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Seiobo auf Erden. Erzählungen
»Die Universalität von Krasznahorkais Blick zerstreut alle Zweifel an der zeitgenössischen Literatur.« schreibt W. G. Sebald über den ungarischen Romanautor László Krasznahorkai, der 2010 für »Seiobo auf Erden« gleich zweimal ausgezeichnet, mit dem den Brücke-Berlin-Preis sowie den Spycher Literaturpreis, Leuk.
Seiobo ist eine japanische Göttin, deren Pfirsiche nur alle 3000 Jahre blühen, aber Unsterblichkeit schenken. Der Glaube an solche Geschichten ist uns längst abhanden gekommen, nicht aber ihre Sehnsucht. Dieser Sehnsucht geht László Krasznahorkai in seinem neuen Buch nach. Er beobachtet, wie es in jeder Epoche und in allen Kulturen vollkommene Dinge gab und gibt: der im Fluss reglos stehende Reiher, die Grimasse einer No-Maske, die äußerste Nacktheit im Gesicht einer Ikone, die Zerbrechlichkeit einer Buddha-Statue. Krasznahorkais Erzählungen sind überwältigend.
Seiobo ist eine japanische Göttin, deren Pfirsiche nur alle 3000 Jahre blühen, aber Unsterblichkeit schenken. Der Glaube an solche Geschichten ist uns längst abhanden gekommen, nicht aber ihre Sehnsucht. Dieser Sehnsucht geht László Krasznahorkai in seinem neuen Buch nach. Er beobachtet, wie es in jeder Epoche und in allen Kulturen vollkommene Dinge gab und gibt: der im Fluss reglos stehende Reiher, die Grimasse einer No-Maske, die äußerste Nacktheit im Gesicht einer Ikone, die Zerbrechlichkeit einer Buddha-Statue. Krasznahorkais Erzählungen sind überwältigend.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
László Krasznahorkai
45 books1,794 followersLászló Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter who is known for critically difficult and demanding novels, often labelled as postmodern, with dystopian and bleak melancholic themes.
He is probably best known through the oeuvre of the director Béla Tarr, who has collaborated with him on several movies.
Krasznahorkai has been honored with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his English-translated oeuvre.
He is probably best known through the oeuvre of the director Béla Tarr, who has collaborated with him on several movies.
Krasznahorkai has been honored with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his English-translated oeuvre.
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April 8, 2023
Seiobo, also known as the Queen Mother of the West, is a goddess. She cultivates a garden of peach trees that blossom only once in a millennium but the one who has eaten a fruit becomes immortal.
Seiobo There Below is about the cultural inheritance of mankind – both occidental and oriental.
The novel tells about objects of art, their creators, their creation and those who face the objects. Russian icons, paintings of Queen Vashti, the portrait of dead Christ, the ancient statue of Buddha, Noh theatre and masks, Acropolis and Alhambra, dragons of stone, creation of “The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis” by Pietro Perugino – the book is a real gallery of art stories.
The eyes are the mirror of the soul so they play the special role throughout the entire novel…
Diamonds and gold are nothing… Culture and arts are the only real wealth of humanity.
Seiobo There Below is about the cultural inheritance of mankind – both occidental and oriental.
…in the picture he saw three mighty, delicate, supplicant men, as these three men sat around a table; that was what he saw first, but he quickly discovered that these three men, each of them, had wings, it was not, moreover, easy to discover this as the painting was in fairly bad condition, it was immediately visible that many parts that had once been painted in were missing, but the three figures who, due to their wings, were obviously angels, had remained relatively intact…
The novel tells about objects of art, their creators, their creation and those who face the objects. Russian icons, paintings of Queen Vashti, the portrait of dead Christ, the ancient statue of Buddha, Noh theatre and masks, Acropolis and Alhambra, dragons of stone, creation of “The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis” by Pietro Perugino – the book is a real gallery of art stories.
…when it is placed on the hydraulic table in its original radiance, and once again whole, the statue of Amida Buddha from the Zengen-ji, and its own gaze of unutterable strength, broadly scourging, sweeps across the entire staff of the Bijutsu-in, as if they had been struck by a windstorm…
The eyes are the mirror of the soul so they play the special role throughout the entire novel…
…now however he looked at just the two closed eyelids, and he had to endure the knowledge that he wasn’t finding out the clue to the strangeness, he looked again at the whole – the fragile shoulders, the head inclined to one side, the mouth, the fine wisps of beard, the scrawny arms, and the two hands placed so oddly together – when suddenly he became aware that the eyelid of Christ seemed, as it were, to have moved a bit, as if these two eyelids had fluttered; he had not lost his sanity, so he said to himself no that’s impossible, he looked away then looked again, and the two eyes flickered yet again, this is sheer impossibility, he thought, frightened, and he was on the point of abruptly leaving the room…
Diamonds and gold are nothing… Culture and arts are the only real wealth of humanity.
October 31, 2014
1. First Thread
Margarita Terekhova in Tarkovsky's Mirror
Munch's portrait of his sister
Ingrid Thulin in the films of Bergman
2. Second Thread
Derek Jarman
Ikiru
Théodore Géricault's last Self Portrait before his death
3. Third Thread
Brassai's Night Photos of Paris
Hasegawa Tohaku's Pine Trees
4. Fourth Thread
Sally Mann's photos of her kids
Schiele - Mother and Child
5. Fifth Thread
Rublev's Trinity
Three Ebensee survivors, too weak to eat solid food, suck on sugar cubes to give them strength. (May 8, 1945)
6. Conclusions
Alfred Schnittke - Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled with Grief (1984–85) (from Concerto for Mixed Choir, arr. Kronos Quartet)
http://youtu.be/wMcTQPdxttA
Margarita Terekhova in Tarkovsky's Mirror
Munch's portrait of his sister
Ingrid Thulin in the films of Bergman
2. Second Thread
Derek Jarman
Ikiru
Théodore Géricault's last Self Portrait before his death
3. Third Thread
Brassai's Night Photos of Paris
Hasegawa Tohaku's Pine Trees
4. Fourth Thread
Sally Mann's photos of her kids
Schiele - Mother and Child
5. Fifth Thread
Rublev's Trinity
Three Ebensee survivors, too weak to eat solid food, suck on sugar cubes to give them strength. (May 8, 1945)
6. Conclusions
Alfred Schnittke - Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled with Grief (1984–85) (from Concerto for Mixed Choir, arr. Kronos Quartet)
http://youtu.be/wMcTQPdxttA
July 24, 2017
I didn't finish - so my rating is only based on my personal frustration. I wanted to try this - but it lost me.
What drove me crazy - is that sentences went on for pages!! There were comas - lots of them- but it was rare to find a sentence end.
There were some interesting & lovely descriptions... but I couldn't understand half of what I read and I couldn't 'feel' anything without understanding. Just lost! My failure.
What drove me crazy - is that sentences went on for pages!! There were comas - lots of them- but it was rare to find a sentence end.
There were some interesting & lovely descriptions... but I couldn't understand half of what I read and I couldn't 'feel' anything without understanding. Just lost! My failure.
August 1, 2024
“Seibo Orada, Aşağıdaydı”, Macar yazar L. Krasznahorkai’den okuduğum ikinci kitap. İlki “Şeytan Tangosu” idi. Bu kitabı okuduktan sonra ilk kitabını anlayamadığımı düşündüm ve tekrar okumaya karar verdim. Dönelim bu kitaba, kitap diyorum çünkü yazar bunun ısrarla roman olduğunu vurgulamış. Roman mı ? Bilemiyorum, ama mükemmel bir kitap !
Macar yazarın kimi tarihi kimi kurgusal olan ancak gerçekle kurgusalın büyük bir incelikle iç içe geçtiği farklı zamanda ve yerlerde, özellikle sanat ve sanatçılara odaklanan bu romanı 17 hikayeden oluşmuşsa da, Fibonacci dizisine göre 1 ile başlayıp ve 2584 ile biten bir numaralandırma görmekteyiz. Fibonacci dizisi, her sayının kendinden önceki ile toplanması sonucu oluşan bir sayı dizisidir, sayıların birbirleriyle oranı olan ve altın oran denilen sayı ise doğada, sanatta ve hayatın her alanında görülen ve estetik ile bağdaştırılan bir sayıdır. Bu ise kitaba ayrı bir anlam katmaktadır.
Yazar istememiş, bu nedenle dipnot hiç kullanılmamış, bu durumda birçok teknik ya da yabancı kelime çeviri metninde aynen yazılmış. Merak etmek, Google kullanmak şart, bunu kabul etmeden de okunabilir ama tadına varmak güç olabilir. Okumamın uzun sürmesi merak dereceme bağlı olarak uzasa da çok şey kazandım. Bağlaçlar ve noktalama işaretleri ile sürüp giden, noktayı koymak için bazen birkaç sayfa süren cümleler sizi korkutmasın, bunun da tadı ayrı. Bir de cümle sonunda kelime veya kelimelerin tekrar edilmesi cümleyi daha bir güzel kılıyor.
Her bölümde farklı bir hikâye anlatılıyor, ortak tema ise sanat, sanatta güzellik ve bu güzelliğe tutkunluk. Bir ortak nokta ise öykülerin hepsinde hüzün var, mutlu son yok. Yazar Macar olduğundan Rusya hakkında da çok şey biliyor ve bunu kitabın elverdiği ölçüde kullanmış. Öykülerin geçtiği yerler kadim uygarlıkların doğup büyüdüğü yerler. Doğuda Japonya’dan batıda İspanya’ya kadar geniş bir alan. Kyoto, Floransa, Atina, Endülüs,Venedik, Cenevre ilk aklıma gelenler.
Kamogawa nehrinde kar beyazı balıkçıl kuşunun kesintisiz dikkatini hissettim. Pers Kraliçesi Babil’li Vashti ile yasak aşk meyvesi F. Lippi’yi esrarengiz dünyalarında buluşturan yazara şapka çıkardım. Buda heykelinin restorasyonunu öyle bir anlatmış ki bu teknik işlem ruhani bir işe dönüşmüş. “Onarmak değil, korumak” hedefiyle yola çıkan restoratörlerdeki tutku bizdeki restorasyonları aklıma getirdi. Ayrıca bu heykelin yerinden alınması ve tekrar yerine konulması ritüeli aurı bir masal. Venedik’i görmedim ama avucumun içi gibi öğrendim. Akropolis’e çıktığımda Zeus ile konuştuğumu hissetmiştim, ama Laszlo benimle aynı görüşte değil, sanırım kitaptaki öyküler içinde sanatın olumlu olarak bahsedilmediği tek öykü “Tepede, Akropolis’te” öyküsü.
Bir caninin doğuşunu sanat tutkusunun bile engelleyemediğinin anlatıldığı öyküde hristiyanlıktaki bölünmelerin temel çelişkilerini öğrenmiş oldum. Kitaba adını veren öykü Noh oyunu aktörünün prova öyküsü en az ilgimi çekeni oldu kitapta. Perugia’ya dönüşün maestro Vanucchi’nin hikayesi yüzyıllar önce resim sanatının ne kadar güçlüklerle yapıldığını, yeteneğin daha başka faktörlerle desteklenmesi gerekliliği vurgulamakta, bu öykü yutarcasına okuduğum cümleler ile anlatılmış. Alhamra Sarayı’nın anlatıldığı bölüm bir küçük ansiklopedi gibi ve çok etkileyici. Kitapta kurmaca olduğu en net anlaşılan öykü Milo Venüsü aşkı ile tanınan müze bekçisinin öyküsü bence. Barok müziği ve Bach hakkında yazılan “Kişisel Tutku” çok çarpıcı bir cümle ile başlıyor, tadı kaçmasın diye yazmıyorum o cümleyi, siz de kitabın genel havasına girin merak edin ayrıca ! Arlango Ustanın “sanat tahrifçileri” sözünü çok tuttum. Sanat tarihini de tahrif eden sanat tarihçileri aklıma geldi. Son dört öykü öncekilere göre zayıf geldi bana, belki de biraz tekrara düşmüş yazar.
