Q: Although this house in Pilisszentlászló is eminently plausible, one keeps having the notion that you are not at home. I think this is metaphorically perfectly true of your position. I could even go so far as to say that your art is characterised by various degrees of not being at home. Is it possible to be inside something – let us call it Hungarian literature or existence – so that the person is not actually at home the whole time?


A: Naturally, Hungarian literature is not quite the same as existence; but to reply to your question, yes, it is possible. You have to produce works which allow you to do that. And that will guarantee that you are “there” in the literature, even if not in the mind of the literary public – this is what happened to Imre Kertész for decades, to mention just a handy example. But if you had the impression that I am often not at home, this may have to do with the fact that I am really and truly often not at home. This is not because I keep travelling all over the world with a huge Havana sticking out of the corner of my mouth. The reason is, to mention but one, that for my previous book, War and War, I had to study the possible settings. Partly, I had to find out what the ancient boundary of Europe was like and, secondly, what was in its place today. So I had to go to the premises. These were study trips, in the strictest sense of the word, which I covered from various grants, thanks to my Swiss publisher and a few well-meaning friends abroad. But there is another reason for not being at home. Other people must feel this about their own country, but I certainly cannot find my place in Hungary. I often go into exile wherever I can, from America to East Asia, just to make sure I am not here. Literally, I will go anywhere just to make sure I don't have to be at home. Of course, the end result is that when I go to a place like this, I usually return shattered, disappointed, and disillusioned. Because there is no place on earth from which a guy like me would not return shattered, disappointed, and disillusioned. What is worse, it means that our yearnings have no meaning anymore. Bit by bit, after many years of unwilling wanderings, I am getting to be convinced there is no place worth yearning for. There isn't anything anywhere anymore. So there is a negative attraction at home and a positive push of repulsion abroad.

And if all of this sounds like a recent development in my life, I must add instantly, it is not only now I cannot find my place at home. I never could, even before. I was born into a predicament and a country where a person accursed with a heightened aesthetic and moral sensitivity like me simply cannot survive. It is enough to have an oversensitive and vulnerable person on one side, and the brutality of the other side will instantly produce mortal danger. Naturally, there are various strategies to help you survive in some way. I used to drink myself quite drunk whenever I could. I went on doing this until my health suffered so much that I was at risk of becoming a dramatic hero in an age which does not give a shit about drama – in an age which thinks no more of a dramatic ending than the Great Bulldozer thinks about a particular shell as it grinds up tens and tens of thousands of shells while driving along the sea shore speckled with herons drowned in oil. Had it meant anything at all, had it drawn that lethargic attention to anything, had there been one single oversensitive youth to draw strength from such a dramatic ending, I admit I would not have hesitated for a moment to act this role. But it would not mean anything; it would not draw attention to anything and would not restore anybody's strength. After all, they have not even properly inhaled the smoke of the gunpowder from the shotgun that Márai used to kill himself at a safe distance.

It hasn't always been like this. During the years of the dictatorship, the general public would have shown more interest in that gunpowder-smoke. At any rate, I most certainly cannot find my place at the present time. Even the most brilliant of people today tend to take me by the arm and pull me into a quiet corner before they can start telling me that they really and truly appreciate what I am doing... they even give me a naughty wink... but you see, they add, with an even naughtier face, the world has changed and so “this kind of thing” cannot be given the space it really deserves. And then they list the arguments why not. And the awful thing is that in a country which has thrown itself so completely at the feet of the Great Moloch without a single question, so blindly and so willingly, there is no point in even asking the question. To be sure, art is still present in this country. Indeed, the quality is truly high at times. But it is always the kind of art which you can express in cash terms, and for which the artist needs money; because, you see, they are pursued, as if by fate, by the gas bill, the sewage bill, the electricity bill. It would be unfair to say that these artists never resent the way things are. After all, we are talking about some very talented people here. But the trouble is that, along with many others, they think that there is some invincible, unalterable, uncontrollable force at work here which you either submit to or... And at this point they all just stop and never think that they could stop and think. They never consider that perhaps you could paint without a brush, play music without an instrument, and write, not without a PC, but even without a pen, and so forth. Somehow, at a single wave of the devil's hand, everyone has come to believe that you cannot. But let us imagine RIGHT NOW that we find out about a world where there are artists who paint without brushes, make music without instruments, and write without pen and paper. The very thought makes me happy. That this world could be ours, right here and now.

wanted to get some responses to this

germanjoey posted:

babyfinland posted:

i'm just starting to read the OP now, but I just want to point out that when Impper sez " he is severely "reactionary" and "hates everyone" including the common Hungarian people he depicts in his novels, the oppressed as wretched and terrible, no better than their oppressors." he means this as a great compliment.

