László Krasznahorkai: "Much of entertainment literature is garbage."

Marrakech[We are republishing this interview conducted in Marrakech on September 27, 2024, on the occasion of the 2024 Formentor Prize]

Getting to interview the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai (Gyula, 1954), one of the most prestigious authors in contemporary literature, has involved overcoming all kinds of obstacles: being stuck in an airport for eight hours, arriving on another continent late at night, almost before waking up. Transformed into a pocket version of one of his protagonists—pathetic, awkward, and suffering beings—we finally sit down in front of the Hungarian author in the lavish interview room of the Barceló Palmeraie Hotel in Marrakech. He has just received the Formentor Prize, worth 50,000 euros, for having been able to "embrace, in his elliptical and delayed evocation, the somber, beautiful, and melancholic landscapes of the soul."

Before writing a single line, you were professionally dedicated to music. How do you think this has influenced your literature?

— I made a living from music between the ages of 13 and 17, and later worked in a variety of jobs, including night watchman for cows near a village lost in the middle of nowhere. The impact on me was profound, both in the study of music and its practice, as well as the instruments themselves. I still play many of them. The largest apartment I own is full.

He was able to follow in his father's footsteps and graduate in law.

— Yes, but luckily I quit before finishing my degree. And besides dropping out of college, I fled the city I was living in.

You studied law and ended up dedicating yourself to exploring other types of laws, those that sustain and constantly modify literary art.

— The law had no importance to me. In fact, going through law school made me allergic to lawyers, although there are bound to be exceptions. The legal world repels me because it's so easy to lie about.

And in literature, do you think this isn't the case? There are authors who have made a name for themselves and a reputation with works filled with tricks.

— I'd like to think I'm not part of that group.

I would say no.

— In any case, it is true that the world of literature is too full of swindlers and businessmen.

You've managed to break through with challenging books, filled with long sentences and narratives that move at a pace that's the opposite of our fast-paced world.

— I don't mean to be blasphemous, but much of the entertainment literature is garbage.

His work is associated with high literature. Once you enter the inner monologues of his characters, it's hard to leave, and that's not incompatible with entertainment.

— I try to make it that way. But I hope it's not banal entertainment, like the kind that usually entertains people in general. It's frustrating... And by that, I don't mean there isn't good entertainment. I like a detective novelist like Raymond Chandler because there's something more behind the action.

Susan Sontag described him decades ago as "the contemporary master of the apocalypse." Since his debut with Satantangó (Satanic Tango) in 1985, has continued to offer variations on the end of the world, whether in a socialist country or in contemporary reality. What strikes me most is that his apocalypse is often funny.

— Perhaps this word should be qualified a bit. I agree that there is a sense of humor in my novels, but it's different from what we might find, for example, in an author like Rabelais. He is a master of satire. My domain is more of a tragicomedy.

In his latest novel that has come down to us, Baron Wenckheimcome back home –published this September in Spanish by Acantilado, but which appeared in Hungarian in 2016–, the protagonist is an old aristocrat who returns, ruined, to Hungary, becoming a kind of messiah for a group of violent neo-Nazis.

— In the book I wrote later, Herscht 07769 (2021) also features a group of young people with these characteristics. This long story, structured in a single 400-page sentence, is set in a small town in Thuringia, the German region where the far right has just won the electionsI wrote this a few years ago, but some of the events I describe have turned out to be prophetic.

I read that, on occasion, characters he invented ended up appearing to him later, in real life, and that this scared him for a while.

— He respected me, yes. Shortly after publishing Satanic Tango I was in a bar waiting for a drink when someone tapped me twice on the shoulder. I turned around and it was Halics, one of the characters in the novel.

How do you explain why this happened?

— Because I don't think I'm a writer in the traditional literary sense: I don't make up stories, I describe them, and I do so by providing as many details as I can. I'm like a shoemaker who receives all the materials to make shoes: the leather, the nails, the table, a stool... But I create stories.

Are your stories based on observation?

— I write the destinies of people who drag a whole life behind them.

For a time, he also wrote for film. This won't happen again, will it?

— I only got into cinema because of Béla Tarr. Generally, I don't like the world of cinema much. It all started on Easter Monday in 1985. While I was still sleeping off my hangover, someone violently knocked on my front door. Who could it be? I wondered. Outside, there was a guy in a leather jacket and tight pants, like he was David Bowie. He told me he'd just read Satanic Tango, which was banned at the time, and which he had loved. Maybe I should have closed the door on the kids, but I didn't, and he invited me to see his films, which were brilliant. We worked together for almost 25 years, until The Turin Horse (2012), with which he retired.

Are you still friends?

— Yes, but he's a very special person. I remember when we were shooting the films, he said he wished he had a cage to hide in and not have to come into contact with anyone from the film industry.

It's an image that reminds me of his novels.

— Maybe so... But it was Béla's wish. It didn't come true because buying a cage would have cost too much. Cinema is a very expensive art, unlike literature.

You've lived in countries as diverse as Mongolia, Japan, the United States, Germany, China... But your characters don't usually leave, they just return to Hungary. A few months ago, you published Zsömle odavan [Zsömle waits].

— It's about a 91-year-old man who is a descendant of the Árpad family, the country's first royal lineage. The question is: will he be crowned the country's new monarch or not?

Is it a novel about what you think about today's Hungary?

— It's a long story, 250 pages long: I don't consider it a novel. It would be an impossible task to summarize Hungary in a text like this.

Your opinion wouldn't be very positive, would it?

— I'm not a canary in a mineshaft trying to warn anyone of the apocalypse. My song says: "It's too late to save us, it's too late..." I could say the same thing about today's Hungary. Thank God, what still survives is the Hungarian language. If I have a homeland, it's my language.

Your country has 9.5 million inhabitants. Catalonia has 8. It will soon no longer be unpublished in Catalan. Are you aware of this?

— Yes, and I'm glad it's readable. Satanic Tango in Catalan.

Has writing in Hungarian worked for you or against you as an author?

— Writing in a language with few speakers, like Hungarian, seems like an advantage to me, because it has a very unique structure and is more sophisticated than languages with many more speakers. Hungarian is constantly changing, and we artists can constantly create words from our imagination. It's wonderful.

October is approaching, which means we'll find out who receives the Nobel Prize. What will they do if they win?

— If they give me the Nobel Prize, I will use the Formentor Prize as a shield.