Yazarın sanat tarihi ve teoloji bilgisine şapka çıkartılır. Bundan olsa gerek gelip geçicilik, yücelik, gerçeklik, yaratma gibi kavramları çok aşkın bir anlatımla veriyor. Halbuki hukuk ve edebiyat eğitimi görmüş L. Krasznahorkai. Cümleler büyüleyici güzellikte, sıradışı bir anlatım kitabı ilginç kılıyor. Tanımlar, tasvirler ayrıntılı ve çarpıcı.
Başlayıp sıkılır da bırakırsanız hiç yadırgamam, okursanız bu olasılığı da aklınızda tutun, böyle bir enteresan kitap bu kitap (hala roman diyemiyorum). Ben kitabın vurguladığı sanatın güzelliğine tutkun olduğumdan bu sanat eseri kitabını iyi ki okudum diyenlerdenim. Gün Benderli’nin Macarcadan olağanüstü çevirisi kitaba artı değer olarak yazılmalı. Kesinlikle öneririm, özellikle değişik bir okuma arayışında olanlara.
Macar yazarın kimi tarihi kimi kurgusal olan ancak gerçekle kurgusalın büyük bir incelikle iç içe geçtiği farklı zamanda ve yerlerde, özellikle sanat ve sanatçılara odaklanan bu romanı 17 hikayeden oluşmuşsa da, Fibonacci dizisine göre 1 ile başlayıp ve 2584 ile biten bir numaralandırma görmekteyiz. Fibonacci dizisi, her sayının kendinden önceki ile toplanması sonucu oluşan bir sayı dizisidir, sayıların birbirleriyle oranı olan ve altın oran denilen sayı ise doğada, sanatta ve hayatın her alanında görülen ve estetik ile bağdaştırılan bir sayıdır. Bu ise kitaba ayrı bir anlam katmaktadır.
Yazar istememiş, bu nedenle dipnot hiç kullanılmamış, bu durumda birçok teknik ya da yabancı kelime çeviri metninde aynen yazılmış. Merak etmek, Google kullanmak şart, bunu kabul etmeden de okunabilir ama tadına varmak güç olabilir. Okumamın uzun sürmesi merak dereceme bağlı olarak uzasa da çok şey kazandım. Bağlaçlar ve noktalama işaretleri ile sürüp giden, noktayı koymak için bazen birkaç sayfa süren cümleler sizi korkutmasın, bunun da tadı ayrı. Bir de cümle sonunda kelime veya kelimelerin tekrar edilmesi cümleyi daha bir güzel kılıyor.
Her bölümde farklı bir hikâye anlatılıyor, ortak tema ise sanat, sanatta güzellik ve bu güzelliğe tutkunluk. Bir ortak nokta ise öykülerin hepsinde hüzün var, mutlu son yok. Yazar Macar olduğundan Rusya hakkında da çok şey biliyor ve bunu kitabın elverdiği ölçüde kullanmış. Öykülerin geçtiği yerler kadim uygarlıkların doğup büyüdüğü yerler. Doğuda Japonya’dan batıda İspanya’ya kadar geniş bir alan. Kyoto, Floransa, Atina, Endülüs,Venedik, Cenevre ilk aklıma gelenler.
Kamogawa nehrinde kar beyazı balıkçıl kuşunun kesintisiz dikkatini hissettim. Pers Kraliçesi Babil’li Vashti ile yasak aşk meyvesi F. Lippi’yi esrarengiz dünyalarında buluşturan yazara şapka çıkardım. Buda heykelinin restorasyonunu öyle bir anlatmış ki bu teknik işlem ruhani bir işe dönüşmüş. “Onarmak değil, korumak” hedefiyle yola çıkan restoratörlerdeki tutku bizdeki restorasyonları aklıma getirdi. Ayrıca bu heykelin yerinden alınması ve tekrar yerine konulması ritüeli aurı bir masal. Venedik’i görmedim ama avucumun içi gibi öğrendim. Akropolis’e çıktığımda Zeus ile konuştuğumu hissetmiştim, ama Laszlo benimle aynı görüşte değil, sanırım kitaptaki öyküler içinde sanatın olumlu olarak bahsedilmediği tek öykü “Tepede, Akropolis’te” öyküsü.
Bir caninin doğuşunu sanat tutkusunun bile engelleyemediğinin anlatıldığı öyküde hristiyanlıktaki bölünmelerin temel çelişkilerini öğrenmiş oldum. Kitaba adını veren öykü Noh oyunu aktörünün prova öyküsü en az ilgimi çekeni oldu kitapta. Perugia’ya dönüşün maestro Vanucchi’nin hikayesi yüzyıllar önce resim sanatının ne kadar güçlüklerle yapıldığını, yeteneğin daha başka faktörlerle desteklenmesi gerekliliği vurgulamakta, bu öykü yutarcasına okuduğum cümleler ile anlatılmış. Alhamra Sarayı’nın anlatıldığı bölüm bir küçük ansiklopedi gibi ve çok etkileyici. Kitapta kurmaca olduğu en net anlaşılan öykü Milo Venüsü aşkı ile tanınan müze bekçisinin öyküsü bence. Barok müziği ve Bach hakkında yazılan “Kişisel Tutku” çok çarpıcı bir cümle ile başlıyor, tadı kaçmasın diye yazmıyorum o cümleyi, siz de kitabın genel havasına girin merak edin ayrıca ! Arlango Ustanın “sanat tahrifçileri” sözünü çok tuttum. Sanat tarihini de tahrif eden sanat tarihçileri aklıma geldi. Son dört öykü öncekilere göre zayıf geldi bana, belki de biraz tekrara düşmüş yazar.
Yazarın sanat tarihi ve teoloji bilgisine şapka çıkartılır. Bundan olsa gerek gelip geçicilik, yücelik, gerçeklik, yaratma gibi kavramları çok aşkın bir anlatımla veriyor. Halbuki hukuk ve edebiyat eğitimi görmüş L. Krasznahorkai. Cümleler büyüleyici güzellikte, sıradışı bir anlatım kitabı ilginç kılıyor. Tanımlar, tasvirler ayrıntılı ve çarpıcı.
Başlayıp sıkılır da bırakırsanız hiç yadırgamam, okursanız bu olasılığı da aklınızda tutun, böyle bir enteresan kitap bu kitap (hala roman diyemiyorum). Ben kitabın vurguladığı sanatın güzelliğine tutkun olduğumdan bu sanat eseri kitabını iyi ki okudum diyenlerdenim. Gün Benderli’nin Macarcadan olağanüstü çevirisi kitaba artı değer olarak yazılmalı. Kesinlikle öneririm, özellikle değişik bir okuma arayışında olanlara.
January 15, 2016
I voted last year for “Seiobo” as the most unique book I have read in 2015. I could have gone also with the most challenging or the most annoying. The review turns out to be the most difficult to write in this beginning of 2016. I can’t seem to run out of superlatives when considering the novel, but they cover both the high end and the low end of the spectrum: amazing and annoying, marvelous and mean spirited, erudite and exhausting, soul searching and smug.
Most of my problems issue from the style of presentation. Mr. Krasznahorkay sets up to redefine the term “wall-of-text” by deliberately and smirkingly avoiding to put a stop to his phrases for several pages at a time. I know that other great writers have used this device succesfully before (Faulkner, Proust) and I see no discord in adding Kraszanhorkai to the list, but in his case I question the necessity of going overboard in his stream-of-conscience flow, given that the main tonality of the novel is the relationship between existence and Art rather than character study. I got the feeling that in Mr. K’s opinion Art should be placed as far as possible from the common ground and the common people (up there as opposed to here below), a mystical, transcendental experience reserved for the elites that can only be expresed obliquely and indirectly :
... circumambulated with words, like a beggar with his palm extended, for this darkness and this screaming, these mouths and these eyes cannot be compared to anything, for they have nothing in common with anything that can be put into words ...
As you will notice in all my quotes here, they are only snippets of those chapter long phrases, of necessity cut out of context and presented to you as pieces of a puzzle that is admittedly elegantly and exhaustively put together with words by the author in this large canvas that roams over both geography and history, that unites cultures and ages into a coherent vision that, for want of a better analogy, we will call Seiobo’s plane of existence :
... I put down my crown, and in earthly form but not concealing my face, I descended among them, to seek out the Prince of Chu, the King of Mu, I had to leave the boundless plains of the Sky, the Radiant Empire of Light, I had to come from that world where form itself is resplendent; streaming forth it swells, and thus everything is filled by nothingness, I had to descend once more, and again, for I had to break away from the purity of the Heavens, and step into a moment; for nothing ever lasts longer, or even lasts as long as that, and thus so is my submerging below, not lasting longer than a single moment, if, yet, so much of everything can fit into a single moment ...
The book is structured around these moments of revelation of the divine and eternal in the drudgery of the daily toil. In the beginning the common thread that links the novellas together is not clear, with the point of view jumping from Japan or China to Venice or Andaluzia, from modern times to Renaissance workshops, each tale a snippet out of the continuum of life, like my quotes are snippets of the never-ending paragraphs. An early pointer can be found in the numbering of the chapters, modernist and gimmicky but not as gratuitous as it sounds. The Fibonaccy mathematical series is constructed by each iteration being the sum of its previous two numbers, and so each story stands on the shoulders on the previous ones, each puzzle piece connects to the ones already placed on the board. As an added bonus, the pre-Renascentist Fibonacci is quoting more ancient texts passed westward by the Arabs from the wisdom of Indian mystics, reflecting the author’s effort at reconciling the action oriented European heritage with the contemplative Far East.
The polarization is introduced in the very first novella, as a tourist in Kyoto stops for a moment on a bridge over the river Kamo and gazes at a hunting crane:
... everything is at play or alive, so that things happen, move on, dash along, proceed forward, sink down, rise up, disappear, emerge again, run and flow and rush somewhere, only it, the Ooshiragi, does not move at all, this enormous snow-white bird, open to attack by all, not concealing its defenselessness ...
Layer upon layer of meaning is added to this moment of eternal beauty in a transient world. The white crane becomes a painted wooden panel of a Biblical scene. A Buddha statue becomes an Orthodox icon by Andrei Rublyov. The arabesques of Alhambra are mirrored in the arpeggios of the Baroque concertoes. A Noh mask is holding conversations with a portrait of Christ by an unknown Venetian master.
... a dark obscurity lay in these eyes, and it seemed unbearable that this dark obscurity was emanating such an endless sadness, and not the sadness of one who suffers but of one who has suffered – but not even that; he got up, and then leaned back in the chair, it is not a question here of suffering but only of sorrow, a sorrow impossible to grasp in its entirety, and entirely incomprehensible to him, an immeasurable sorrow, he looked into Christ’s eyes and he saw nothing else there, just this pure sorrow, as if it were a sorrow without a cause, he froze at the thought of it, SORROW JUST LIKE THAT, FOR EVERYTHING, for creation, for existence, for beings, for time, for suffering and for passion, for birth and destruction ...
In sorting the puzzle pieces I looked for common features, lines of continuity and colour transitions. One of these is a recurring reference to restoration or restaurateurs. I am choosing to interpret this as an invitation to the modern man to reconsider the past and to recover the Sacred from the onslaught of the Profane. A dig at the direct cretinization of our ignorant present age is balanced by the dedication of a few elite souls, like the abbot of the Zengen-ji monastery in Kyoto: all that is unclean and foul and decayed and impure is now being made pure here. to the chant of mysterious and ancient sutras.
From the same episode at the monastery, the author points at the role of the artist / artisan / craftsman / novelist, whose higher sensibility allows him or her to atune his soul to the magical / mystical message of past masterpieces. A renowned Amida Buddha statue needs to be repaired, but will it lose its original mystical power in the process of restoration?
