You can't mention Krasznahorkai without Béla Tarr. Tarr's main filmography is basically Krasznahorkai's main bibliography: Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011).
I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly.
They truly feel like a match made in heaven. Krasznahorkai's own writing is lovely and lyrical, and Tarr's interpretation of it projects the same ideas onto the films but also in a way that makes it stand distinct as a medium.
Try to see Tarr's movies on film. Except for the last couple that got Bluray releases there are only horrible quality DVDs available. But they come around on 35mm in cities like NY somewhat routinely.
When Turin Horse came out I saw it at the NYFF (with an hour long talk in a small room with the director) and then another 3 times in theaters afterward. I've been lucky to catch Satantango and Werckmeister on film.
Tarr also mentored a young Chinese director, Hu Bo. His two works are very good: An Elephant Sitting Still and Man in the Well. Tarr came out to TIFF to introduce and eulogize the latter with an impassioned speech.
edit: Forgot that Criterion finally released a new edition of Werckmeister recently.
It is not easy to commit seven hours to a single movie; for me, Sátántangó was worth it. Warm up on Werckmeister Harmonies which is a short two hours since Bela Tarr isn't and doesn't need to be for everyone. That said, Sátántangó is in my top four movies of all time because of how well it reflects humanity and how much it says about how we interact with each other. (The cows are a metaphor for HN, obviously.)
> I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly.
If that is so, then these are books that you read to experience ultimate ennui?
I know the films, I've watched them all, but doing e.g. Satantango in book form sounds not so enticing?
Can anyone comment on the translations of Krasznahorkai's works into English?
Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult.
Of course, I still happily read and enjoy translations; there's just this shadow cast for me all the time by the originals.
I knew it would happen eventually! I've been waiting for his award. Long time fan. My favorite is War and War (Háború és háború) because the confusion of the world and the endless struggle of trying to be understood represented so well.
Τhe melancholy of resistance is a book that shaped my understanding of conflict and apathy. I am happy this man got the Nobel, he is a tremendous writer.
I am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will:
"All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind … one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction;"
The Nobel Prize hasn't been a prize for work done in the previous year in a long time. This originates in the science prizes because some prizes were given to discoveries that were later discredited. But even the literature prize is generally given in honor of a body of work. And if you look at the list on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit...), even those who are cited for a particular work (which was mostly in the first half of the 20th century) didn't get the prize for some time after that work. I suspect there was the same idea that the work needed to be one recognized to have lasting literary value.
The Nobel Prize in all fields has become an award for lifetime achievement, even though the wording of Nobel's will could also be interpreted as meaning that it should be awarded for work that had the greatest impact during the preceding year.
I don't know, but I suspect the interpretation is that the impact should be during the preceding year, the wording doesn't say the work has to occur in the preceding year. So arguably the work could have been decades ago, but if the impact has only recently become apparent that counts.
I think that's fine. Often it's not really possible to assess the impact of a contribution until long after, it takes a lot of context to be able to do that.
Strangely enough though, there is a conflict around the foundation managing Hilma af Klint's art collection and they are now trying to change how the works are displayed and loaned based on stricter interpretations of her words.
This is a sensible and reasonable proposition, which is ironic considering the USA is run based on interpretations of intentions of slave owners or those copacetic with slavery who have been dead for almost twice as long.
Conveniently those interpretations can be whatever suits the current lifetime-appointed guardians of the sacred legal text. It helps that the text is old and originally ambiguous.
When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.
> When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.
What is “obscure” in the US constitution?
The first amendment is the one thing that makes it impossible for authoritarian US to be reality.
Off-topic, but reading that will is a fascinating study in 19th-century international economics: In the initial outlays, I count 5 different currencies (crowns, francs, florins, dollars, marks). I don't think anyone now would bequest cash in anything other than their native currency (to be converted by the heir).
I don't see a requirement that the work was created or released during the preceding year, only that it conferred benefit to humankind during that time. Presumably the argument is that Nobel-worthy acts continue to confer benefit for long periods.
