László Krasznahorkai: "Even now I find it hard to accept that there is so much poverty in the world"

Barcelona"I'm sure you've all wondered at some point how to pronounce my friend László's surname," began translator and writer Adan Kovacsics, with a friendly smile, sitting next to the latest Nobel laureate in literature. "I have the answer," he continued. "It has to be separated into two parts, kraszna and horkaiIt is a word of Slavic origin: krasny It means pretty, and horkai, hill." The "pretty hill" that is László Krasznahorkai He was also smiling on Wednesday night at the CCCB while his friend assured everyone that the work of the author of Satanic Tango and Melancholy of resistance It connects with great classics like Dostoevsky and Kafka and broadens the scope of the contemporary novel thanks to its demanding nature, both in form and content.

Krasznahorkai wanted to recall the "passion" and "closeness" he felt with his first Spanish-language editor, Jaume Vallcorba, who in 2001 championed the first of the eight books that Acantilado has ultimately published. "Vallcorba had a strong temperament, but when he sat down with his authors, everyone understood that the project transcended any minor problems that might arise," he continued. Kovacsics met Krasznahorkai the same year he had met Imre Kertész. "Imre admired you greatly, and you told me that you also held him in very high regard," he affirmed. "Kertész was an enigmatic figure, a Hungarian intellectual whom they had tried to kill when he was young," said Krasznahorkai. "In 2002, the Swedish Academy called him to tell him he had won the Nobel Prize. Nothing changed. He was somewhat less, sociable, and had great vitality. He felt a certain aversion to bourgeois behavior." No destinationThe father asks his son what he feels, and he says a single word: hate. Anyone who isn't moved by this should stop reading literature.

A perpetually dissatisfied Nobel laureate

Regarding Gyula, the village where he grew up from the mid-1950s onward, he explained that it pained him to see so much misery around him. "Even now, I find it hard to accept that there is so much poverty in the world," he said. "Whenever someone asks me for alms, I give them some." Krasznahorkai also reflected on his "perpetual dissatisfaction" with his writing.Satanic Tango "It didn't convince me, and that's why I wrote a second book, and then a third... until now," he said. "In your novels there are figures like the innocent, the professor, and the victim, but also angels and false prophets," Kovacsics pointed out. "As I wanted to correct the mistakes in the books," the writer explained. Regarding the long sentences that abound in his literature, he asserted that they are a way of "maintaining the feelings and passion" for the themes he addresses. "I don't need to fragment the language," he added. Herscht 07769, constructed from a single 400-page sentence.

"Without the innocent victims who suffer, the world does not exist, because not only is evil part of our world, but also the most absolute and pure good," Krasznahorkai said later, before Kovacsics reminded some of the attendees that the East is as important as, or even more important than, the description of a Hong. "It all started when, back in the 1980s, a friend invited me to Ulaanbaatar to see a lecture on Genghis Khan," the writer said. "That adventure continued when we went to Beijing by train. Thanks to that experience, we discovered that there isn't just one worldview, but that it depends." Since then, Krasznahorkai has lived for periods in China and Japan, and from his deep contact with their cultures have come wonders like And Seiobo descended to the earth (Acantilado, 2015). "Seiobo is a goddess who appears every 3,000 years, gives a peach to the emperor, which is the symbol of immortality, and disappears again for another 3,000 years," he revealed.