“We have always lived in the apocalypse,” says László Krasznahorkai

Madrid. Since last December 11, when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai has secluded himself in the solitude of his books to watch the future of the world from that secret corner. And he, who continues to write with pen and paper “to try to understand an increasingly confusing world,” decided to reappear publicly at an event in Barcelona, ​​at the Center for Contemporary Culture (CCCB) in the Catalan capital, from where he acknowledged that “we have always lived in the apocalypse, it is the way history has developed.”

Krasznahorkai, who was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, had canceled a couple of months ago a talk he had planned to give at the CCCB together with his translator and friend Adan Kovacsics, but the gale of the Nobel Prize in Literature forced him to cancel to focus on the reception speech and try to defend his privacy, broken by the constant calls and the incessant focus of the cameras. But now, now more relaxed, he decided to recover that commitment to reappear publicly.

Dressed in black, as is his custom, and with his long white hair, he appeared at the cultural center to talk about his literature, the “trinkets” that have become fashionable in literature and even the uncertain future that awaits his country if the far-right Viktor Orban wins the elections in April. He even recommended that if these predictions come true, the best thing his compatriots can do is “run away.”

Regarding his way of writing, Krasznarhorkai acknowledged that although his left hand “is increasingly tired,” it is the one with which he continues to write his books, with a pen and on paper, faithful to the tradition of the Hungarian poet Endre Edy, who refused to use the typewriter because he assured that this device “was incompatible with poetry.”

The Hungarian Nobel Prize winner believes something similar, who, based on this habit of looking at his own literature, discussed the world and new technologies: “I don’t think art has much to do with the direction the world has taken. Technology is wonderful, but art takes us much further. It can make us fly into free space. Art elevates us, but then returns us to Earth, not like Elon Musk’s rockets.” And he went further, maintaining that “right now there are very popular trinkets that would have been unthinkable years ago. They are the enemies of literature.”

Krasznarhorkai’s visit to Spain also has to do with the imminent publication of his latest novel translated into our language, Herst 07769which will be published by the Acantilado publishing house, with which he has published titles such as Baron Wenckheim returns home, sata tangonico y War and war.

Poverty and misery

During his meeting with the press, the Hungarian writer acknowledged that there are two words with which his literature is usually related: “misery” and “apocalypse.” Regarding the first, he assured that “I do not write about misery, but about poverty. They are two similar terms, but not the same. The poor have their culture. They don’t have money, but they have spirit. Misery is absolute poverty, both earthly and spiritual. But perhaps I should have tried harder to represent the state of total misery, which is what we are increasingly bogged down in in the world. Even so, I would not reduce what I write to a reflection of social misery.”

In that sense: “I cling with two fingers, or perhaps only one, to quality art. Art helps us, yes, but in the last two decades I have not read any book about a person in misery who only has his dignity left. That person could perhaps be the object of my work.”

And as for the second word, apocalypse, Krasznahorkai explained that the first to use that word to explain his work was the writer Susan Sontag, who came to define him as “the master of the apocalypse” and that some time later, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize, the jury defined him again with that word, justifying the award in his “convincing and visionary work that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

And he added: “Many people laughed at that statement; what I can say in that regard is that the apocalypse is something continuous, it is not a last-minute assumption, but it is the way in which history has developed. It is a dynamic of falling and rising. We have always lived in the apocalypse, it is the way in which history has developed.”

The Hungarian Nobel Prize winner cited concrete examples of this sinister drift in the world: “Bad people like Vladimir Putin have always existed. Things are not going well, of course, but they have never gone well, although something has always happened that has saved us, that has made us advance in this world. In my books it is the angels who bring a revealing message and are sacrificed for collective sins. But something has changed in recent years: before they were sacrificed because they understood their messages and found one offensive. such a naked truth; now they don’t even understand it, they don’t even know that it is a message, but they continue to sacrifice them.”