That's not the basis the award is decided on, I presume it may have been in the early years of the award, but generally it's given as a lifetime achievement kind of thing - the recipients are often decades removed from their most influential work.
I'm curious about the moral underlying an objection like this. Why do you care about whether the prize exactly reflects his will? And why specifically for this prize, when your objection has applied for most of a century across every field?
It was a genuine question, I have no objections. I am rather illiterate about the Nobel Prize, it just caught my attention this year. I just noticed a discrepancy after checking the body of his work after reading the will. That's all.
2025 - László Krasznahorkai - Literature - for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.
2023 - Katalin Karikó - Physiology or Medicine - for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
2023 - Ferenc Krausz - Physics - for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.
It is difficult to say 'we' here for me, when the common ground with these remarkable people are only the country of origin and most of the time the language spoken. Also when it is based on achievements that are mostly theirs, which I have nothing to do with.
I am glad that these people could achive so much coming from a place like Hungary, that is providing inadequate possibilities for these kinds of achivements so they reach it in other countries too many times. Or sometimes even put obstacles in their ways - which is actually good/ok in the end as they seek out the places allowing their success.
But I am glad for any Nobel price winners, regardless of their origins. They give us so much.
Ferenc Krausz has almost the same degrees as me: ELTE Physics, BME EEng/Comp.Sci.
Katalin Karikó went to the same University as my sister (Szeged).
But yes, we have to leave the country if we want good opportunities.. unless we go into politics! Fidesz is easily the most successful startup in Hungary after 1989, possibly in Europe; Fidesz' CEO is one of the richest men in Europe.. unfortunately at our expense.
Agreed, I do understand the sentiment of when someone of your tribe does something great you feel great sentiment, but it can lead to zero sum thinking which is counterproductive. I am pleased that every year we celebrate the achievements of humanity.
I've never heard of them. Does anyone have a top suggestion for checking out his works or standout book? And for those of you that have read him, what did you get out the experience? Should I just read Satantango?
Satantango or the melancholy of resistance are good places to start. His books aren't all the same but there are some qualities they all share.
They're intricate, reference-heavy, postmodern novels with a lot of the emotional intensity purposely occulted behind the prose style. If you like Gass or Sebald you'll have fun.
He's my favorite working author! (Well, maybe that's Pynchon)
I recommend not only his early works like Satantango but also his recent ones like Seiobo There Below (lucky to have a signed copy of this one).
The short ones are interesting too. Animalinside (with Max Neumann), The Last Wolf.
Interested in checking Chasing Homer which has musical accompaniment: "Publishers Weekly described the book as a cross between a Jean-Claude Van Damme film and the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka"
This is false: "There are no hungarian intellectuals over 40 who aren’t openly racist."
Yes, there is a fair amount of under-the-grass (sometimes over) anti-semitism in Hungary (and many other European countries), as well as racism towards people with darker skin, but certainly not every hungarian intellectual over 40.
1)The writing is very bad (which is ironic because she got mad at Houellebecq for being a racist and said that he is translated a lot because he writes like shit so easy to translate). You take an average page of Ernaux (in French) and it's just not very... sophisticated at all, but then all the critics that like her say that this language "unmasks" the reality and is the perfect medium for "autofiction".
2)Her initial ascension has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of her writing(which is very bad), but rather with her "social" message. Her entire work is basically about how she is from a working class family background which is very horrible and sexist, and going to school and university is how she escaped this horrible environment(domineering dad, "rape" that's not really rape, abortions, etc.) . She is basically "anti-beauf" and that's all.
To summarize, I would say that she is like the left-wing analogue of Houellebecq, except that Houellebecq (rightfully) doesn't win the Nobel Prize for shitty writing. I'm certainly elitist a bit of a "reactionary", but for Ernaux its so flagrant that what got rewarded was the political message and not the quality of the writing.
re #2, this is part of culture whether you agree with it or not. just because you don't like her politics doesn't mean she's not influential. sounds like your beef is with what was trending in the marketplace of ideas at that time and you would never be happy if any left wing writer was chosen.
