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merlandese 's review for:
Satantango
by László Krasznahorkai
Really treacherous and sickly and external.
I read Krasznahorkai's final book first (Satantango is his first book). I can see the path this feeling and idea he's cultivated has traveled. It's such a rich idea, and so hard to talk about in plain terms. He shows it to us in crisp, yet enigmatic prose, surrounding the dismal existence of a drunken people that can't comprehend that they can't comprehend the notion of the eternal infinity of which they are such a meaningless part. I could easily see the ideas of this book come off as nihilism in someone else's hands, but Krasznahorkai goes for something else. And maybe this is an Eastern Europe thing, as a Polish friend tells me, "because Eastern European literature has a fascination with killing God." But I don't think there's any killing God here, or even any pointlessness to existence—instead, having a Devil of some degree beyond our comprehension, and our existence shown as being rather pitiful. Not meaningless. Not pointless. Just... overestimated and sloppy.
I honestly couldn't recommend this book. It's dense and wearying and, to be completely honest, so far stuck in its own viewpoint of the world (the universe?) that most unprepared people won't even come close to glimpsing what that viewpoint actually is. (I could see, for example, people finishing this book and wondering what any of it had to do with the titular "Satan.") Heck... I probably don't understand it myself. But I loved it.
I read Krasznahorkai's final book first (Satantango is his first book). I can see the path this feeling and idea he's cultivated has traveled. It's such a rich idea, and so hard to talk about in plain terms. He shows it to us in crisp, yet enigmatic prose, surrounding the dismal existence of a drunken people that can't comprehend that they can't comprehend the notion of the eternal infinity of which they are such a meaningless part. I could easily see the ideas of this book come off as nihilism in someone else's hands, but Krasznahorkai goes for something else. And maybe this is an Eastern Europe thing, as a Polish friend tells me, "because Eastern European literature has a fascination with killing God." But I don't think there's any killing God here, or even any pointlessness to existence—instead, having a Devil of some degree beyond our comprehension, and our existence shown as being rather pitiful. Not meaningless. Not pointless. Just... overestimated and sloppy.
I honestly couldn't recommend this book. It's dense and wearying and, to be completely honest, so far stuck in its own viewpoint of the world (the universe?) that most unprepared people won't even come close to glimpsing what that viewpoint actually is. (I could see, for example, people finishing this book and wondering what any of it had to do with the titular "Satan.") Heck... I probably don't understand it myself. But I loved it.