... and so where is that renowned gaze? – that is the sensitive question; to which of course Fujimori-san has an answer, namely that it is nowhere else, and nowhere else during the entire course of the restoration, but within the souls of the restorers ...
This is also an example of the less salutary elitist position taken by Krasznahorkai, that only a few special persons are allowed to glimpse at these mysteries.
... it was he who surmounted everything with the greatest of sensitivity, because he alone had a heart, and with this heart he looked at the landscape, and he looks at it now too, and it is with this heart that he sees now that everything is woven into one: the earth with the water, the water with the sky, and into the earth and the water and the sky, into this indescribable Cosmos is woven our fragile existence as well, but merely for just one moment that cannot be traced, then, already, it is no more, it disappears for all eternity, irrevocably ...
Getting off my, probably erroneus, high horse, I am moved to insert a personal note in the proceedings : Mr. K. is my kind of tourist. After long decades of living behind the Iron Curtain where the only traveling available was through the pages of books and art albums, he finally has the means and disposition to travel the world and see the wonders of the past with his own eyes. But the previous imaginary journeys are already colouring and enriching the experience far beyond the snapshot shallow quality of the moronic camera touting tourist stereotype. The key points of interest of Mr. K. travels are not to push back the tower of Pisa with your hands raised in fake perspective, but to recapture the transcendental experience of the artists of the yesterday, to grasp the spirit not the substance of the place. Such experience takes a heavy toll on Mr. K. alter egos, sometimes driving them crazy, isolating them from the crowd in a unique metaphysical sphere where Seiobo walks in grace and indifference to mortal concerns.
The episodes that resonated the most with me are thus the ones that occur in the places I have myself visited. Alhambra in particular is an occassion where the crowds of other tourists could not in the end overshadow the magic of the labyrinth of halls and fountains.
... this glittering, delicately-lived pattern points to the unity of the nature of various experiences, the unity holding all as one in a net, because the geometrical composition used by that Arab spirit, across the Greek and Hindu and Chinese and Persian cultures, actualizes a concept, namely that in place of the evil chaos of a world falling apart, let us select a higher one in which everything holds together, a gigantic unity, it is that we may select, and the Alhambra represents this unity equally in its tiniest as well as its most monumental elements ...
Like the Fibonacci mathematical formulas, the Arab artisans with their interlocking geometries and flowing scripts are agents of a higher understanding of the world, uniting the fleeting lives of individuals with universal truths : ... to say that something infinite can exist in a finite, demarcated space...
Mr. K. pays a visit even to Romania, talking in episode 144 of a commune for artists set up near a volcanic lake high up in the Carpathians, where they were supposed to gather together to create masterpieces on demand for the regime. I’m not sure he got his names right, after all Ion Grigorescu was a painter not a sculptor, but the nonconformist, modernist message is spot on, an invitation to return to an earthy source of inspiration and abandon the mannerisms and the pride of the established schools.
The insistence on personal experience and mystical revelation is present in most of the novellas, but once again, the ones describing places I am familiar with are the ones that remain stronger in my recollection. A modest janitor in Le Louvre becomes a specialist on the famous statue of Venus of Milo, and he defends his passion in a conversation with another improbably named Romanian characer, Mr. Brancoveanu:
... in his opinion this was not a competition, here, not even one stands above the other, but yet and yet, what could he do, for him personally, this, the beauty of the Venus de Milo meant the most ...
From Paris, I often go in my holidays to visit friends in Switzerland, and Morges is one of my favorite locations by the Lake Leman. Like the Swiss painter in the novel, I have often been struck with wonder and pointed my camera at the majestic vista of water, mountain and sky that makes ants of the humans strolling by the lake and reconciles me for a mystical moment with the irrevocable passage of time.
... at the end it was not his more lucid self but instead the other that was triumphant...
I hope one day I will also walk the streets of Kyoto, the most powerful and ladden with meaning of the foreign travels of Mr. K. If I do, I plan to take his novel with me for a re-read and as a guide to the wonders of secret worlds hidden behind monastery walls or behind ancient theatre masks:
Noh is the lifting up of the soul, which, if it doesn’t occur through Noh, that means that the Noh is not occuring, but if it does occur, then anyone can comprehend that above us and below us, outside of ourselves and deep within ourselves, there is a universe, the one and only, which is not identical with the sky looming above us overhead, because that universe is not made of stars and planets and suns and galaxies, because that universe is not a picture, it cannot be seen, it doesn’t even have a name, for it is so much more precious than anything that could have a name, and that is why it is such a joy to me that I can practice Seiobo; Seiobo is the emissary who arrives and says I am not the desire for peace, I am peace itself; Seiobo arrives and says do not be afraid, for the universe of peace is not the rainbow of yearning; the universe, the real universe – already exists.
I hope some of the tranquility of the crane in the middle of flowing waters will find it way into my heart and that future generations will look kindly and try to preserve the efforts of past and present artists to capture in stone, paint, word or sound the miracle of life and conscience:
... and every person will understand that something cannot be separated from something else, there is no god in some faraway dominion, there is no earth far from him here below, and there is no transcendental realm somewhere else apart from where you are now, all that you call transcendental or earthly is one and the same, together with you in one single time and one single space, and the most important of all is that there is no room here for either hope or for miracles, since hope has no basis and there are no miracles, namely that everything happens as it must happen ...
Laszlo Krasznahorkai drowned me in a sea of words in this first book of his that I read, making me work like a miner sifting through dense slurry to get at the speckles of gold. Sometimes he took pity on my stressed brain and offered the gems / keys to the kingdom in short references to old poems:
“A bird flies home across the sky. It appears to be tired, it had a difficult day. It returns from the hunt, it was hunted.”
- Al-Zahad ibn Shahib
or,
“Music is the sorrow of one
who has lost his Heavenly home”
- Ibn al-Faradh
The toil and struggle may result sometime in a high sense of achievement, in pride at getting to the end of a long journey and in admiration for the master craftsman who was my guide. I am not sure I want to start very soon on another of Mr. K’s novels, at least not while I still have to worry about earning my daily bread in the factory, but I will keep this book in my library as a bulwark against a rainy, lonely day. The last quote is appropriately from the last piece of the puzzle, with an alter-ego of the author saying goodbye to it all:
... the ceremonial swan-song of a soul sunk into silence, of a being who has overcome inconstant fate, capable of contemplating worldy existence only alongside heavenly existence...
[from Ze’ami is leaving]
July 22, 2017
This is my first time reading Krasznahorkai. Surely he is a deeply intellectual, knowledgable, 'been around - seen around' wise person. The translator's role is monumental in bringing us this book in English. Krasznahorkai writes in long sentences, mostly using the fullstop only at the end of the chapters. He writes in a meditative way. Its sort of like listening to progressive jazz, where one theme hangs in the air but constantly new ones are being born of it.
In Seiobo there Below, there are 17 chapters numbered according with the Fibonacchi sequence, sort of spiraling out to heaven. Each story is almost independent however some themes like Noh, or an artist working on his art seems to appear repeatedly. The stories take place in different times some going back 1500 years. We visit many places in Europe and Japan; in all the stories we watch an art or an artist, developing into its perfection, maturing into something divine and transcending this material world; as if peeping through a small hole in time and space.
Architectural and artistic perfection through mathematics and through faith is the main theme. In fact there is a very moving prayer of Inoue Kazuyuki at page 241 which ends 'O God the Creator, may your strenght be in performance, I give over my fate entirely'.
Although this was not an easy book to read (partly because I had to read it in hardcopy and missed luxuries of Kindle), this was a very meditative and deeply moving experience.
In Seiobo there Below, there are 17 chapters numbered according with the Fibonacchi sequence, sort of spiraling out to heaven. Each story is almost independent however some themes like Noh, or an artist working on his art seems to appear repeatedly. The stories take place in different times some going back 1500 years. We visit many places in Europe and Japan; in all the stories we watch an art or an artist, developing into its perfection, maturing into something divine and transcending this material world; as if peeping through a small hole in time and space.
Architectural and artistic perfection through mathematics and through faith is the main theme. In fact there is a very moving prayer of Inoue Kazuyuki at page 241 which ends 'O God the Creator, may your strenght be in performance, I give over my fate entirely'.
Although this was not an easy book to read (partly because I had to read it in hardcopy and missed luxuries of Kindle), this was a very meditative and deeply moving experience.
July 9, 2019
içerik sağlam: farklı kültürler, farklı zamanlar üzerinden sanata bakış, sanatın anlamı-amacı, anlaşılması-yorumlanması, sanatçı, sanatçının yaratım süreci ve sanata bağlı olarak güzellik kavramı, hakikat kavramı, değişen ve anlamını yitiren dünyada sanatın, güzelliğin ve hakikatin yeri...yazar, şeytan tangosu'nun yazarı, zaten sorgulanmaz.
fakat biçime gelince iş biraz değişiyor, en azından benim için. kitap aynı temaları işleyen bağımsız bölümlerden-öykülerden oluşuyor. bana göre ideal öykü kitabı forrmatı bu. elbette roman da yazılabilir bu formatta, iyi roman da yazılabilir, zaten bu roman da iyi bir roman ve fakat bu formatta büyük roman yazılamayacağını-olamayacağını düşünüyorum kendi adıma. bu format, söz konusu büyük roman olduğunda yetersiz, düz, kaba. romanın çok daha derinden, çok daha incelikle okuru ulaştırması gereken merkez bu formatta baştan belli ve sabit. yazar baştan oluşturduğu, sabitlediği merkezin etrafında kısa öykülerle bir tür çeşitlemeye girişiyor. bu kolaycılık bir anlamda da, hem yazar hem okur için.
romanda, özellikle ilk bölümü vurgulamak gerek, harika yazılmış bölümler de var, daha düz, yazarı-anlatıcıyı daha doğrudan konuşturma işlevi gören bölümler de. belki daha az öyküyle derinleşebilir, güçlenebilir, okura da daha fazla alan bırakarak büyük romana yaklaşabilirdi. yazar zira büyük romanlar yazabilecek, kendini, şeytan tangosu'nu da aşabilecek bir yazar.
fakat biçime gelince iş biraz değişiyor, en azından benim için. kitap aynı temaları işleyen bağımsız bölümlerden-öykülerden oluşuyor. bana göre ideal öykü kitabı forrmatı bu. elbette roman da yazılabilir bu formatta, iyi roman da yazılabilir, zaten bu roman da iyi bir roman ve fakat bu formatta büyük roman yazılamayacağını-olamayacağını düşünüyorum kendi adıma. bu format, söz konusu büyük roman olduğunda yetersiz, düz, kaba. romanın çok daha derinden, çok daha incelikle okuru ulaştırması gereken merkez bu formatta baştan belli ve sabit. yazar baştan oluşturduğu, sabitlediği merkezin etrafında kısa öykülerle bir tür çeşitlemeye girişiyor. bu kolaycılık bir anlamda da, hem yazar hem okur için.
romanda, özellikle ilk bölümü vurgulamak gerek, harika yazılmış bölümler de var, daha düz, yazarı-anlatıcıyı daha doğrudan konuşturma işlevi gören bölümler de. belki daha az öyküyle derinleşebilir, güçlenebilir, okura da daha fazla alan bırakarak büyük romana yaklaşabilirdi. yazar zira büyük romanlar yazabilecek, kendini, şeytan tangosu'nu da aşabilecek bir yazar.