Please don't mischaracterize my friend......

oh I know. Impper is a miserable little pervert in that way.

babyfinland posted:
Q: Although this house in Pilisszentlászló is eminently plausible, one keeps having the notion that you are not at home. I think this is metaphorically perfectly true of your position. I could even go so far as to say that your art is characterised by various degrees of not being at home. Is it possible to be inside something – let us call it Hungarian literature or existence – so that the person is not actually at home the whole time?


A: Naturally, Hungarian literature is not quite the same as existence; but to reply to your question, yes, it is possible. You have to produce works which allow you to do that. And that will guarantee that you are “there” in the literature, even if not in the mind of the literary public – this is what happened to Imre Kertész for decades, to mention just a handy example. But if you had the impression that I am often not at home, this may have to do with the fact that I am really and truly often not at home. This is not because I keep travelling all over the world with a huge Havana sticking out of the corner of my mouth. The reason is, to mention but one, that for my previous book, War and War, I had to study the possible settings. Partly, I had to find out what the ancient boundary of Europe was like and, secondly, what was in its place today. So I had to go to the premises. These were study trips, in the strictest sense of the word, which I covered from various grants, thanks to my Swiss publisher and a few well-meaning friends abroad. But there is another reason for not being at home. Other people must feel this about their own country, but I certainly cannot find my place in Hungary. I often go into exile wherever I can, from America to East Asia, just to make sure I am not here. Literally, I will go anywhere just to make sure I don't have to be at home. Of course, the end result is that when I go to a place like this, I usually return shattered, disappointed, and disillusioned. Because there is no place on earth from which a guy like me would not return shattered, disappointed, and disillusioned. What is worse, it means that our yearnings have no meaning anymore. Bit by bit, after many years of unwilling wanderings, I am getting to be convinced there is no place worth yearning for. There isn't anything anywhere anymore. So there is a negative attraction at home and a positive push of repulsion abroad.

And if all of this sounds like a recent development in my life, I must add instantly, it is not only now I cannot find my place at home. I never could, even before. I was born into a predicament and a country where a person accursed with a heightened aesthetic and moral sensitivity like me simply cannot survive. It is enough to have an oversensitive and vulnerable person on one side, and the brutality of the other side will instantly produce mortal danger. Naturally, there are various strategies to help you survive in some way. I used to drink myself quite drunk whenever I could. I went on doing this until my health suffered so much that I was at risk of becoming a dramatic hero in an age which does not give a shit about drama – in an age which thinks no more of a dramatic ending than the Great Bulldozer thinks about a particular shell as it grinds up tens and tens of thousands of shells while driving along the sea shore speckled with herons drowned in oil. Had it meant anything at all, had it drawn that lethargic attention to anything, had there been one single oversensitive youth to draw strength from such a dramatic ending, I admit I would not have hesitated for a moment to act this role. But it would not mean anything; it would not draw attention to anything and would not restore anybody's strength. After all, they have not even properly inhaled the smoke of the gunpowder from the shotgun that Márai used to kill himself at a safe distance.

It hasn't always been like this. During the years of the dictatorship, the general public would have shown more interest in that gunpowder-smoke. At any rate, I most certainly cannot find my place at the present time. Even the most brilliant of people today tend to take me by the arm and pull me into a quiet corner before they can start telling me that they really and truly appreciate what I am doing... they even give me a naughty wink... but you see, they add, with an even naughtier face, the world has changed and so “this kind of thing” cannot be given the space it really deserves. And then they list the arguments why not. And the awful thing is that in a country which has thrown itself so completely at the feet of the Great Moloch without a single question, so blindly and so willingly, there is no point in even asking the question. To be sure, art is still present in this country. Indeed, the quality is truly high at times. But it is always the kind of art which you can express in cash terms, and for which the artist needs money; because, you see, they are pursued, as if by fate, by the gas bill, the sewage bill, the electricity bill. It would be unfair to say that these artists never resent the way things are. After all, we are talking about some very talented people here. But the trouble is that, along with many others, they think that there is some invincible, unalterable, uncontrollable force at work here which you either submit to or... And at this point they all just stop and never think that they could stop and think. They never consider that perhaps you could paint without a brush, play music without an instrument, and write, not without a PC, but even without a pen, and so forth. Somehow, at a single wave of the devil's hand, everyone has come to believe that you cannot. But let us imagine RIGHT NOW that we find out about a world where there are artists who paint without brushes, make music without instruments, and write without pen and paper. The very thought makes me happy. That this world could be ours, right here and now.


