A review by spacetime03
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

“he saw before him, as if by magic, the path prepared for him, the way the fog swam up from either side of it and, in the middle of the narrow path, the luminous face of his future, it’s lineaments bearing the infernal marks of drowning.” 

“she would follow him like a strange dreamlike shadow…and in this way she would be reborn time after time; she would learn his every movement, the secret meaning of each distinct modulation of his voice, would interpret his dreams and should - God forbid! - any harm befall him, hers would be the lap in which he would lay his head” 

“i’ve long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and a voice shouting above it. there’s no sense or meaning in anything. it’s nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressures. it’s only our imaginations, not our sense, 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…we think we’re breaking free but all we’re doing is readjusting the locks. we’re trapped.” 

“what is behind me still remains ahead of me. can’t a man rest?”

“they’re simply enjoyed living in the shadow of their masters…then whenever the shadow falls they follow, like a flock of sheep, because they can’t do without a shadow…they’ll do anything not to be left alone with the remnants of pomp and splendour, because when they are left alone they go mad: like mad dogs they fall on whatever remains and tear it to bits.” 

“the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity…and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself…where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life…strip him even if his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home.”