Katia N's Reviews > Satantango

“One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall”, I’ve finally decided to crack this book opened. And I’ve been rapidly consumed by the swirl of its language, atmosphere and its characters. The bunch of desperados, all of them one buy one resurfacing from murky nothingness, sculptured by language trying to surround me and drag into the the opaque non-existence of their quite real world.

And yet, though undeniably the characterisation of this novel is darkly-brilliant, what kept me turning the pages was the language and the stylistic variety of its registers. The author could play with his sentences; he could imbed a dreadful pathetic speech into the text that would still be meaningful; he could create a whole vignette contrasting a passionate figurative Volapük of the one of his characters with bureaucratic dry lingo of a state; and he would make it in a such a way that it is absurd, but it is perfectly credible at the same time and grotesquely funny.

His prose is very cinematic. He changes the perspectives, swiftly moves between the scenes, zooms into details, then - out again; he uses noises and music for effect. I am not surprised that the film by Béla Tarr based on the novel has become iconic. And that is in spite of lasting 7 hours and been shot in black and white. One does not need colours in that world. The first few chapters are quite disorienting as you are going head first into the atmosphere and it is tricky to work out what is going on around you. So you have no choice but keep reading, almost watching. This is as well a good for cinema.

As with any good book it would be quite reductive to talk about separate themes. You cannot split the whole into bits without losing something. But the main take for me was his rendering or power as a concept. It seems to be intrinsically important for the characters. It seems each of them consciously or subconsciously crave for it. For them the power is directly associated with the degree of freedom they have achieved. The power and freedom is almost equivalent. At the same time, it seems that they all accept the existence of a hierarchy without any challenge: they crave for some sort of authority which would relieve them from the responsibility to be free. Power brings some freedom to control the destiny of someone weaker; to decide whether to forgive or to punish; to be a saviour or a destroyer. But ultimately, in this system it would be always someone above you who would exercise his freedom on you not share it with you.

In the most powerful episode of the book, a little girl deprived of any love and care exercises her freedom to deal with her cat as she pleased - just to see who is more powerful. Just to establish that she can.

A doctor, in the name only though, desperately tries to fight the laws entropy:

“the best he could do was to use his memory to fend off the sinister, underhanded process of decay, trusting in the fact that since all that mason might build, carpenter might construct, woman might stitch, indeed all that men and women had brought forth with bitter tears was bound to turn to an undifferentiated, runny, underground, mysteriously ordained mush, his memory would remain lively and clear.”

He also carves out a tiny island of order through arranging a small number of physical objects on his table, but letting everything else in his house to decay. Eventually, he finds his unique way how to exercise a certain power over other people too: “I can control the flow of events around me using nothing more than the words.” Writing!

Irimias, a swindler, or is he a saviour? In any case, he possesses almost unlimited power over the group of villagers. They would happily intrust him their lives. And they actually do so. But does this power makes him free or at least fearless? No. He is even more trapped than they are. He needs to serve the system above him. Moreover, in this system of hierarchies eventually it should be a something absolutely free with absolute power. Therefore, it should be God, but if not him? If “God was a mistake”, then this absolute is simply nothing. So according to Irimias, “We think we’re breaking free but all we’re doing is readjusting the locks. We’re trapped, end of story.”

So any power is meaningless at the end in that world: “in truth he was as helpless as they were, he no longer hoped to lend meaning to the power that was strangling him as much as it was them, could not free himself from it.” Any power is indeed meaningless if it is distributed in such a way that it is used solely with purpose of grabbing more freedom at the expense of others.

To some extent, this novel is an antithesis to Don Quixote. Like aforementioned Don, Irimias is almost always on a journey accompanied by the sidekick who is awkward, simple but more cautious and pragmatic character sincerely devoted to his lord. Cervantes’s knight of sad countenance imagines miracles where there are none, and by fighting for this imaginary reality he creates it for real. In contrast, Irimias, when faced with a proper miracle, rejects it. He explains it in a way that his imagination simply played a trick on him:

“It’s only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of decay. There’s no escaping that, stupid.”

Don Quixote’s imagination would make a Dulcinea out of a peasant girl. Through his imagination he would find a way to love, almost worship ordinary people.

The world of this book is on the contrary full of contempt for the folk. Well, at least for the characters presented in the novel. And yes, they are not the most likeable bunch. They are the ones left behind (does this expression remind you of something?) Left behind literally in their case on the remote ruined estate. They could not adapt as some other managed to. They did not leave and now they stuck with little opportunity apart from the bar and dreams of escape to the brighter future.

Irimias does not mince his words in respect of them:

“They are slaves who have lost their master but can’t live without what they call pride, honor and courage. That’s what keeps their souls in place even if at the back of their thick skulls they sense these qualities aren’t their own, that they’ve simply enjoyed living in the shadow of their masters . . .Then, wherever the shadow falls they follow, like a flock of sheep, because they can’t do without a shadow..”

The Doctor gently refers to the same people as “these moronic nincompoops”.

VS Naipaul starts his novel A Bend in the River with the phrase:

“The world is what it is; men who are nothing allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it”.

Reading Santatango, I was constantly coming back to this sentence in my mind. And if not anything else, this novel has again made me think about this. Is it actually true? To which extent Don Quixote is right? To which extent Naipaul or Irimias is right? And does the existence of these people, “nincompoops”, lead to the emergence of such Irimiases on the top of the social ladder, Irimiases who gain power, constantly hungry for more, ready to kill for it eventually if required? How do Don Quixote and Irimias co-exist?

I wish to believe Don Quixote was somewhere on the right track. But the reality intervenes. And when I see Russian soldiers being summoned into the country by their master, gruesomely murder and rape civilians and run from Ukraine with stolen washing machines and toilet sits in their hands; when I see a man attacking the husband of an older female politician with a hammer to “make America great again”; when I see how young girls are met with the bullets on the street of Iran, fighting for their right to be free… Well, then I start reluctantly to side with Naipaul because those who are potentially “slaves who cannot do without a shadow to follow”, who “allowed themselves to become nothing” might suddenly become very dangerous. “The world is what it is”…

But the remainder of an idealist in me still cries for hope. And compared to the reality this book even might be considered somewhat reassuring. At least, there is a big element of black humour that saves the day. There is element of perseverance as well even if redemption is not on the table.

And I finished the book, and I thought about it for a few days, and I opened my laptop, and thought a bit more; and then I began to type: “One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall…”