December 25, 2016
"Immanence" is what you get when the spiritual world permeates the mundane. The word appears on the inside flap and nicely sums up this one's primary theme (secondary theme = inevitability of death and being forgotten forever under the force of time). Most of this seemed benevolently mundane to me, read at a slow fluid pace that so often accelerated as it reached the highest peaks. The first 50+ pages I read nearly blind, as though through a scrim of not quite comprehending between words and mind, not quite engaging, eyes covering the long sentences en route down paragraphless pages, anticipating some iridescent fleeting beauty below my steady gaze to spear and then hype on a certain book-related social media site, like the Ooshirosagi, that enormous snow-white bird in the first section/chapter/story. The prose achieves at times a sort of motionlessness, replete with unfamiliar (to me) names and terms from Japan, Italy, Greece, elsewhere, often from the art of antiquity, the eye passes over them as the mind in part thinks OK it seems like the author is really integrating research or specialized knowledge about Noh mask building etc, how do I feel about that, is he doing a good job, does ignorance of all this enhance the text's authority and does it jibe with the primary and secondary themes noted above? Yes I'd say, plus it opens little doors one might walk through one day via Google. In general, throughout I trusted that sweet fish to spear would appear at some point, and they do in nearly every chapter/story/section, usually achieving for stretches the highest level prose I've read in contemporary fiction in a long time. It's almost formulaic, maybe even absolutely formulaic, but it seems like his own formula and the prose and insight and unexpected turns cannot be faked. Toward the end, the last 100-150 pages, there's a self-referential level I appreciated, about the Alhambra's intricate, ecstatic patterns that appear behind not particularly elaborate or enticing entrances, for example, the landscape painter's parallel lines, the rant about baroque music, probably in each part actually but I only really began to register it as I read enough to recognize the lines that seemed like self-referential explanatory explorations. The Acropolis story seemed like the best standalone piece, the one I'd scan and distribute to creative writing students if I still taught. The blinding light atop the Acropolis, so bright the traveler can't really even see the place he's traveled to -- reminded me of traveling to Machu Picchu and not being able to see much thanks to fog and rain, which maybe in the end is more memorable and beautiful in a way than seeing it the way it appears on the postcards. All sections are similar, all definitely cast in the same prose style/narrative voice, but I appreciate the variation in geography, time period, and type of male protagonist, either a monk-like solitary expert deeply engaged in his craft or a novice/normal guy experiencing that sense of immanence in an ancient work of art, the Venus de Milo, a copy of a painting by Andrei Rublev (a favorite movie), etc. Loved that all the beauty and specialized craftwork of the past is buried like blind screaming dragons and only occasionally is grasped these days on earth. 4.5 stars, rounded down since the first fifty pages and the last fifty pages sort of sandwiched this one's accessible greatness and nearly straightforward sections between dense blocks of prose I'll need to reread (and then maybe knock the rating up to five stars). I'll try to add some quotations later maybe. My first Krasznahorkai but I'll get to the others in 2017, assuming the world doesn't end. Read this thanks to Michael Silverblatt's interview here: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/show.... There was something about the paperback, its glossy white covers and iridescent illuminated lettering and French flaps, that made reading this a real pleasure, too.
October 19, 2020
His most difficult and complex work yet. These stories operate like mandalas in that they use rhythm, tone and position to deliver meaning. Each segment progresses in Fibonaci's sequence, and draws readers towards an understanding of art and artists primarily. How things are made, or compiled rather and then taken back apart and ingested is a constant theme throughout. Krasznahorkai makes literary music that has nothing to do with improvisation but rather a masterful interpretation of traditional expression. As seen in Ensor's masterful drafts like the Skaters and The Cathedral - it's rhythm and tone that shows the skill of a unique and highly articulate voice. Transcendence is also a constant point of focus and there's no place for the shambling drunkards of Satantango or the circus shaman of Melancholy of Resistance. The tone is heightened and elevated here as mastery of art and the experiencing of that mastery is a repeated focus.
There are moments where the prose is delightful and articulate, intense and horrifying, innovative and intellectual and also - extremely dull. The section concerning the origin and meaning of the Alhambra was simply numbing. I didn't care and I took no joy in the repetitive pattern of the string-along-sentences that echo the pattern of Muslim architecture. Just not interested.
I like Krasznahorkai when he bares his fangs or shows his love of beauty because in both terms his prowess is almost unmatched. His overtly structural patterning that at times remind me of Bernhard's Correction in all the wrong ways interests me less.
There is a Leskov-like skill in story telling that keept me engaged generally as the masterful development of K.'s skill is always apparent. It's not at all surprising that the icon painting of Rublev, something that has compelled fellow artists such as Tarkovsy and Leskov himself, gets K.'s attention to the readers delight. There is much the reader will learn about the preparation and execution of art throughout.
Towards the end of the work the examples of structure and concordance coil away from example and towards methodology - here K. does the analysis for us as he explains such structural concerns in clear terms. There's nothing symbolist here that requires reading into. This is more a display of how-to. And yet, despite these predominant formalist elements - it's ultimately the overall tone of his writing that is most engaging. My understanding of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night as not simply a last foray into romanticism but rather a mastery, an exhaustion of a method that necessitated the subsequent abandonment of a desiccated source of expression is similar to my impression of this latest from Krasznahorkai. It is clear that he is moving way from narratives about what people are doing and it seems logical that coming works might no longer need any other humanity that that of the reader when taking the words offered
There's much more to write about this...more soon. Pardon my lack of editing...
There are moments where the prose is delightful and articulate, intense and horrifying, innovative and intellectual and also - extremely dull. The section concerning the origin and meaning of the Alhambra was simply numbing. I didn't care and I took no joy in the repetitive pattern of the string-along-sentences that echo the pattern of Muslim architecture. Just not interested.
I like Krasznahorkai when he bares his fangs or shows his love of beauty because in both terms his prowess is almost unmatched. His overtly structural patterning that at times remind me of Bernhard's Correction in all the wrong ways interests me less.
There is a Leskov-like skill in story telling that keept me engaged generally as the masterful development of K.'s skill is always apparent. It's not at all surprising that the icon painting of Rublev, something that has compelled fellow artists such as Tarkovsy and Leskov himself, gets K.'s attention to the readers delight. There is much the reader will learn about the preparation and execution of art throughout.
Towards the end of the work the examples of structure and concordance coil away from example and towards methodology - here K. does the analysis for us as he explains such structural concerns in clear terms. There's nothing symbolist here that requires reading into. This is more a display of how-to. And yet, despite these predominant formalist elements - it's ultimately the overall tone of his writing that is most engaging. My understanding of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night as not simply a last foray into romanticism but rather a mastery, an exhaustion of a method that necessitated the subsequent abandonment of a desiccated source of expression is similar to my impression of this latest from Krasznahorkai. It is clear that he is moving way from narratives about what people are doing and it seems logical that coming works might no longer need any other humanity that that of the reader when taking the words offered
There's much more to write about this...more soon. Pardon my lack of editing...
August 11, 2016
A tad overhyped, this (in some quarters). It's an interesting and unusual book, of interlocking short stories about art, beauty and the sacred. I'm not saying emperor's new clothes - but some of the superlatives...
- Unique, like nothing else. [Collective gist.]
A non-exhaustive list of things I was reminded of whilst reading Seiobo There Below: documentaries about art & building restoration; documentaries about and visits to buddhist monasteries; meditation and writing and talks on; How to Be Both by Ali Smith; Revenge by Yoko Ogawa; history lessons; the puzzles in Georges Perec books; the number/chapter games in The Luminaries; experiences of arriving somewhere ill-prepared, or feeling irritable whilst in queues; other long-sentence writers, especially in the German tradition. (All those 'as it were's were very familiar.)
- an impossibly wide range of knowledge
Seiobo is undoubtedly a knowledge and terminology-heavy book. However, nearly all of that knowledge is from two domains.
a) Mainstream European [art] history of the medieval & early modern period: a repetitive surfeit of Ital Ren; the Alhambra; Andrei Rublev. (Also, a reasonable knowledge of the bible is necessary for studying that period. Anyway, I wonder if this stuff seems more exotic to Americans, for whom it isn't so standard in curricula and holiday destinations.)
b) Traditional Japanese culture. Not a few enthusiasts of that around, and not an unusual overlapping interest with art history.
This is depth more than breadth: it's possible to see one person checking all this from a handful textbooks if he didn't know it already off the top of his head - it's not the vastly disparate facts that Pynchon employs researchers to verify; different from the scale of Perec who mentions stuff from many domains, giving a sense of how much general knowledge there is in a whole other culture; having been the sort of kid who read encyclopaedias for fun in Britain did little more than scratch the surface.
Part of the point is, of course, comparison with the likes of Perec - not with most other literary fiction published in 2014.
For a book I'd heard spoken of for the fascinating, intoxicating properties hidden beneath this plain cover*, it got a touch monotonous at times. Did we really need that many C15th-C16th artists' workshops? And such a lot of obvious destinations in the European sections, Italy, Spain, Greece: bloody Cook's Tour. (The Romanian lake and the land sculpture of the horse, though, was exactly the kind of strange and wonder I'd come here for.) Most main characters are men who are in late middle age and/or Hungarian. Surely the fabled Krasznahorkai does better than writing self-inserts? Among the most memorable lead characters were those who differed noticeably from the template, especially the Dostoevskyan working class Hungarian (still a Hungarian) stranded in Barcelona by an employment scam, and the embarrassed young Japanese chap trying to cope with his Euro friend's frequent faux pas at 'The Rebuilding of the Ise Shrine'.
Seiobo There Below had become a barometer or test to me since I first looked at it in March. I had a specific block on, or a very high threshold for, processing the run-on sentences of the first chapter. A couple of pages and my mind felt like a failing printer with 30 items backing up in the queue; soon jammed, it ground to a halt completely. And this wasn’t just at the worst times when I might expect that: even whilst I was up to enjoying Blinding: The Left Wing by Mircea Cărtărescu or The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth – books of comparable difficulty in the eyes of many - I couldn’t properly process this. But I kept looking at the sample (I must have read chapter 1 about ten times by now). On a couple of occasions, the text started to flow and so I got a copy, having become determined to conquer this thing at some hoped-for suitable time.
I’d now say that the first chapter, along with the first page each of chapters 377 (13) and 2584 (17 - they have Fibonacci numbers), is considerably more dense structurally than the rest of the book. (My head finds abstract sentences more challenging to deal with than specialist terminology.) Through the early chapters, I was aware of a slight physical tension produced by the multi-page sentences. Sometimes it suited the content very well (e.g. the harried, overheated tourist ‘Up on the Acropolis’). At others, whilst I understood their use as creating a sense of long-term unity for scenes that develop slowly, such as during ‘The Preservation of a Buddha’, this tension didn’t always seem appropriate to the subject, and I thought Krasznahorkai could perhaps have written some scenes in shorter sentences and others long to fit rhythm and mood of actions taking place**. Throughout the book, sentences, though extremely long, almost never had the sort of complexity I’d been apprehensive about. They don’t go back to an earlier point after a three page anecdote , rarely even a three-line one. It all flows along like a stream. (And sometimes the camera pans to a scene of another stream that’s a tributary of the same river.) Simply there are, for page after page, commas and conjunctions where full stop, space, capital letter would normally be found. A portion of the tension came from chopping up these sentences and editing in the conventional punctuation in my head – making a conscious decision about the ‘pause to take breath’ that Gertrude Stein acknowledged was part of the purpose of the punctuation she rejected on paper. Regardless, it was always hypnotic: more than with most books, it was easy to fall into it for pages and pages and not look up - I even remained engrossed at times when I had to use a book stand, not something I like. At some point, into the second day of reading, I stopped noticing: it wasn’t a problem any more, I wasn’t tense and I didn’t need to repunctuate consciously. I was just reading. It’s not Finnegan’s Wake.