wanted to get some responses to this

certum est quia impossibile

this is pretty much exactly how i feel at all times, every single word of this

Impper posted:
by the way half of that godamn bullshit youre quoteing mischaracterizes the fuck out of the work. listen, i read melancholy of resistanve twice, and animal inside three times, and each time i took a different interpretation, and melancholy was extremely hard to read both times. krasz does something where he gets closer to his characters' psyche than possibly any other writer i've ever seen. the only quote that does any justice to his work that you've posted here is his translator's. also fuck you im drunk

ive not read it, im just posting things ive found online

tpaine posted:
reactionary means you react a lot to stuff. if you're just like going around all day and and taking in outside stimuli and totally doing things in reaction to it, you're a reactionary. sorry to say it, but it's true. yeah you wait for a stop light? what happens when it turns green, fucker? you react. you press go. you collect $200. you go to jail. whoops, you were drunk and hit a pederestrian. guess what? that's a reaction too, to the alcohol in your blood. all day everyday, chemical reactions, physical reactions, just fucking reacting to shit and that makes you a reactionary: someone who doesn't go with his or her or its own flow. a slave to the rhythm of life you might say. fuck me

tpaine posted:
reactionary means you react a lot to stuff. if you're just like going around all day and and taking in outside stimuli and totally doing things in reaction to it, you're a reactionary. sorry to say it, but it's true. yeah you wait for a stop light? what happens when it turns green, fucker? you react. you press go. you collect $200. you go to jail. whoops, you were drunk and hit a pederestrian. guess what? that's a reaction too, to the alcohol in your blood. all day everyday, chemical reactions, physical reactions, just fucking reacting to shit and that makes you a reactionary: someone who doesn't go with his or her or its own flow. a slave to the rhythm of life you might say. fuck me

the t-1488 model possesses a neural-net processor, a learning computer. an exoskeleton comprised of mimetic poly-alloy, capable of embracing any aesthetic that is sampled viscerally. the reactionary can react to any philosophy it touches, but only at a superficial level: a reactionary cannot form complex thoughts, ideas or ideologies - it doesn't work that way. it can form solid metal shapes, harvesting tools; hammers and sickles imprinted onto the basic colors red and black.

The citizens that populate Satantango are some of the most miserable characters in literature. They make Thomas Bernhard’s monologists (to whom Satantango’s narrative point of view eventually owes a great debt) seem as sentimental as they truly are. By this reviewer’s count, there are only two moments of actual kindness in the book. In one, a bar owner cleans the mud off a drunk cripple. In the other, a boy teaches his mentally retarded sister the best way to commit suicide. (She thinks of it as a type of favor.)

In Satantango, sex is a meaningless act, except as a way to make money or cure boredom. Teenage girls turn tricks in an abandoned factory. A certain Mrs. Schmidt (her beauty, in a wonderful way, matched only by her girth) sleeps with every man in town but, so it would seem, her husband. Furthermore, everyone despises everyone — and with good reason. Every single character in Satantango, in their own way, is trying to cheat, betray, wound, destroy, or escape the other. All this drama is set inside a rain-pelted, fog-swallowed, dark and crumbling village, where, as the image of the once impregnable, now decayed estate at its edge suggests, the words comrade and serf are all but interchangeable, and as equally dehumanizing and ridiculous.

