by Imre József Balázs
László Krasznahorkai’s complex world is rooted in Central Europe and its literatures, where absurdity and beauty coexist, yet circulate globally. Krasznahorkai’s vision resists mainstream simplification and confronts the “stupidity” of modern civilization. Through dialogues between literature, film, and visual arts, Imre József Balázs traces how an artist’s work transforms despair into a haunting affirmation of art’s enduring power.
Literary encounters: Zacharias Lichter
One of László Krasznahorkai’s early literary experiences, as revealed in a 2012 book compiling his interviews, was with the Romanian author Matei Călinescu. Călinescu is mostly known to a Western audience as a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, Bloomington, particularly for his seminal work Five Faces of Modernity. Yet, in the late 1960s, Matei Călinescu also wrote fiction. He published an extremely interesting text called Viața și Opiniile lui Zacharias Lichter, translated into Hungarian in 1971. This unconventional novel, The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter, came into Krasznahorkai’s hands in 1971.
Which aspects of Călinescu’s work captivated Krasznahorkai during his high school years? He describes the book’s effect on him as ‘the scent of an unknown flower.’ And he goes on: ‘An unclassifiable, special, sad beauty.’
Zacharias is a kind of holy fool in Călinescu’s work, his views overriding all regularity, conventional rationality included. He is interested in special states of mind, like perplexity. Right at the beginning of the book, we encounter this remark: ‘For Kierkegaard’s famous stages—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—Zacharias Lichter substitutes the hierarchy circus—madness—perplexity. Spiritual life—he maintains—inevitably develops in terms of one of these existential categories.’ I believe these are basic categories that are also present in Krasznahorkai’s later, developing oeuvre. Although Călinescu as a starting point does not explain Krasznahorkai’s works, it can help us contextualize certain motifs in the Hungarian writer’s fiction.
An openness to the absurd, a receptiveness to characters who break the rules and all boundaries, and the search for exceptions and miracles within a gray, bleak environment are themes that interest Krasznahorkai throughout his oeuvre, which has unfolded over several decades.
Cinematic encounters: Béla Tarr
Cinematographic encounters play a crucial role in understanding Krasznahorkai. The films made in collaboration with Béla Tarr reveal that, for Krasznahorkai, dialogue is a superpower that multiplies the individual strength of those involved. Krasznahorkai’s novels are remarkable in their own right, but Tarr’s films have made them available to a determined and enthusiastic audience who might otherwise never have encountered the characteristic cadence of Krasznahorkai’s prose. Clearly, dialogue is also present in a more abstract sense in the works: image and text, East and West, animal and human enter into dialogue, and in this process, nothing is fixed, everything is open to transformation. Animalinside, a book created in collaboration with visual artist Max Neumann, reveals several levels of this dialogic nature. The interview collection Nem kérdez, nem válaszol (No Questions,NoAnswers), containing 25 conversations, also demonstrates that Krasznahorkai’s interviews can themselves be treated as a relevant part of his oeuvre.
Geographic encounters: Central Europe
The starting point for Krasznahorkai’s oeuvre is a specific Central European experience. The handbook published in Timișoara, The Dictionary of the Central European Novel in the 20th Century (2022), contains an analysis of Satantango (1985) that unravels the network of connections into which Krasznahorkai’s works fit. Originally, this universe was an Eastern European colony, a peripheral world in which the experiences that would later become decisive in his works could unfold. In the forty years following Satantango, Krasznahorkai became a cosmopolitan world citizen and was able to examine, in many places around the globe, what could be written down with the same intensity of attention that was already present in his first novel. The structure of his short story collection Seiobo There Below, quite capable of integrating diversity, is exemplary in this sense. The Central European ruins, the gray apocalypse, and the references to the bureaucratic system can be translated into other cultures according to this model.
The politics of the periphery
‘Circulation’ is a key term in world literature studies, and László Krasznahorkai exemplifies this principle through his own work and presence. He is a nomadic author who carefully absorbs influences across space and time.
Not just any impulses, and not without strict selection. Krasznahorkai’s perspective is, in several respects, more aligned with modernism than postmodernism. Despite the fragmented elements present in his work, each creation demonstrates considerable scope and ambition. The Nobel Prize argumentation included this much-quoted sentence: ‘for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.’ The phrasing is precise in several aspects: Krasznahorkai consistently articulates themes of resistance and marginality. Simultaneously, the award committee’s statement affirms that the experiences of East Central Europe in the 20th century offer valuable guidance for contemporary times, serving as a model exemplifying resistance to authoritarian regimes and the use of brutal force.
There is a tension between the experimental nature of the avant-garde and its attraction to the periphery, as well as its desire for the emancipation of the marginal. Throughout the 20th century, audiences have experienced many variations of this paradox. The likely explanation for the paradox comes from the lesson that gaining mainstream acceptance can be risky. In a sense, entering the mainstream means betraying the cause of the periphery. This is exactly why Krasznahorkai’s body of work intentionally avoids mainstream appeal, as its style requires readers to give it their full attention. Let us return for a moment to our starting point: Zacharias Lichter’s prophetic visions in Matei Călinescu’s novel: ‘Lichter sees modern civilization as a vast extension of the Realm of Stupidity. (…) The parasite plagiarizing the pure core of intelligence, sapping its vigor, stupidity forever fortifies and perfects itself, sprawling like a vast and dangerous stain on the consciousness of humanity. For stupidity is vain (the vanity of ‘efficiency’), sure of itself, economical, has wide-spreading technological tentacles and is shrewdly and ferociously aggressive.’
The dominant forces of the contemporary world are often described in similar terms. Aggression, circus-like behavior, and the spread of post-truth are characteristics that have become clichés of an entire era. Krasznahorkai’s works reflect on this state of affairs and reveal strategies for building alternative worlds. These are worlds characterized by a ‘sad beauty’ that are capable, at least on a mental level, of disrupting the mechanical functioning of the stupidity machine.
Imre József Balázs is associate professor of Hungarian and comparative literature at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, a university that awarded László Krasznahorkai the honorary title Doctor Honoris Causa in 2019. He regularly published about avant-garde art and contemporary literature. His publications include the articles Trees, Waves, Whirlpools: Nation, Region, and the Reterritorialization of Romania’s Hungarian Literature (2018) and Worlding Hungarian Surrealism. A Short History (2023).
This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team or the CEU Democracy Institute.