don't worry, a reactionary will get their time soon enough again. last night, actually, my thought was: i bet it's gonna be a conservative (given the current political climate and how ironically "conservatism" is trendy as "avant-garde" despite the oxymoron in how conservative ideas are some of the most basic and mainstream ideas in the world)
perhaps the same kind of hyperbole krasznahorkai likes to use when talking about the "arabs": "I'm sure the Arabs would accept me now that they're gonna cut off my nose, then my eyes, and then they'll poke my eyes out, my tongue rip it out, everything that sticks out of me, cut it off, tortured me, and then shoot me. So that is the Jewish past is enough for me. That’s all the family history" (https://www.szombat.org/kultura-muveszetek/krasznahorkai-las...) (...that's an example among many)
Considering the amount of threats and hate jewish people with no connection get about Israel vs Palestine, you don't think there's at least some legitimacy for his position?
Considering there was literally just an attack on a UK synagogue by an arab, after which many people protested on the side of the attacker in London, you don't think there's a tiny legitimacy to his views?
Of course this is a rhetorical question, because your obviously don't think his views has legitimacy.
Can you give some info on people "protesting on the side of the attacker in London"? That is, people coming out in support of the attack on the synagogue?
Your argument is that it’s not ok to think of all Jewish people as a monolithic group, and therefore his statement where he considered all arabs as a monolithic group is ”legitimate”? Seriously?
Just like it’s not ok to see all jews as part of the same murderous conspiracy, it’s not ok to see all arabs as part of one either.
From a Latin American perspective, racism seems to be a rising thing in the "old world" (i.e. northern hemisphere, east of the Atlantic).
In particular, it seems to be inversely proportional to fertility rate. The lower the fertility rate, the more racist countries seem to be (e.g: Italy, Korea, Hungary, Japan, etc).
> From a Latin American perspective, racism seems to be a rising thing in the "old world" (i.e. northern hemisphere, east of the Atlantic).
Plenty of racism in India, Pakistan, China, MENA (where slavery is common, Libya has open air black slave markets), and Africa itself. And let's not even get started how plenty of these places are ravaged by petty sectarian, ethnical violence, or straight out civil wars between communities.
You just don't hear about all that because most of these places don't have a free press, or people are too busy trying to survive another day to testify.
There are at least 4/5 genocides happening right now in Africa & MENA, and I don't include whatever is going on in Gaza, can you name them?
In 1974, The Swedish Academy was heavily criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to two of its own members. One laureate, Harry Martinson, was so shaken by the backlash he committed suicide 4 years later.
I could watch this scene from Werckmeister Harmonies every day for the rest of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5X2t_s9g8
And The Turin Horse as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s
Think of some magical Tarr adaptation of Seiobo There Below...
When Turin Horse came out I saw it at the NYFF (with an hour long talk in a small room with the director) and then another 3 times in theaters afterward. I've been lucky to catch Satantango and Werckmeister on film.
Tarr also mentored a young Chinese director, Hu Bo. His two works are very good: An Elephant Sitting Still and Man in the Well. Tarr came out to TIFF to introduce and eulogize the latter with an impassioned speech.
edit: Forgot that Criterion finally released a new edition of Werckmeister recently.
I know the films, I've watched them all, but doing e.g. Satantango in book form sounds not so enticing?
Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult.
Of course, I still happily read and enjoy translations; there's just this shadow cast for me all the time by the originals.
"All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind … one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction;"
Has anyone any insight on this?
https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-text-of-alfred-...
I think that's fine. Often it's not really possible to assess the impact of a contribution until long after, it takes a lot of context to be able to do that.
When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.
What is “obscure” in the US constitution?
The first amendment is the one thing that makes it impossible for authoritarian US to be reality.
2025 - László Krasznahorkai - Literature - for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.
2023 - Katalin Karikó - Physiology or Medicine - for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
2023 - Ferenc Krausz - Physics - for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.
To be fair, there are only 2 others since 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hungarian_Nobel_laurea...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...
I am glad that these people could achive so much coming from a place like Hungary, that is providing inadequate possibilities for these kinds of achivements so they reach it in other countries too many times. Or sometimes even put obstacles in their ways - which is actually good/ok in the end as they seek out the places allowing their success.
