lászló krasznahorkai the melancholy of resistance

Then, unexpectedly, the audacity of introducing a kind of traveling circus that comes to town-one whose only attraction is a whale, the corpse of a leviathan, enclosed in a massive trailer that doubles as a viewing room. What was happening with these very long sentences? How did Krasznahorkai sustain them? Why did he write like that? Clearly it worked, but how? And what of the novel’s mood? How did he convey it, this sense of ever-present menace and danger even as he described the most mundane events? These include a woman in an overcrowded and delayed train, the same woman who arranges her possessions in a tiny, well-kept apartment a simpleton in a late night bar explaining his theory of the cosmos to a mocking but familiar crowd an old musician puttering about his home, lost in his thoughts. Reading The Melancholy of Resistance in this manner astounded me.

You feel no obligation to rise to an important occasion or to enter with servile reverence. There are no professors or museum guides whispering in your ear, telling you emphatically how much you should appreciate the experience you are having.

It is a deep pleasure to read an author without any critical preconceptions because you are absolutely free to live inside of the work, to come to it on your own terms, to evaluate it as something new. I searched for László Krasznahorkai and purchased, blind, the title that I found most attractive and mysterious (although many of his titles fit this description) and began reading The Melancholy of Resistance immediately. I live in Argentina, where in the past ten years government restrictions have strictly limited the importation of foreign goods, including books, so I reluctantly do much of my reading on an e-reader. All of it.Īfter watching the interview, I came across a link to Krasznahorkai, who is a friend and collaborator of the filmmaker. Apart from being an exceptional interview, Tarr mesmerized me: his underbite his accent and his way of speaking in English (“You know, it’s, why I like it to do this film is…”) his blackening, widely spaced smoker’s teeth his bright eyes how he expressed his deeply held convictions in a quiet voice his unpretentious but urgent way of explaining his art and his vision of storytelling.

Some time ago, through a route of links and clicks that I disremember, I came across a video interview with the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, whom I also did not know. I had the good fortune of reading László Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance in a state of almost complete ignorance about the author and his works.

László krasznahorkai the melancholy of resistance