By Daniel Gustafsson, translator
A reading experience like few others
Epic ambitions and features of classical literature. Layers of supernatural elements and a multitude of literary clichés, but few punctuation marks. Few know László Krasznahorkai’s texts as well as translator Daniel Gustafsson, who here offers his take on the Hungarian author’s peculiar work.
Anyone who delves into László Krasznahorkai’s literary work will notice some distinctive characteristics. Perhaps most importantly, the sentences are often unusually long, but also that the text is written in compact blocks with no real beginnings or ends, where even the dialogue is intertwined. At the same time, the prose is remarkably vivid: the narrative perspective shifts fluidly, and the text zooms in and out from small details to a general perspective, shifts focus, changes narrator, changes voice, and then backs away again. The text moves in converging circles, or perhaps more accurately, in a kind of vortex. It’s a reading experience like few others.
Krasznahorkai’s novels also move with an encouraging rhythm, a progressive movement despite the formal circularity. There is a tangible epic ambition with a clear connection to the classical novel and narrative, particularly through the use of plot, the gallery of characters, and the curve of events. The texts also contain layers of a strongly symbolic nature, in the form of fantastical and supernatural elements, as well as a frequent use of literary clichés, both linguistic tropes and situations and characters that almost seem lifted from genre literature. And amid all the books’ diabolical depiction, there’s a kind of conciliatory humor, sometimes in the form of what could easily be compared to situational comedy, albeit darkly and ironically.
THE WHOLE THING CAN, OF COURSE, sound like a jumble, or like postmodern games (Krasznahorkai had to endure the epithet “postmodern” for a long time, before it became obsolete). But despite the eclectic play, despite the tension between experimental form and classical storytelling, the novels hold together in a remarkable way. And what holds them together is, ultimately, the language. In an interview, Krasznahorkai, who has a deep and long-standing interest in East Asian culture, recounts how, during a stay in Japan, he asked a carpenter at the temple in Nara how he could plane cypress wood so incredibly evenly and smoothly. The carpenter was puzzled and responded enigmatically: wood is everything. And the same can be said of writing, Krasznahorkai quotes: language is everything.
If we listen carefully, we realize that most people speak the way he writes.
In recent years, the linguistic elasticity of his work has only increased; the sentences expand endlessly, creating a flow where concepts like “main clause” and “sub-clause” are no longer relevant. His latest novel in Swedish, HERSCHT 07769, is written in a single sentence. It should be added that Hungarian, this peculiar language belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family, has a kind of elastic tendency within itself; there is a preference and habit of expressing oneself in long sentences; the very structure of the language invites it, so to speak. And according to Krasznahorkai himself, he writes this way in search of realism. He believes that if we listen carefully, we will hear that most people speak the way he writes.
Of course, it might also be relevant to speak of a kind of musicality, or ear, in the use of language, although the analogy is worn out. The truth is that Krasznahorkai likes to talk about music and the important and central role it plays in his life. Music is also a recurring motif in the novels. And not surprisingly, a musical theoretical problem occupies Mr. Eszter’s reflections in The Melancholy of Resistance: why was the natural-tone scale supplanted by the chromatic, the mathematically conceived, the tempered, the constructed scale? However, with his classical ear, it is almost impossible for Mr. Eszter to get used to the primitive natural-tone scale on the piano he has retuned; he is forced to torment himself with his natural-tone Bach, but his ear refuses to get used to the noise.
