives. The tango in the title is the drunken dance the characters do as they wait in the bar for Irimias. This time loop is the trap that Satan has sprung for them. The book is saying that, although the Christ-figure is probably also a con man, and his promises of paradise are lies, the real evil is in the debauched stasis of the character's lives before his arrival.
Just my interpretation.
Show More
19th century Russian, especially Dostoevsky. The girl Esti echoes Stinking Lizaveta in the Brothers Karamazov, as a kind of human symbol of suffering. The religious aspect of the story is most striking. The residents of the farm collective are trapped in a type of purgatory, as they wait for Irimias to arrive and redeem them. There is a Mary Magdalene character (Mrs. Schmidt), and Irimias supposedly returns from the dead, which is never fully explained. At the end, the characters are spread to the wind by Irimias as they wait for paradise to come at the manor, much like Jesus' disciples are scattered to spread the word of the Gospel.
Which makes me wonder about the title and the source of evil in the story. The doctor at the end is writing the novel as it cycles back to the beginning, and it is notable that he along with Esti's family are the only characters left behind at the collective. The symbol of the bell ringing at the beginning of the end was evocative, especially once the doctor finds out that it is just an "idiot" making the noise (Macbeth allusion?). The doctor returns to his chair, his drinking, and his writing. He embodies the malaise that trapped the other characters in the village. That he is writing the story means that he has some omniscience and power over the characters' lives. The tango in the title is the drunken dance the characters do as they wait in the bar for Irimias. This time loop is the trap that Satan has sprung for them. The book is saying that, although the Christ-figure is probably also a con man, and his promises of paradise are lies, the real evil is in the debauched stasis of the character's lives before his arrival.
Just my interpretation.
Show Less
Awards
Best Translated Book Award (Winner — Fiction — 2013)
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (Longlist — 2013)
Language
Original language
Hungarian
Original publication date
1985 (original Hungarian)
2012 (English translation)
ISBN
9789028424371
Similar in this library
JR by William Gaddis