While the ghosts of feudalism and a dying communism linger and affect the characters in Satantango, Krasznahorkai is not merely interested in how the Hungarian psyche suffered under failed sociopolitical systems. He is more interested in the illness of the human individual inside all systems, and the visions we experience and delusions we create in order to “attempt to forget despair.” Krasznahorkai’s mastery of structure, character, and language is matched by his ability to simultaneously weave all three together; readers can feel themselves physiologically immersed in the world of the book, itself a finely orchestrated system.

http://thenewinquiry.com/post/16365913230/dance-with-the-devil

Incredibly long as Satantango is, it feels even longer. Set in a small Hungarian village during the last days of Communism, the movie is based on a novel by Tarr’s frequent collaborator Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Unlike Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, which strives to match its epic source material hour for hour, Krasznahorkai’s novel is fewer than two-hundred pages. (Currently in translation, it’s slated to be published by New Directions early next year.) Given the industry-standard equation between one page of script and one minute of screen-time, Tarr’s adaptation is three times the size of its source.

Tarr achieves this distention by the use of his signature long takes. His camera will track a herd of cows as they travel through a dilapidated housing block for eight minutes before he cuts. It will linger on some seemingly insignificant detail—the rain pummeling a patch of muddy landscape, the swaying of a towel hanging from the back of a door that has just been shut, the jacket buttons of a man who has just passed out from drunkenness—long after almost any other director would have moved on.

Compositionally, Tarr consistently relegates the major narrative action of a scene to the periphery of the shot. In scenes like the drunken tango in the village pub or the sermon in which a priest screams “The Turks are Coming!” to the bombed-out windows of his empty church, he allows his actors to repeat themselves beyond the point of excruciation—to watch and listen, let alone speak and act. Emerging into the light of day during the first of the intermissions—by the time you get to the second the sun had long fled—is particularly jarring because Tarr’s lighting is dim at its brightest. From the shot in which, in real time, the dawn barely manages to reveal a shabby room to the shot where all one can see is the light of the moon on the rain, Satantango is an experience that approaches sensory deprivation.

The camerawork, directing, and lighting combine to create a mood of perpetual dread that mercilessly refuses to resolve itself into cathartic spasm, but the film’s most oppressive element is undoubtedly its cast of characters. The villagers are stupid, petty, servile, and cruel. Each of them tries to swindle his neighbors out of the year’s wages they’ve been paid to close down the collective farm, only to be swindled by Irmias (played by Mihaly Vig, who has acted in Tarr’s last four films), the village’s prodigal son. A huckster who fancies himself a messiah, Irmias proves to be nothing more than a police informant with a florid prose style. He convinces the villagers to follow him on some ill-defined quest, and they do, leaving behind the town’s doctor, an alcoholic recluse, whom we’ve seen abusing his maid and spying on his neighbors. It is implied that when the village is deserted the doctor will starve to death, but neither the other villagers nor the viewer concludes that this would really be a terrible thing.

Aside from the animals in the film, which attain by comparison surpassing levels of dignity, the only character with whom the viewer sympathizes is the mentally-ill girl, Estike (Erika Bok), with whom we spend an hour or so as she tortures and poisons a cat. Though I was aware that I was implicating myself in the film’s depiction of cruelty-perpetuating cruelty, I spent the second half of Satantango praying for the sudden appearance of an Old Testament-style God to repent of his creation and blot out the village in a fit of righteous pique. I am grateful that Tarr, who at one point has the priggish Mrs. Kraner (Iren Szjaicki) open a Bible to Revelations, did not yield to this temptation. The tragedy of life, the film never allows us to forget, is that its dispensations of justice are neither conclusive nor symmetrical.

http://thenewinquiry.com/post/6246795327/the-captive-audience

Edited by babyfinland (Jan. 30, 2012 01:58:38)

Impper posted:
lol, the last two paragraphs of that article are absolutely fucking ridiculous, it's an argument about mediums, nothing to do with satatango at all. i guess this means the film itself is diminished should anybody try to watch it at home

i donno why thats so ridiculous to you. the subject of the article is more about medium and uses satanatango as a referential object. its not like a book review or whatever. and any film is diminished when watched at home i think

Impper posted:

babyfinland posted:

Impper posted:
lol, the last two paragraphs of that article are absolutely fucking ridiculous, it's an argument about mediums, nothing to do with satatango at all. i guess this means the film itself is diminished should anybody try to watch it at home

i donno why thats so ridiculous to you. the subject of the article is more about medium and uses satanatango as a referential object. its not like a book review or whatever

you posted an excerpt from some bullshit website and the subject was satatango

i changed the excerpt from the article i was quoting from you noob. its still the same article

Impper posted:
i dont click links, nor do i read edits

clearly