László Krasznahorkais Novel “Zsömle ist weg”: Lang lebe der König – Kultur

In the Nobel Prize speech that the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai gave in Stockholm last Sunday, angels played a conspicuously large role. He talked about their wings and robes with Giotto or Fra Angelico and merged them with the messages they carried. Then with a sharp cut they disappeared, the background certainties faded, the angels fell silent. It quickly became clear that Krasznahorkai had called her in to talk about literature, about the difficulty of formulating anything like messages in times like these, when “the Elons Musks organize time and space” and we can no longer hear the angels, even if they still had messages. He came to the desk confessing that his hopes were exhausted and then found a convincing image for his writing. He always and everywhere has his stethoscope with him so he can put it on people’s chests and listen to what’s pulsating inside them. “For his urgent and visionary work that affirms the power of art in the midst of apocalyptic horror,” Krasznahorkai was awarded the Nobel Prize.