The subtitle of this novella is "Entering the Madness of Others", and what we get is the account of an employee at the New York Public Library named hThe subtitle of this novella is "Entering the Madness of Others", and what we get is the account of an employee at the New York Public Library named herman melvill (no typo) who slowly spirals towards a mental breakdown. An admirer of, you guessed it, Herman Melville, melvill starts to literally follow Melville's paths while walking through Manhattan, a sort of twisted flaneur à la Walter Benjamin aimlessly walking in another man's shoes while ruminating and building up resentment - and soon also imitating the routes of Malcolm Lowry, who was in turn a fan of Melville. The novella particularly offers many references to Lowry's auto-fictional Lunar Caustic. At an exhibition, melvill discovers the work of architect Lebbeus Woods, who aimed to free his art form of conventional limits, much as a certain László Krasznahorkai.
The whole text is written in a single sentence presented as an excerpt from a notebook and evoking a mental maelstrom that is trapping the narrator in his own head. It's not Krasznahorkai's best work as it rambles on and often fails to captivate this reader....more
Created in collaboration with painter Max Neumann (who hails from my home town), Krasznahorkai's menacing tale pulls off a disturbing stunt: The narraCreated in collaboration with painter Max Neumann (who hails from my home town), Krasznahorkai's menacing tale pulls off a disturbing stunt: The narrative voice is the force of destruction that resides in all of us, "the spirit that denies", as Goethe would put it, and instead of a plot, the whole text is a kind of self-explanation that manages to explain nothing, but evokes primal terror, a fear of oneself, of the inner power that lures us to our own demise. In a way, the text is a meditation on the nature of that force, what exactly it is and how it fights us, trying to convince us that we're its master while plotting to annihilate the whole earth.
It took me some pages to get into this small masterpiece, but then I discovered its mesmerizing genius. ...more
This is not a fun read for any German, but Krasznahorkai is addressing an urgent and important topic when he writes about neo-Nazis in East Germany. IThis is not a fun read for any German, but Krasznahorkai is addressing an urgent and important topic when he writes about neo-Nazis in East Germany. In the recent national election that took place four weeks ago, the far-right party AfD, which in some states is under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, became the strongest party in both Saxony and Thuringia, where Krasznahorkai's novel is set. Looking at East Germany as a whole, the AfD is the second-strongest party. 25 % in Saxony, 5 % in Hamburg - there is a new divide between East and West, and it threatens the constitution (and I'm not saying that there are no Nazis in the West, but the problem in the East is apparent).
Krasznahorkai's protagonist is Florian Herscht, a simple-minded worker with a good heart. His authoritarian, fascist boss took him out of a care facility and under his wing, now they are cleaning surfaces from graffitis and other soiling while the boss is idolizing Johann Sebastian Bach and trying to convince Herscht to join the brotherhood (yes, it's exactly what you think). Meanwhile, Herscht has attended public classes about quantum theory by a local physicist and, being unable to process science and thus misinterpreting it into catastrophic thinking, Herscht is trying to reach out to Angela Merkel in order to warn her about the impending apocalypse. The return address on his letters: "Herscht 07769".
The postal code doesn't actually exist, but 0776 is the area code for Saale-Holzland-Kreis, which entails the city of Kahla (postal code: 07768) - in the novel, the city is named Kana. In WW II, forced laborers had to work in the porcelain plant in Kahla, and during the GDR, the city was famous for its porcelain - and the porcelain industry is also a key motif in Kana, so I guess we're on to something when we say that Krasznahorkai had indeed this area in mind. Kahla is a hot spot for neo-Nazis, where they have gained major societal and cultural influence (you can read about it here). A member of the city council, who had switched parties from Merkel's CDU to the AfD, killed himself, which has since been weaponized as a conspiracy theory by the far right. Misinformation, hatred, alienation, a feeling of deprivation - Krasznahorkai takes this themes and turns them into disturbing art. What are the forces that drive these people? In German, "Herrscht" (with two "r") means "reigns", as in: "he reigns".
And the author knows a thing or two about Germany, as he has lived in Berlin for several years and has taught as a professor at the Free University. The main representative of German high culture who becomes a projection surface in the book is Bach, the Bachhaus in the book is a real museum in the composer's hometown of Eisenach, Thuringia. In 2016, the Bachhaus showed an exhibition entitled "Luther, Bach and the Jews", you can read an article about it here.
Regarding the style of the novel, Krasznahorkai has elaborated: "In my novels and stories I use a style that does not take into account the tradition of the last few hundred years. The reason for this is that I don't feel obliged to use a filter or to force the monologues pouring into me into any disciplinary form. The flowing things and the conversations of the people reach me with an overwhelming force, who am I to put obstacles in the face of these insurmountable forces? I write down the monologues just as they thunder into my brain, I don't cut them into nice little pieces. (...) Bach's music is also very complex, but we listen to it without stopping it at the bar limits, just because it gives us the time to rethink where we are actually." What's not to love about that concept?
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