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370 reviews for:

Satantango

László Krasznahorkai

4.11 AVERAGE

lehrer21's review against another edition

dark funny reflective medium-paced

jonfaith's review against another edition

4.0

A powerful open text, one rife with both fire and human failures. As I quipped early, it's a Faulkner noir in the Magyar mud. What ripens and stings is more akin to Beckett: a waiting for IKEA, with ideological trappings.

The novel opens essentially with a bell in the night. Then it rains.

The contemporary reader will ascribe a historical arc to the symbolism, unfortunately the novel was written in 1985. INXS didn't script the Velvet Revolution. Many phenomenon are repositioned after the fact.

The novel in translation appears in the wake of Bela Tarr's imperious adaptation. The language is a live wire amidst the sodden decay. This should be pursued at all costs.

pavram's review against another edition

3.0

Vidi ovako, imam ja puno poštovanja ovde za Krasnahorkaijevu viziju tematske celine koju on ovde umešno pruža, ali pobogu jel može pasus negde, jel može da se ponavljanje svede na jedno poglavlje a ne čitav roman (tvrdim da bi ”poenta” bila ista), jel može makar dašak vetra u ljudskom mrtvilu romana, bilo kakav unutarnji život makar jednog od nekolicine likova koji se ovde nalaze u ulozi protagoniste, zbilja, kakvo bi to pozorište bilo (a roman ima debeli pozorišni vajb) da je sve samo sleganje ramenima ili pijano divljanje potpuno suvišnih ljudskih duša, ali da, to je i poenta, sistem koji je doveo do fenomena cedilnika, gde ljudska bića mogu da budu toliko isceđena da ne ostane ni pulpa, i konačno jel može paragraf negde kucaj novi pasus, jebeš stil ako ću ja izgubiti razum na stranici pet, vidi ovako….

3+

francisicus_rex's review against another edition

5.0

To say this book is challenging is an understatement. But damn it if this wasn’t the most enthralled I’d been in a long time. Each 20+ page chapter was one paragraph, a literal wall of text on every page, and took some serious “I’m going to just be reading now” focus. You really have to read in big chunks. But it is worth it.

The depth Krasznahorkai goes into for his characters, absolutely incredible. His insanely long, syntactically complex, but beautiful sentences made me slow down and really appreciate all of the images therein, the turns of phrases which sometimes required multiple readings of the same sentence, or whole sections to understand…yes it was difficult but again, so worth it. I am looking forward to reading more of this author, and to watch the 7.5 hour film adaptation he did with Bela Tarr.

jpegben's review against another edition

5.0

How do we make sense of the chaos around us? How do we respond to decay? To meaninglessness? To dislocation? How do we react to the allure of power? To demagogic guarantees of absolution? To utopian promises of a brighter future?

In this inimitable postmodern masterpiece, Laszlo Krashnahorkai grapples with these very questions. Set on a decrepit collective farm in rural Hungary in the dying days of the communist dictatorship, Satantango is a haunting examination of the nature of crisis and conspiracy. Rot pervades everything. The estate is constantly pummelled by dull, unrelenting rain and the terrain is churned into “a stinking yellow sea of mud”. Its characters who are desperately immiserated and aggrieved hear untraceable bells toll and are haunted by a sense of profound foreboding. They speak ominously and obliquely of the future. They believe things are not as they appear. That someone has swindled, cheated, deceived them. They are, in the words of the book’s primary antagonist, Irimiás:

They’re waiting patiently, like the long-suffering lot they are, in the firm conviction that someone has conned them. They are waiting, belly to the ground, like cats at pig-killing time, hoping for scraps.

The narrative revolves around the arrival of the Laurel and Hardy-like duo, Irimiás and Petrina who miraculously appear in the hamlet although they were long presumed dead. The hamlet is in a state of entropy, but also one of crisis. A girl has died in tragic circumstances. Adolescents whore themselves out in a frantic attempt to make money. Neighbours scheme to cheat one and other out of the meagre earnings they have. In other words, the law of the jungle prevails in a fetid, corrupt environment:

The stench of sewers mixed with mud, the smell of the odd crack of lightning, wind tugging at tiles, power lines, empty nests; the stifling heat behind the low ill-fitting windows... impatient, annoyed half-words of lovers embracing... demanding wails of babies, their cries sliding off into the tin-smell of dusk; streets pliable, parks soaked to their roots lying obedient to the rain, bare oaks, half-broken dry flowers, scorched grass all prostrate, humbled by the storm, sacrifices strewn at the executioner's feet.

The title is laced with double meaning. On the one hand, it refers to a drunken, bawdy dance, awash with diabolical, pagan overtones, in which the town’s inhabitants participate at the local watering hole when they are suitably inebriated. Yet, it could just as aptly describe the book’s structure: constantly fluctuating, moving backwards and forwards, orchestrated by some invisible force, an otherworldly éminence grise who moves behind the scenes.

At the centre of the narrative is Irimiás, a messianic figure who exerts an irresistible draw on the townsfolk. Exactly who or what he represents is something of an open question. He has all the mordant characteristics of Gogol and Bulgakov’s famous personifications of the devil: the “aquiline” nose, the tall frame with the “loping gait”, the beetling brows. His actions buzz and fizzle with conspiracy, he seems to retain influence everywhere, he can draw upon contacts and inspires trust, but his motives are never fully transparent. On some level, he seems to be a huckster intent on exploiting the vulnerable - in this case, the town's inhabitants - through sheer force of his personality:

They are slaves who have lost their master but can’t live without what they call pride, honor and courage. That’s what keeps their souls in place even if at the back of their thick skulls they sense these qualities aren’t their own, that they’ve simply enjoyed living in the shadow of their masters . . .Then, wherever the shadow falls they follow, like a flock of sheep, because they can’t do without a shadow..