A lot of this post so far has been about blowing raspberries at Krasznahorkai, or rather his reputation - but there are many, many wonderful things in Seiobo There Below. This is a work which, unusually, understands deeply meditative and reverent states, and great darkness and black comedy. Several chapters end with a sudden sting in the tail - most of these made me laugh; and I loved the way that they could turn a scene on its head without diminishing its earlier meaning. And whilst he does deal with some hackneyed subjects (who needs another postcard from the Alhambra or Florence for instance?... Especially at this distance, in a book, not in the place, I was sometimes like Brancoveanu, the sceptical colleague of the Venus de Milo worshipping Louvre security guard character, the one who feels the sculpture is trite) Krasznahorkai does bring a sprinkling of extra magic to these locations, conjured from detailed information that's less often heard, and from the meditation-like state of the prose which is intended to mirror both the transcendent experience of viewing great art on one hand, and the taut rope of sustained concentration, and the near-impossible perfectionism (which would be denigrated in many other scenarios) needed to produce it.
I wrote detailed summaries of all chapters(in the status updates below). But personal favourite pieces were:
- 'Kamo-Hunter' - a heron hunting, a beautiful creature yet predatory, nature and its cycles living alongside the bustle and buses of Kyoto, a city where the book returns several times. (Seiobo appears to follow the same classical Japanese tradition as Ogawa's Revenge, stories which are in some respects separate but which contain motifs and themes shared, though not according to a mechanical sequence.)
- 'Up On the Acropolis' - Just simple identification, this kind of journey, the eager adventure, the draining effort, having forgotten something vital. How often have I had this? (Though not, of course, the last few lines.)
- 'Something is Burning Outside' - at an artists' workshop in the Romanian countryside, no-one seems very productive. An impoverished-looking old man arrives, who turns out to be nationally famous artist Ion Grigorescu. Early one morning two other artists go out for a walk and find him and his project. [Grigorescu is real and I found this page for a Tate exhibition that included him. Watching its video led me to another artist's photographs of Armenia juxtaposing beautiful snow scenes and decaying concrete tower blocks of stunning yet brutal design.]
- 'Private Passion'. A scene which would have been quite different, laughable probably, in the medium of film or radio. An old architect, of repulsive appearance and grating voice, delivers an adult education lecture to a few bored, numbed Swiss villagers. He is, at best, a buffoon - worse, experienced by his audience as a Job-like test. His crazy passion for the music of the Baroque has a Byronic intensity which comes through on the page, making it possible to hear how differently it might have been received from a person who was attractive and charismatic, and to consider the idea of a personality trapped inside an exterior shell that doesn't match. (Or did Krasznahorkai just write this text too well for this character?)
- 'Screaming Beneath the Earth' - I don't really agree with the extent of darkness which things, life and death are viewed in this final chapter (c.f. some people find looking at the stars and thinking how insignficant we are to be depressing, I find it comforting). But the archaeological vision in this piece was exhilarating, of all these past creatures under the ground.
- In general, I've become more interested in Shinto, and the unique way in which an ancient animist / pagan religion remains part of every day life in a highly developed country. (Amazing to imagine if we still had continuous traditions like this.) It's thanks, I'm guessing, to Japan's long isolation from monotheisms, and the economic strength and stability that allowed it to forge ahead for itself without subjection to significant outside influences.
There is great stuff in Seiobo There Below, but it doesn't have the magic for me that it does for many other readers; it wasn't a transcendent experience, though it was meditative. I daresay a few others in time will find the characters a little samey. Nonetheless, there's be an ineffable something I just don't get, as with my similar underwhelmed-but-not-disliking reaction to another of the Best Translated Book Longlist, Stig Saetterbakken's Through the Night. I'd still rate a few of those longlisted books higher than this one, and, contrary to almost every opinion I've read, think the Cărtărescu better for its unusual fusion of biological science and surrealism and narrative - art in literature has been done often enough (and there's been a lot of it about in 2014 publications). I wasn't quite in the mood for these topics and places right now - the Meditteranean, Japan - they feel more summery: I wanted the dark and brooding of central European traditon, which likely would have been better served by Satantango rather than Krasznahorkai's sunlight-dappled, meditation-infused, voyage away from home.
* The chest on the cover, as well as being an obvious metaphor for looking into, opening up etc, refers to a trousseau-chest from the school of Botticelli that features in chapter 2. Its outline and the title lettering are made of a rainbow-shimmery stuff most familiar from kids' stationery. So up close, not entirely as plain as it looks.
** There's a pretty good discussion about Krasznahorkai's sentences in this interview and the comments. Shame that, despite the mention of his 'broken English', that people sharp enough to know better then take his phrase 'loss of a culture of poverty' at face value rather than considering consumerism and folk culture.
- Unique, like nothing else. [Collective gist.]
A non-exhaustive list of things I was reminded of whilst reading Seiobo There Below: documentaries about art & building restoration; documentaries about and visits to buddhist monasteries; meditation and writing and talks on; How to Be Both by Ali Smith; Revenge by Yoko Ogawa; history lessons; the puzzles in Georges Perec books; the number/chapter games in The Luminaries; experiences of arriving somewhere ill-prepared, or feeling irritable whilst in queues; other long-sentence writers, especially in the German tradition. (All those 'as it were's were very familiar.)
- an impossibly wide range of knowledge
Seiobo is undoubtedly a knowledge and terminology-heavy book. However, nearly all of that knowledge is from two domains.
a) Mainstream European [art] history of the medieval & early modern period: a repetitive surfeit of Ital Ren; the Alhambra; Andrei Rublev. (Also, a reasonable knowledge of the bible is necessary for studying that period. Anyway, I wonder if this stuff seems more exotic to Americans, for whom it isn't so standard in curricula and holiday destinations.)
b) Traditional Japanese culture. Not a few enthusiasts of that around, and not an unusual overlapping interest with art history.
This is depth more than breadth: it's possible to see one person checking all this from a handful textbooks if he didn't know it already off the top of his head - it's not the vastly disparate facts that Pynchon employs researchers to verify; different from the scale of Perec who mentions stuff from many domains, giving a sense of how much general knowledge there is in a whole other culture; having been the sort of kid who read encyclopaedias for fun in Britain did little more than scratch the surface.
Part of the point is, of course, comparison with the likes of Perec - not with most other literary fiction published in 2014.
For a book I'd heard spoken of for the fascinating, intoxicating properties hidden beneath this plain cover*, it got a touch monotonous at times. Did we really need that many C15th-C16th artists' workshops? And such a lot of obvious destinations in the European sections, Italy, Spain, Greece: bloody Cook's Tour. (The Romanian lake and the land sculpture of the horse, though, was exactly the kind of strange and wonder I'd come here for.) Most main characters are men who are in late middle age and/or Hungarian. Surely the fabled Krasznahorkai does better than writing self-inserts? Among the most memorable lead characters were those who differed noticeably from the template, especially the Dostoevskyan working class Hungarian (still a Hungarian) stranded in Barcelona by an employment scam, and the embarrassed young Japanese chap trying to cope with his Euro friend's frequent faux pas at 'The Rebuilding of the Ise Shrine'.
Seiobo There Below had become a barometer or test to me since I first looked at it in March. I had a specific block on, or a very high threshold for, processing the run-on sentences of the first chapter. A couple of pages and my mind felt like a failing printer with 30 items backing up in the queue; soon jammed, it ground to a halt completely. And this wasn’t just at the worst times when I might expect that: even whilst I was up to enjoying Blinding: The Left Wing by Mircea Cărtărescu or The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth – books of comparable difficulty in the eyes of many - I couldn’t properly process this. But I kept looking at the sample (I must have read chapter 1 about ten times by now). On a couple of occasions, the text started to flow and so I got a copy, having become determined to conquer this thing at some hoped-for suitable time.
I’d now say that the first chapter, along with the first page each of chapters 377 (13) and 2584 (17 - they have Fibonacci numbers), is considerably more dense structurally than the rest of the book. (My head finds abstract sentences more challenging to deal with than specialist terminology.) Through the early chapters, I was aware of a slight physical tension produced by the multi-page sentences. Sometimes it suited the content very well (e.g. the harried, overheated tourist ‘Up on the Acropolis’). At others, whilst I understood their use as creating a sense of long-term unity for scenes that develop slowly, such as during ‘The Preservation of a Buddha’, this tension didn’t always seem appropriate to the subject, and I thought Krasznahorkai could perhaps have written some scenes in shorter sentences and others long to fit rhythm and mood of actions taking place**. Throughout the book, sentences, though extremely long, almost never had the sort of complexity I’d been apprehensive about. They don’t go back to an earlier point after a three page anecdote , rarely even a three-line one. It all flows along like a stream. (And sometimes the camera pans to a scene of another stream that’s a tributary of the same river.) Simply there are, for page after page, commas and conjunctions where full stop, space, capital letter would normally be found. A portion of the tension came from chopping up these sentences and editing in the conventional punctuation in my head – making a conscious decision about the ‘pause to take breath’ that Gertrude Stein acknowledged was part of the purpose of the punctuation she rejected on paper. Regardless, it was always hypnotic: more than with most books, it was easy to fall into it for pages and pages and not look up - I even remained engrossed at times when I had to use a book stand, not something I like. At some point, into the second day of reading, I stopped noticing: it wasn’t a problem any more, I wasn’t tense and I didn’t need to repunctuate consciously. I was just reading. It’s not Finnegan’s Wake.
A lot of this post so far has been about blowing raspberries at Krasznahorkai, or rather his reputation - but there are many, many wonderful things in Seiobo There Below. This is a work which, unusually, understands deeply meditative and reverent states, and great darkness and black comedy. Several chapters end with a sudden sting in the tail - most of these made me laugh; and I loved the way that they could turn a scene on its head without diminishing its earlier meaning. And whilst he does deal with some hackneyed subjects (who needs another postcard from the Alhambra or Florence for instance?... Especially at this distance, in a book, not in the place, I was sometimes like Brancoveanu, the sceptical colleague of the Venus de Milo worshipping Louvre security guard character, the one who feels the sculpture is trite) Krasznahorkai does bring a sprinkling of extra magic to these locations, conjured from detailed information that's less often heard, and from the meditation-like state of the prose which is intended to mirror both the transcendent experience of viewing great art on one hand, and the taut rope of sustained concentration, and the near-impossible perfectionism (which would be denigrated in many other scenarios) needed to produce it.
I wrote detailed summaries of all chapters(in the status updates below). But personal favourite pieces were:
- 'Kamo-Hunter' - a heron hunting, a beautiful creature yet predatory, nature and its cycles living alongside the bustle and buses of Kyoto, a city where the book returns several times. (Seiobo appears to follow the same classical Japanese tradition as Ogawa's Revenge, stories which are in some respects separate but which contain motifs and themes shared, though not according to a mechanical sequence.)
- 'Up On the Acropolis' - Just simple identification, this kind of journey, the eager adventure, the draining effort, having forgotten something vital. How often have I had this? (Though not, of course, the last few lines.)
- 'Something is Burning Outside' - at an artists' workshop in the Romanian countryside, no-one seems very productive. An impoverished-looking old man arrives, who turns out to be nationally famous artist Ion Grigorescu. Early one morning two other artists go out for a walk and find him and his project. [Grigorescu is real and I found this page for a Tate exhibition that included him. Watching its video led me to another artist's photographs of Armenia juxtaposing beautiful snow scenes and decaying concrete tower blocks of stunning yet brutal design.]
- 'Private Passion'. A scene which would have been quite different, laughable probably, in the medium of film or radio. An old architect, of repulsive appearance and grating voice, delivers an adult education lecture to a few bored, numbed Swiss villagers. He is, at best, a buffoon - worse, experienced by his audience as a Job-like test. His crazy passion for the music of the Baroque has a Byronic intensity which comes through on the page, making it possible to hear how differently it might have been received from a person who was attractive and charismatic, and to consider the idea of a personality trapped inside an exterior shell that doesn't match. (Or did Krasznahorkai just write this text too well for this character?)
- 'Screaming Beneath the Earth' - I don't really agree with the extent of darkness which things, life and death are viewed in this final chapter (c.f. some people find looking at the stars and thinking how insignficant we are to be depressing, I find it comforting). But the archaeological vision in this piece was exhilarating, of all these past creatures under the ground.
