Guest of the ilb 2002
After the publication of his novel, 'Háború és háború' (1999), the
'Süd-deutsche Zeitung' described him as the "great one who turns off
the lights at the end of the century". Once again László Krasznahorkai
has created a scenario which is both melancholic and critical, where
subjective underlying feeling is at one with the sadness of a society
which, like today’s, as it perhaps always was, is unable to convince
any dreamers on the way into the abyss of the opposite of its pessimism.
Born in Gyor, Hungary, Krasznahorkai creates a world in which the
classical heroes have had their day. It is the overall feeling,
the atmosphere, which takes up the protagonist’s role. The latter
stands on the touchline of their actions, which are condemned to
failure. They are static like those puppets whose strings
have become joined up somewhere in the dark. They are
profound loners, ceaselessly unable to cope. Kafka seems not only
to have been the model for this type of character, but also for the
consistency of style and the nightmarish tightness of construction of
these novels.
Krasznhorkai has become internationally well known certainly since 'The
Melancholy of Resistance' (1989). Here, too, he creates a
complicated scenario of silhouette-like characters, still life,
atmosphere and, caught as if by skillful use of camera, a presence of
power, in short: an absurd world in which false prophets pull the wool
over their victims’ eyes.
A remote small town in Hungary is dozing under a pall of haze made up
of suspicions and rumours, tangible threat, senseless aggression and
expectation of salvation. A circus comes to the town. The
main attraction, a whale, is seen to be, however, a counterpart to the
Trojan horse from which a misshapen dwarf orders the village to be
destroyed.
The whole novel can be read as a parable which has a clear reference to
the atmosphere before and after that turning point of the late
eighties, to the stillness before the storm, to the upheavals and
disappointments in eastern Europe.
In this way 'Háború és háború' seems to be an answer to the new age
that has dawned. On the threshold to the new millennium, Korin,
the candidate for the post of senior archivist, makes a journey from
his provincial home town to New York, in order to there, at the centre
of "Life", die. On his journey he touches, at different stages,
the West’s past, from Crete and Rome to the halls for New Art in
Schaffhausen. Everywhere he finds new verses for his swan song;
only the thought of a manuscript, sown into the coat he carries with
him, gives hope that his journey has meaning.
Together with the cult director, Bela Tarr, Krasznahorkai adapted his
debut novel 'Sátántangó', published in 1985, as seven-and-a-half-hour
long black and white film version (1994). 'The Melancholy of
Resistance' was made into a film in 2000 under the title 'Werckmeister
Harmonies'.
László Krasznahorkai who is also known for his short stories and essays
has received countless prizes for his literary work, among them the
prize from South-West German Radio for 'Az urgai fogoly' and the
Kossuth Prize, the most distinguished Hungarian award for artists.
Since 1980 Krasznahorkai has spent his time mostly in foreign
countries. He travelled and lived in Germany, Finland, Switzerland,
Italy, Bosnia, Mongalia, China, France and Spain. Repeatedly he spent
time in Kyoto on a scholarship from the Japan Foundation and in 2005 he
was also invited by the Brown University, Rhode Island.
Krasznahorkai is a member of the Digital Literary Academy and lives at
present as a freelance writer in Pilissentlaszlo, near Budapest.
© international literature festival berlin
László Krasznahorkai online: www.krasznahorkai.hu | 
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