But I am glad for any Nobel price winners, regardless of their origins. They give us so much.
Katalin Karikó went to the same University as my sister (Szeged).
But yes, we have to leave the country if we want good opportunities.. unless we go into politics! Fidesz is easily the most successful startup in Hungary after 1989, possibly in Europe; Fidesz' CEO is one of the richest men in Europe.. unfortunately at our expense.
They're intricate, reference-heavy, postmodern novels with a lot of the emotional intensity purposely occulted behind the prose style. If you like Gass or Sebald you'll have fun.
You can also appreciate him through his screenplay work on Bela Tarr's movies.
I recommend not only his early works like Satantango but also his recent ones like Seiobo There Below (lucky to have a signed copy of this one).
The short ones are interesting too. Animalinside (with Max Neumann), The Last Wolf.
Interested in checking Chasing Homer which has musical accompaniment: "Publishers Weekly described the book as a cross between a Jean-Claude Van Damme film and the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka"
Yes, there is a fair amount of under-the-grass (sometimes over) anti-semitism in Hungary (and many other European countries), as well as racism towards people with darker skin, but certainly not every hungarian intellectual over 40.
I liked both of Annie Ernaux's books about her parents.
1)The writing is very bad (which is ironic because she got mad at Houellebecq for being a racist and said that he is translated a lot because he writes like shit so easy to translate). You take an average page of Ernaux (in French) and it's just not very... sophisticated at all, but then all the critics that like her say that this language "unmasks" the reality and is the perfect medium for "autofiction".
2)Her initial ascension has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of her writing(which is very bad), but rather with her "social" message. Her entire work is basically about how she is from a working class family background which is very horrible and sexist, and going to school and university is how she escaped this horrible environment(domineering dad, "rape" that's not really rape, abortions, etc.) . She is basically "anti-beauf" and that's all.
To summarize, I would say that she is like the left-wing analogue of Houellebecq, except that Houellebecq (rightfully) doesn't win the Nobel Prize for shitty writing. I'm certainly elitist a bit of a "reactionary", but for Ernaux its so flagrant that what got rewarded was the political message and not the quality of the writing.
don't worry, a reactionary will get their time soon enough again. last night, actually, my thought was: i bet it's gonna be a conservative (given the current political climate and how ironically "conservatism" is trendy as "avant-garde" despite the oxymoron in how conservative ideas are some of the most basic and mainstream ideas in the world)
perhaps the same kind of hyperbole krasznahorkai likes to use when talking about the "arabs": "I'm sure the Arabs would accept me now that they're gonna cut off my nose, then my eyes, and then they'll poke my eyes out, my tongue rip it out, everything that sticks out of me, cut it off, tortured me, and then shoot me. So that is the Jewish past is enough for me. That’s all the family history" (https://www.szombat.org/kultura-muveszetek/krasznahorkai-las...) (...that's an example among many)
Considering there was literally just an attack on a UK synagogue by an arab, after which many people protested on the side of the attacker in London, you don't think there's a tiny legitimacy to his views?
Of course this is a rhetorical question, because your obviously don't think his views has legitimacy.
Just like it’s not ok to see all jews as part of the same murderous conspiracy, it’s not ok to see all arabs as part of one either.
In particular, it seems to be inversely proportional to fertility rate. The lower the fertility rate, the more racist countries seem to be (e.g: Italy, Korea, Hungary, Japan, etc).
Plenty of racism in India, Pakistan, China, MENA (where slavery is common, Libya has open air black slave markets), and Africa itself. And let's not even get started how plenty of these places are ravaged by petty sectarian, ethnical violence, or straight out civil wars between communities.
You just don't hear about all that because most of these places don't have a free press, or people are too busy trying to survive another day to testify.
There are at least 4/5 genocides happening right now in Africa & MENA, and I don't include whatever is going on in Gaza, can you name them?
In 1974, The Swedish Academy was heavily criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to two of its own members. One laureate, Harry Martinson, was so shaken by the backlash he committed suicide 4 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#Later_life_and...
But what's the point, he was gone .-.