- In general, I've become more interested in Shinto, and the unique way in which an ancient animist / pagan religion remains part of every day life in a highly developed country. (Amazing to imagine if we still had continuous traditions like this.) It's thanks, I'm guessing, to Japan's long isolation from monotheisms, and the economic strength and stability that allowed it to forge ahead for itself without subjection to significant outside influences.
There is great stuff in Seiobo There Below, but it doesn't have the magic for me that it does for many other readers; it wasn't a transcendent experience, though it was meditative. I daresay a few others in time will find the characters a little samey. Nonetheless, there's be an ineffable something I just don't get, as with my similar underwhelmed-but-not-disliking reaction to another of the Best Translated Book Longlist, Stig Saetterbakken's Through the Night. I'd still rate a few of those longlisted books higher than this one, and, contrary to almost every opinion I've read, think the Cărtărescu better for its unusual fusion of biological science and surrealism and narrative - art in literature has been done often enough (and there's been a lot of it about in 2014 publications). I wasn't quite in the mood for these topics and places right now - the Meditteranean, Japan - they feel more summery: I wanted the dark and brooding of central European traditon, which likely would have been better served by Satantango rather than Krasznahorkai's sunlight-dappled, meditation-infused, voyage away from home.
* The chest on the cover, as well as being an obvious metaphor for looking into, opening up etc, refers to a trousseau-chest from the school of Botticelli that features in chapter 2. Its outline and the title lettering are made of a rainbow-shimmery stuff most familiar from kids' stationery. So up close, not entirely as plain as it looks.
** There's a pretty good discussion about Krasznahorkai's sentences in this interview and the comments. Shame that, despite the mention of his 'broken English', that people sharp enough to know better then take his phrase 'loss of a culture of poverty' at face value rather than considering consumerism and folk culture.
April 9, 2021
A truly stunning work.
Through a series of beautiful stories Krasznahorkai explores the immanence of the divine in human artistic creation.
As just one small detail - the chapters are not numbered sequentially but rather in the Fibonacci sequence, with each chapter number the sum of the proceeding chapters. This mirrors the way that the book's themes build up between the seemingly unconnected stories. And, of course, the ratio between successive chapter numbers then converges on the Golden Ratio - a mathematical fraction that occures often in works of art (e.g. the dimensions of the Parthenon, featured in one chapter), often referred to as the Divine Proportion.
Through a series of beautiful stories Krasznahorkai explores the immanence of the divine in human artistic creation.
As just one small detail - the chapters are not numbered sequentially but rather in the Fibonacci sequence, with each chapter number the sum of the proceeding chapters. This mirrors the way that the book's themes build up between the seemingly unconnected stories. And, of course, the ratio between successive chapter numbers then converges on the Golden Ratio - a mathematical fraction that occures often in works of art (e.g. the dimensions of the Parthenon, featured in one chapter), often referred to as the Divine Proportion.
July 25, 2019
Σίγουρα ένα βιβλίο που ξεχωρίζει.
5 αστέρια γιατί αν και δεν θεωρώ ότι όλα τα κείμενα είναι ισάξια, η ματιά του Krasznahorkai με συγκλόνισε.
17 κείμενα για τη τέχνη και το ιερό.
Μια πολύ ιδιαίτερη προσέγγιση …
Ακόμη και για την αρίθμηση των κεφαλαίων δεν διάλεξε τον συμβατικό τρόπο αλλά την αρίθμηση Fibonacci, η οποία αν και έχει μαθηματική λογική, η σημασία της για τους καλλιτέχνες έγκειται στις αισθητικές σχέσεις που δημιουργούν μέσα σε μια σύνθεση. Έτσι λοιπόν η σειρά των κεφαλαίων ξεκινάει "φωτεινά"και καταλήγει με μια κραυγή στο σκοτάδι.
Μια λογοτεχνία που ξεφεύγει από τις σημερινές τετριμμένες και αναμασημένες μεθόδους συγγραφής. Μια λογοτεχνία που δεν υποτάσσεται όπως ο ίδιος λέει στη βιομηχανία ψυχαγωγίας. Που απαιτεί έναν αναγνώστη συγκεντρωμένο και σε διέγερση.
Ο χαρακτηριστικός μακροπερίοδος λόγος του, ενώ στην αρχή φαίνεται πολύπλοκος, χαοτικός, εν τέλει είναι τόσο λιτός όσο ένα ιαπωνικό δωμάτιο.
5 αστέρια γιατί αν και δεν θεωρώ ότι όλα τα κείμενα είναι ισάξια, η ματιά του Krasznahorkai με συγκλόνισε.
17 κείμενα για τη τέχνη και το ιερό.
Μια πολύ ιδιαίτερη προσέγγιση …
Ακόμη και για την αρίθμηση των κεφαλαίων δεν διάλεξε τον συμβατικό τρόπο αλλά την αρίθμηση Fibonacci, η οποία αν και έχει μαθηματική λογική, η σημασία της για τους καλλιτέχνες έγκειται στις αισθητικές σχέσεις που δημιουργούν μέσα σε μια σύνθεση. Έτσι λοιπόν η σειρά των κεφαλαίων ξεκινάει "φωτεινά"και καταλήγει με μια κραυγή στο σκοτάδι.
Μια λογοτεχνία που ξεφεύγει από τις σημερινές τετριμμένες και αναμασημένες μεθόδους συγγραφής. Μια λογοτεχνία που δεν υποτάσσεται όπως ο ίδιος λέει στη βιομηχανία ψυχαγωγίας. Που απαιτεί έναν αναγνώστη συγκεντρωμένο και σε διέγερση.
Ο χαρακτηριστικός μακροπερίοδος λόγος του, ενώ στην αρχή φαίνεται πολύπλοκος, χαοτικός, εν τέλει είναι τόσο λιτός όσο ένα ιαπωνικό δωμάτιο.
May 13, 2019
Λατρεύω Κρασναχορκάι και ουγγρική λογοτεχνία.
July 6, 2014
You reach through bars. Your arm is stretched to the furthest possible extent; tense and aching from the effort. You wriggle your fingers attempting to come into contact with an object that has enormous significance for you. You are convinced that just to touch it once would resolve so much that has become disfigured in your life. With one final strain you manage it. A finger has lightly pressed against this sacred talisman. What do you feel? Relieved? Renewed? Transformed? How fleeting will this feeling be? Or will it last for the rest of your life? Was it a moment that will, like the memory of its occurrence, remain indelible? Or will you, even as your finger is against this object, feel an absence of all feeling. A failure of transformation that is, despite your immense effort, beyond reach?
'Seiobo There Below' is, in many ways, utterly unlike the three other Krasznahorkai novels that have been translated. Where previously we were mired in random acts of brutality or understandable despair, we are here presented with immensely patient considerations of the ways in which art or the sacred can be deeply transcendent. This willingness to confront beauty in an open, whole-hearted way is certainly unexpected, and makes for deeply engaged writing, and deeply absorbing reading. Whether that beauty is illustrated through a detailed examination of the composure of a heron, the carving of a noh-theatre mask or an amusingly opinionated lecture about baroque music, Kransnahorkai, seems to be genuinely in awe of the power of these, and other elements of our lives, to give meaning and purpose to our existence.
But while all of this is new and unexpected, an essential element of the previous novels is present here too, because there has always been a sense in each of the novels that a moment, an action, a prophet will, given time and a favorable alignment of circumstances, transform the lives of those who are seeking solace. That yearning is an essence of all of his writing, but here it becomes - in its many manifestations - almost his sole subject matter. But, it never brought about the hoped for transformation in the other books. Can we believe that it is possible in these remarkable episodes? I want to believe it. I need to believe it...
'Seiobo There Below' is, in many ways, utterly unlike the three other Krasznahorkai novels that have been translated. Where previously we were mired in random acts of brutality or understandable despair, we are here presented with immensely patient considerations of the ways in which art or the sacred can be deeply transcendent. This willingness to confront beauty in an open, whole-hearted way is certainly unexpected, and makes for deeply engaged writing, and deeply absorbing reading. Whether that beauty is illustrated through a detailed examination of the composure of a heron, the carving of a noh-theatre mask or an amusingly opinionated lecture about baroque music, Kransnahorkai, seems to be genuinely in awe of the power of these, and other elements of our lives, to give meaning and purpose to our existence.
But while all of this is new and unexpected, an essential element of the previous novels is present here too, because there has always been a sense in each of the novels that a moment, an action, a prophet will, given time and a favorable alignment of circumstances, transform the lives of those who are seeking solace. That yearning is an essence of all of his writing, but here it becomes - in its many manifestations - almost his sole subject matter. But, it never brought about the hoped for transformation in the other books. Can we believe that it is possible in these remarkable episodes? I want to believe it. I need to believe it...
August 1, 2024
R. Musil Günlükler’inde şöyle bir yazmıştı: “Alışılmış romanlar üzerine yazılacak pek bir şey yok .” Zaten alışılmış romanlar yakanıza da yapışmaz ilgi diye. Okursunuz, rafta gözünüze çarpması da keyif verir.
L. Krasznahorkai kitapları benim konuşmak, yazmak ve üzerine sohbet etmekten keyif aldığım “alışılmışın dışında” kitaplar.
Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı okuduğum en iyi avangart kurgu, en zengin içerik, mükemmel bir tarihçe.
L. Krasznahorkai’nin tercih ettiği kaotik, girift, çözümleme gerektiren bir anlatım şekli var. Ülkemiz okurunun yazarın kitapları ile daha fazla ilgilenmeme nedeni de sanırım bu.
Bazen benim de çabama rağmen bir şey elde edemediğim bu tarz karışık metinler oluyor ancak Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı çabayı ve de ilgiyi fazlasıyla hak eden kurgusal bir anlatı. Roman diyerek okuru yanıltmak istemiyorum. O kalıptan çok uzak.
Yazarın özellikle bu kitabı için yapılan noktasız, sayfalarca sürüp giden cümlelerin okumayı zorlaştırdığı eleştirilerinin aksine virgüllerle güçlendirilmiş, okumayı kesintiye uğratmayan cümleler olarak, hatta yalın cümleler olarak görüyorum bunları. Bunu da birçok yerde okuyabileceğiniz eleştiri kitapla aranıza mesafe koymasın diye yazıyorum. Herkes için aynı şeyi ifade etmeyebiliyor bazen teknik ve üslup.
Bölümler arasında bir devamlılık ya da bağlantı aramayın çünkü yok. Her bölüm dünyanın farklı bir noktasında, farklı kişiler ve hikayeler ile kurulu. Aradaki tek bağlantı hikayelerin tematik olarak sanat merkezli olmaları diyebilirim.
Bölümlerin sıralanışına değinmiyorum. Google’manız gereken şeyler listenizin başında bu var.
Öncelikle hikayelerin tümü tapınak, müze, atölye, stüdyo ve galerilerde geçmekte.
Kraliçe Vashti, Esther’in kitabı, Filippino, Zengen-ji’nin restorasyonu, Vededik’teki ölü İsa tablosu, barok müziği, Acropolis, Noh tiyatrosu, Alhambra, Kutsal Teslis İkonası, Doğunun gelenekleri, Şinto ritüelleri, Milo Venüs…
Kitap derya deniz. Bir röportajında on yıl kadar Uzak Doğu’yu gezdiğini söylemişti Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Gezmekle kalmamış, adım adım not almış, gördüğü yerleri kalemiyle ince ince dokumuş.
Bahsi geçen yerleri görme imkanınız olmuşsa kitap size Krasznahorkai’nin gönderdiği bir sürpsiz adeta. O günlere dönüp fotoğraf arşivinizin içinde kaybolmak ise büyük keyif.