Krashnahorkai offers a searing character study of the dangerously eloquent itinerant preacher, the charismatic demagogue, the man who can make false promises of deliverance and spellbind crowds of the desperate and despairing. There’s a universality in this narrative because history is littered with these figures. Men like Irimiás are cynics who understand human nature on a fundamental level, who can act as “an angel of hope to hopeless people with hopeless difficulties”. They are not original or inventive people, they just know how to exploit the imaginations and hopes of others. They know themselves to be doomed and this is their greatest strength because, to them, reality can be distorted and manipulated because it has no inherent worth or value:

It’s only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of decay. There’s no escaping that, stupid.

Irimiás thus functions as many things. In the text, he maintains ties with megalomaniacal secret policeman functioning as part of a network of informers who now appear to have as much authority as their declining masters – think the Stasi and its network in moribund East Germany. Yet, there is also something crudely entrepreneurial about him, a vicious influence-peddler and proto-corporate bully idolised by country-folk for his ruthless acquisitiveness. His ethos resembles that of St. Petersburg’s mobster-oligarchs of the 90s; men whose ill-gotten gains were acquired through semi-legal market manipulation and criminal coercion. But there is also something far less definable about him. He is but one agent of chaos in a broader system of disarray

Of course, this is crucial because Satantango is far more than a mere character study of Irimiás. Krashnahorkai is a poet of decay: of states of decomposition, dilapidation, and decrepitude. His prose is poetic, but chilling. His tone is apocalyptic. His syntax is a cavernous vortex, punctuated by phrases of burning clarity. Long sentences entrap and entangle readers in a claustrophobic world of angst, characterised by an abeyance of time and a terrifying sense that imperceptible forces conspire to control their destinies. He channels Kafka and Beckett. And in doing so, he asks urgent questions.

Krashnahorkai’s blackly comic narrative is frightening because it resonates; elements of it, even its essence, are all too recognisable. Satantango functions as a scathing examination of the worst facets of modernity. Irresolution lies at the book’s core. It demands that the reader reflect on reality. It beseeches us to interrogate what is knowable and, more importantly, what we gain from knowing. Has the quest to comprehend, rationalise, and typologise gone too far and made us not only unhappy but malnourished on a deeper level? Has it caused a backlash against knowledge itself in a world in which forms of authority lie and make empty promises? In the text, realisation – that piece of essential knowledge – eludes the characters and us as readers, yet it is questionable this would truly enlighten them let alone improve their lives. Yet, they, like us, have an unquenchable thirst for some sort of ultimate truth around which they can orient themselves: an ultimate truth which is little more than a mirage to help navigate the labyrinth that is reality. Krashnahorkai, meanwhile, remains firmly grounded in reality, providing us with an idea of what is going on, but never absolute certainty. In the text, like in the world, things must be interpreted and inferred, patterns identified from a chaotic stream of sensory inputs:

The best he could do was to use his memory to fend off the sinister, underhanded process of decay, trusting in the fact that since all that mason might build, carpenter might construct, woman might stitch, indeed all that men and women had brought forth with bitter tears was bound to turn to an undifferentiated, runny, underground, mysteriously ordained mush, his memory would remain lively and clear.

However, Krashnahorkai is not a reactionary. He just grasps the atomised nature of modern and particularly postmodern societies. His is a warning against human arrogance. We believe we understand more about the world around us than we do, yet there is a veil which will never be fully breached. Krashnahorkai does not demand that we disregard objectivity or truth. Instead, he obliges a sort of humility, an acceptance of uncertainty and a willingness to live in a world where not everything makes sense. Those who fail to do so, sometimes through no fault of their own, become all too susceptible, like the village folk, to the false promises of the Irimiás’ of the world: figures who offer simple solutions to complex problems, typically with catastrophic consequences for those sucked into their orbit.

Few books throughout 2022 – or throughout my life – have had as a powerful effect on me as Satantango. It is a towering masterpiece which demands our attention because it grapples with human pathologies and foibles which are hardwired into our nature and reflected in the societies in which we inhabit. Such books are rare and Krashnahorkai stands apart as one of a handful of living writers destined to be enjoyed in posterity.

mmillerb's review against another edition

3.0

Sorry!! Superficial and boring. Predictable. “It was a dark and stormy night” … Narrative play didn’t add much imo

owlishone's review against another edition

4.0

I didn’t enjoy this as much as the other book I’ve read by this author, Seiobo There Below. By midway through, this just felt bleak, bleak, bleak . . . with no sense of purpose. Since Seiobo There Below is really a series of short stories, the payoff occurs immediately, within each chapter. In this, the payoff comes at the end. There is a purpose here; the book is worth reading. The second half is more gratifying than the first half, and the last few chapters are fascinating. I do feel that much of this book might have made more sense to me if I had been more familiar with the region described (Central Europe/Hungary, mid-20th century, I think). There is a sense of more meaning embedded in the text which I simply can’t access. This is to be expected, I suppose, to a greater or lesser extent with any book, but especially with a translated book from a region of the world which one starts out knowing next to nothing about.