Henüz görmemiş iseniz de size muhteşem keşifler yapma imkanı sunuyor. Sanat eserlerin birer sembol olmasından çok öte birer ilahi ritüel, bir adanmışlık ve bir inanç temeliyle inşa edildiğinin bilincine varmanızı sağlıyor.
Kişinin deneyimini geliştirmek için usta işi anlatıların olduğu nefis bir kitap Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı.
ELEŞTİRİ (KÜÇÜK AMA)
Yazar neden öfkeli,hırçın,cani vs. olabilecek karakterler yaratmış ve onları uzun uzun tanımamızı istemiş olabilir anlayamadığım yegane şey. Mevzu sanatken üstelik, bu karakter çizgisindeki insanların sanatla ilgilenmesini, sanata tutkuyla bağlı olmasını ise yapay ve zorlama buldum diyebilirim.
Ayrıca Satantango’daki yağmurdan çamurdan ya da Direnişin Melankolisi’ndeki karanlık ve kasvetten eser yok Seiobo’da.
L. Krasznahorka’nin belki de en aydınlık kitabı.
L. Krasznahorkai kitapları benim konuşmak, yazmak ve üzerine sohbet etmekten keyif aldığım “alışılmışın dışında” kitaplar.
Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı okuduğum en iyi avangart kurgu, en zengin içerik, mükemmel bir tarihçe.
L. Krasznahorkai’nin tercih ettiği kaotik, girift, çözümleme gerektiren bir anlatım şekli var. Ülkemiz okurunun yazarın kitapları ile daha fazla ilgilenmeme nedeni de sanırım bu.
Bazen benim de çabama rağmen bir şey elde edemediğim bu tarz karışık metinler oluyor ancak Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı çabayı ve de ilgiyi fazlasıyla hak eden kurgusal bir anlatı. Roman diyerek okuru yanıltmak istemiyorum. O kalıptan çok uzak.
Yazarın özellikle bu kitabı için yapılan noktasız, sayfalarca sürüp giden cümlelerin okumayı zorlaştırdığı eleştirilerinin aksine virgüllerle güçlendirilmiş, okumayı kesintiye uğratmayan cümleler olarak, hatta yalın cümleler olarak görüyorum bunları. Bunu da birçok yerde okuyabileceğiniz eleştiri kitapla aranıza mesafe koymasın diye yazıyorum. Herkes için aynı şeyi ifade etmeyebiliyor bazen teknik ve üslup.
Bölümler arasında bir devamlılık ya da bağlantı aramayın çünkü yok. Her bölüm dünyanın farklı bir noktasında, farklı kişiler ve hikayeler ile kurulu. Aradaki tek bağlantı hikayelerin tematik olarak sanat merkezli olmaları diyebilirim.
Bölümlerin sıralanışına değinmiyorum. Google’manız gereken şeyler listenizin başında bu var.
Öncelikle hikayelerin tümü tapınak, müze, atölye, stüdyo ve galerilerde geçmekte.
Kraliçe Vashti, Esther’in kitabı, Filippino, Zengen-ji’nin restorasyonu, Vededik’teki ölü İsa tablosu, barok müziği, Acropolis, Noh tiyatrosu, Alhambra, Kutsal Teslis İkonası, Doğunun gelenekleri, Şinto ritüelleri, Milo Venüs…
Kitap derya deniz. Bir röportajında on yıl kadar Uzak Doğu’yu gezdiğini söylemişti Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Gezmekle kalmamış, adım adım not almış, gördüğü yerleri kalemiyle ince ince dokumuş.
Bahsi geçen yerleri görme imkanınız olmuşsa kitap size Krasznahorkai’nin gönderdiği bir sürpsiz adeta. O günlere dönüp fotoğraf arşivinizin içinde kaybolmak ise büyük keyif.
Henüz görmemiş iseniz de size muhteşem keşifler yapma imkanı sunuyor. Sanat eserlerin birer sembol olmasından çok öte birer ilahi ritüel, bir adanmışlık ve bir inanç temeliyle inşa edildiğinin bilincine varmanızı sağlıyor.
Kişinin deneyimini geliştirmek için usta işi anlatıların olduğu nefis bir kitap Seiobo Orada, Aşağıdaydı.
ELEŞTİRİ (KÜÇÜK AMA)
Yazar neden öfkeli,hırçın,cani vs. olabilecek karakterler yaratmış ve onları uzun uzun tanımamızı istemiş olabilir anlayamadığım yegane şey. Mevzu sanatken üstelik, bu karakter çizgisindeki insanların sanatla ilgilenmesini, sanata tutkuyla bağlı olmasını ise yapay ve zorlama buldum diyebilirim.
Ayrıca Satantango’daki yağmurdan çamurdan ya da Direnişin Melankolisi’ndeki karanlık ve kasvetten eser yok Seiobo’da.
L. Krasznahorka’nin belki de en aydınlık kitabı.
November 16, 2022
Art as the Wound Dressing
The recent outbreak of the epidemic of vandalism has reminded me of this outstanding literary meditation on art.
Krasznahorkai’s powerful stories are a perfect exemplification of Andrey Kuraev’s definition of culture. In his essay, the Russian theologian argues that culture is like a pearl that humanity builds to cover the wound produced in its being as a result of Adam’s fall.
Mathias Énard explores the various faces of culture in his Compass, but does so horizontally, moving mostly in an aesthetic dimension. Krasznahorkai’s explorations of art connect the East and the West vertically. While Énard reveals the links from here to there and back, Krasznahorkai moves on a there-above and there-below line, summarizing encounters with art in a leitmotif: “concealed in its essence, by its appearance revealed”. Most stories revolve around a specific artwork, and the gamut of emotions they inspire resemble the religious experience: awe and fear and a sense of one’s inadequacy in the face of mystery. He reiterates this in one of his interviews: "the sentence itself is not perfection, but perfection is hidden in a sentence".
These long-winding phrases - a hallmark of Krasznahorkai and, as he confesses, perhaps a culmination of his desire for beauty in language - present all the phases of the birth and ‘life’ of art: the initial creation, its presence in art venues, its restoration. The artist’s role in the process reflects the same play of mystery versus visibility: an almost complete obscuring of the self in the Eastern places and an active self-awareness of the creative artist in Western restoration.
Contrast as the driving force surfaces elsewhere, too. The Buddhist monks are penitent even for their own sinful existence (a detail regretfully mistranslated in the English version), while the Cristo Morto suffers for these creatures’ sins. One offers the principle of suffering, the other offers grace.
Religious art gets a special focus in the stories, which brings me back to my old inquiry: is religious art – art? Or is it something entirely different? In the light of Kuraev’s metaphor it’s easy to claim it is the latter. But in the spirit of Kuraev’s own investigations, I’d say the very freedom which is essential for art (even or especially religious) to be created moves the answer in the other direction.
The final lines of every story are about definitiveness, death, eternity. Art is a deadly serious business. This gloomy undercurrent erupts in the last and shortest story, which features one of Krasznahorkai’s recurrent images, the microscopic processes of living (or dead) matter and soil. The howling figures locked for ever (or maybe not) in the darkness underneath come as a revelation that seems to be connected to the other strikingly short story in the book: the one about Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu who sculpts an escaping horse from the soil:
The recent outbreak of the epidemic of vandalism has reminded me of this outstanding literary meditation on art.
Krasznahorkai’s powerful stories are a perfect exemplification of Andrey Kuraev’s definition of culture. In his essay, the Russian theologian argues that culture is like a pearl that humanity builds to cover the wound produced in its being as a result of Adam’s fall.
Mathias Énard explores the various faces of culture in his Compass, but does so horizontally, moving mostly in an aesthetic dimension. Krasznahorkai’s explorations of art connect the East and the West vertically. While Énard reveals the links from here to there and back, Krasznahorkai moves on a there-above and there-below line, summarizing encounters with art in a leitmotif: “concealed in its essence, by its appearance revealed”. Most stories revolve around a specific artwork, and the gamut of emotions they inspire resemble the religious experience: awe and fear and a sense of one’s inadequacy in the face of mystery. He reiterates this in one of his interviews: "the sentence itself is not perfection, but perfection is hidden in a sentence".
These long-winding phrases - a hallmark of Krasznahorkai and, as he confesses, perhaps a culmination of his desire for beauty in language - present all the phases of the birth and ‘life’ of art: the initial creation, its presence in art venues, its restoration. The artist’s role in the process reflects the same play of mystery versus visibility: an almost complete obscuring of the self in the Eastern places and an active self-awareness of the creative artist in Western restoration.
Contrast as the driving force surfaces elsewhere, too. The Buddhist monks are penitent even for their own sinful existence (a detail regretfully mistranslated in the English version), while the Cristo Morto suffers for these creatures’ sins. One offers the principle of suffering, the other offers grace.
Religious art gets a special focus in the stories, which brings me back to my old inquiry: is religious art – art? Or is it something entirely different? In the light of Kuraev’s metaphor it’s easy to claim it is the latter. But in the spirit of Kuraev’s own investigations, I’d say the very freedom which is essential for art (even or especially religious) to be created moves the answer in the other direction.
The final lines of every story are about definitiveness, death, eternity. Art is a deadly serious business. This gloomy undercurrent erupts in the last and shortest story, which features one of Krasznahorkai’s recurrent images, the microscopic processes of living (or dead) matter and soil. The howling figures locked for ever (or maybe not) in the darkness underneath come as a revelation that seems to be connected to the other strikingly short story in the book: the one about Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu who sculpts an escaping horse from the soil:
… with a slow, broad movement of his arm, he indicated the entire landscape.Art, this expression which inevitably has to hide in order to express, is thus an unearthing, a shaping of the collective existential experience of humanity. As the stories here are linked together in a Fibonacci sequence, so is art (i.e. storytelling in its various rich forms) a chain of threaded narratives we take over, modulate, and pass on to the next generations:
There are still so many of them, he said in a faint voice.
but this actually was not his own memory, he says, this was told to him by his mother much later, and so it remained like that, it became his own memory, and now he relates it as if he were recollecting something he remembered.Even though excellence, the rarity of beauty or talent, are inevitably causes for exile, the immediacy of the revelation found in art, its ability to connect us to something larger, does heal some of the solitude.
October 21, 2021
There is no doubt, I much prefer the mud and rain, the cold decaying misery, the apocalyptic terror stricken feeling, the revulsion, tension and cynicism of Central Europe - namely Krasznahorkai's native Hungary - of both The Melancholy of Resistance & Satantango, and the fact that structurally both read like novels. But, I'd be lying if I said there was nothing to like about this. It's a thing of meditative beauty, with writing that takes one's breath away. Split into 17 stories, Seiobo There Below looks at the aesthetic experience and relationship between art and artist, and takes in such places as Japan and Italy. You know you are in for something entirely different when in the first part the consciousness of a crane in Kyoto is explored. Impossible to pigeonhole into a particular genre, and tough to get going at first, it really does require patience and a clear mind. It's all rather phenomenal really, but I don't think it's a masterpiece in the way The Melancholy of Resistance was. Some will say this is his best book, but it all depends on how deeply the reader takes it all in. Definitely not oe for the casual reader.
September 4, 2019
Θαυμάσιο! Γεμάτο συμβολισμούς! Ενα από τα στοιχεία που λάτρεψα - γιατί είναι πολλά - είναι ότι περισσότερα αφήνει στην σκέψη του αναγνώστη παρά τα επεξηγεί αναλυτικά. Η γραφή του ρέει με ταχύτητα "φωτός"! Υπέροχο βιβλίο από έναν πολύ μεγάλο συγγραφέα της εποχής μας!
http://quarterlyconversation.com/seio...
http://quarterlyconversation.com/seio...
February 17, 2020
Από τον Λάσλο Κρασναχορκάι, με αβάσταχτη ένταση, για τη συγκίνηση που προκαλεί η μεγάλη τέχνη.
June 19, 2015
"Even the grey clouds are black in Krasznahorkai's world and don't let the silver linings fool you. That is black." Me
I approached the reading of László Krashnahorkai's 'Seiobo There Below' with some excitement because, I must admit, I am smitten with his writing. It was a hot, sunny day so I wandered down to a bench by the riverside and read about a view of a river (the Kamo River in Japan), much like the one I saw spread out in front of me (the Rideau River),
"... and all the individual glittering of light flashing on the surface of this fleeting element, this surface suddenly emerging and just as quickly collapsing, with its drops of light dying down, scintillating and then reeling in all directions, inexpressible in words; ..."
"... inexpressible in words; ..." Krashnahorkai, the author who led me in a dance with the Devil in the dark, rainy Hell of 'Satantango' seemed to be taking me into another world in a kinder, gentler nature in Japan.
I looked at the scene before me, like Krashnahorkai's, framed by traffic noise and was delighted to watch a great blue heron land between the scattered grass islands in the shallow river, find his footing in the gravel below his feet and stand motionless, watching the water before his eyes.
"... only it, the Ooshirosagi, does not move at all, this enormous snow-white bird, open to attack by all, not concealing its defencelessness; this hunter, it leans forward, its neck folded in an S-form, and it now extends its head and its long hard beak out from this S-form, and strains the whole, but at the same time it is strained forward, its wings pressed tightly against its body, its thin legs searching for a firm point beneath the water's surface; the surface, yes, while it sees, crystal-clear, what lies beneath this surface, down below in the refractions of light, ...."
In the juxtaposition between the reality in front of me and the somewhat transcendent world of the sublime being woven in words in the book, I allowed myself to be lured into Krashnahorkai's trap. Japan, nature, the motionless bird in its Zen-trance among the swirling waters and the man-made chaos around him. I entered into it all willingly. And then the end of the story (chapter) and the trap closed.
"....it would be better for you to go away this very evening when twilight begins to fall, it would be better for you to retreat with the others, if night begins to descend, and you should not come back if tomorrow or after tomorrow, dawn breaks, because for you it will be much better for there to be no tomorrow and no day after tomorrow; so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that—breathe your last."
Krashnahorkai asserted his vision, "sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear...." The trap closed on me as I sat there watching the heron. All my Zen, Daoism, and romanticism melted away. Thus ended the first of the seventeen theme-linked stories of 'Seibu There Below'. Krashnahorkai, the apparent architect of Hell, had created an ordered world of Asian transcendence and smashed it to pieces. In the sixteen stories to follow, he managed to do it again and again.
In 'The Queen Exiled' we are reminded of the Biblical story of Esther in which Queen Vashti, acclaimed for her beauty, is raised up to the throne by the love of the King who seems to be risking all, caught up as he is in his love for her. Then, in a moment, as she seems to disobey him, his male ego wounded, he exiles her, and worse, has her murdered, her sublime beauty gone from the world forever. Within the same story, we follow the Italian Renaissance artist as he tries to recreate scenes from her life and the efforts of art specialists in later times as the struggle to discern who the artist was who created these unsigned works. The sublimity of art becomes besmirched by those who see themselves closest to the sublime.
For me, the most beguiling story is 'The Life and Work of Master Inoue Kazuyuki" in which we finally encounter the Japanese goddess of the book's title, Seiobo, as she descends to our world:
"I put down my crown, and in earthly form – yet not concealing the contours of my face – I descend among them, to seek out the prince of Chu, King Mu, for I was constrained to leave the infinite planes of Heaven, the Empire of Radiant Light; compelled to leave that realm, where form shines, abundant and emanating, and thus all is replenished with nothingness, I had to make my descent below yet and yet again, for I had to flee the purity of Heaven, I must step across into a moment, for nothing ever lasts longer ...."
And thus, Seiobo has come to Earth to transmit a vision of the perfection of Heaven to human kind. She dances for King Mu, the human who most exemplifies the characteristics of the ancient sages who achieved their own perfection. And then she must return to Heaven leaving behind the earthly pleasures of "lilac and scarlet silken shot through with gold, and I must at once set off, go back to that place from whence I came.... for that is the place where I exist, although I am not, for this is the place where I can may place my crown upon my head, and I can think to myself that Seiobo was there below."
And here the ascent (descent) hits us as Seiobo is transformed back into the Noh Master, Inoue Kazuyuki, actor extraordinaire. A man for whom reality is, perhaps, more real on stage, or at least more sublime. He has perfected the role of Seiobo, that is his glory and his life. But here again, humanity is caught up in pain and frustration, the glory of the great Noh Master with all of its earthly honours and petty jealousies and worries. He seeks peace in prayer but even that is difficult to find as his fans, his family, his supporters and, maybe, his superior await him:
"... he begins to pray, from the Great Spirit all the way to I Give Over My Fate Entirely, he kneels on the cold stone floor of the toilet in the smell of disinfectant, he is alone, there is peace, tranquility and silence in the toilet of the Kanze, then he presses the flush button, as if he had finished his business, and he calmly sets off to the common dressing room, so that he may be dressed in the first layers of the garb of Seiobo."
In the Western world, we often seek out the culture of the East. China, Japan and India hold for many the possibility of transcendence, of an escape from the pressures, the suffering, the anxiety of this world. We seek something beyond. Since the days of the German Romantics, we have sought transcendence in art: painting, sculpture, music, poetry and even, in prose. It is curious that Krashnahorkai is able to create such alluring prose that makes the reader believe that that moment of ecstasy is upon us, and then he drops it - reality is there - in the toilet.
I suppose that I am the perfect reader of this book - the cynic who hopes constantly to be proven wrong. I recognize Krashnahorkai's transcendent imagery because it is ingrained. I appreciate his honesty because it returns me to my reality, and, in the final analysis, tickles my sense of humour. He made me laugh out loud as he pulled the rug out from under me. I rarely laugh.
This book takes us through Japanese monasteries, Renaissance ateliers, cathedrals, village cultural centres, museums,train stations, an island of exile and more. We learn about Renaissance art, Baroque music, Noh theatre and Japanese religious practices. (Take the time to look up the historical references. You lose a great deal without it.) The book is fascinating.
Finally, there are 17 chapters: numbered 1 - 2584. Krashnahorkai has chosen to use the Fibonacci sequence to numbering system for the chapters. (Look that up too. Fun.) My take on it is that we are caught in an eternal spiral in life for Krashnahorkai. Perhaps like Dante's vision, except that there is no heaven and we never know if we're going up or down.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fun vision of Hell. Dante would be proud.
I approached the reading of László Krashnahorkai's 'Seiobo There Below' with some excitement because, I must admit, I am smitten with his writing. It was a hot, sunny day so I wandered down to a bench by the riverside and read about a view of a river (the Kamo River in Japan), much like the one I saw spread out in front of me (the Rideau River),
"... and all the individual glittering of light flashing on the surface of this fleeting element, this surface suddenly emerging and just as quickly collapsing, with its drops of light dying down, scintillating and then reeling in all directions, inexpressible in words; ..."
"... inexpressible in words; ..." Krashnahorkai, the author who led me in a dance with the Devil in the dark, rainy Hell of 'Satantango' seemed to be taking me into another world in a kinder, gentler nature in Japan.
I looked at the scene before me, like Krashnahorkai's, framed by traffic noise and was delighted to watch a great blue heron land between the scattered grass islands in the shallow river, find his footing in the gravel below his feet and stand motionless, watching the water before his eyes.
"... only it, the Ooshirosagi, does not move at all, this enormous snow-white bird, open to attack by all, not concealing its defencelessness; this hunter, it leans forward, its neck folded in an S-form, and it now extends its head and its long hard beak out from this S-form, and strains the whole, but at the same time it is strained forward, its wings pressed tightly against its body, its thin legs searching for a firm point beneath the water's surface; the surface, yes, while it sees, crystal-clear, what lies beneath this surface, down below in the refractions of light, ...."
In the juxtaposition between the reality in front of me and the somewhat transcendent world of the sublime being woven in words in the book, I allowed myself to be lured into Krashnahorkai's trap. Japan, nature, the motionless bird in its Zen-trance among the swirling waters and the man-made chaos around him. I entered into it all willingly. And then the end of the story (chapter) and the trap closed.
"....it would be better for you to go away this very evening when twilight begins to fall, it would be better for you to retreat with the others, if night begins to descend, and you should not come back if tomorrow or after tomorrow, dawn breaks, because for you it will be much better for there to be no tomorrow and no day after tomorrow; so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that—breathe your last."
Krashnahorkai asserted his vision, "sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear...." The trap closed on me as I sat there watching the heron. All my Zen, Daoism, and romanticism melted away. Thus ended the first of the seventeen theme-linked stories of 'Seibu There Below'. Krashnahorkai, the apparent architect of Hell, had created an ordered world of Asian transcendence and smashed it to pieces. In the sixteen stories to follow, he managed to do it again and again.
In 'The Queen Exiled' we are reminded of the Biblical story of Esther in which Queen Vashti, acclaimed for her beauty, is raised up to the throne by the love of the King who seems to be risking all, caught up as he is in his love for her. Then, in a moment, as she seems to disobey him, his male ego wounded, he exiles her, and worse, has her murdered, her sublime beauty gone from the world forever. Within the same story, we follow the Italian Renaissance artist as he tries to recreate scenes from her life and the efforts of art specialists in later times as the struggle to discern who the artist was who created these unsigned works. The sublimity of art becomes besmirched by those who see themselves closest to the sublime.
For me, the most beguiling story is 'The Life and Work of Master Inoue Kazuyuki" in which we finally encounter the Japanese goddess of the book's title, Seiobo, as she descends to our world:
"I put down my crown, and in earthly form – yet not concealing the contours of my face – I descend among them, to seek out the prince of Chu, King Mu, for I was constrained to leave the infinite planes of Heaven, the Empire of Radiant Light; compelled to leave that realm, where form shines, abundant and emanating, and thus all is replenished with nothingness, I had to make my descent below yet and yet again, for I had to flee the purity of Heaven, I must step across into a moment, for nothing ever lasts longer ...."
And thus, Seiobo has come to Earth to transmit a vision of the perfection of Heaven to human kind. She dances for King Mu, the human who most exemplifies the characteristics of the ancient sages who achieved their own perfection. And then she must return to Heaven leaving behind the earthly pleasures of "lilac and scarlet silken shot through with gold, and I must at once set off, go back to that place from whence I came.... for that is the place where I exist, although I am not, for this is the place where I can may place my crown upon my head, and I can think to myself that Seiobo was there below."
And here the ascent (descent) hits us as Seiobo is transformed back into the Noh Master, Inoue Kazuyuki, actor extraordinaire. A man for whom reality is, perhaps, more real on stage, or at least more sublime. He has perfected the role of Seiobo, that is his glory and his life. But here again, humanity is caught up in pain and frustration, the glory of the great Noh Master with all of its earthly honours and petty jealousies and worries. He seeks peace in prayer but even that is difficult to find as his fans, his family, his supporters and, maybe, his superior await him:
"... he begins to pray, from the Great Spirit all the way to I Give Over My Fate Entirely, he kneels on the cold stone floor of the toilet in the smell of disinfectant, he is alone, there is peace, tranquility and silence in the toilet of the Kanze, then he presses the flush button, as if he had finished his business, and he calmly sets off to the common dressing room, so that he may be dressed in the first layers of the garb of Seiobo."
In the Western world, we often seek out the culture of the East. China, Japan and India hold for many the possibility of transcendence, of an escape from the pressures, the suffering, the anxiety of this world. We seek something beyond. Since the days of the German Romantics, we have sought transcendence in art: painting, sculpture, music, poetry and even, in prose. It is curious that Krashnahorkai is able to create such alluring prose that makes the reader believe that that moment of ecstasy is upon us, and then he drops it - reality is there - in the toilet.
I suppose that I am the perfect reader of this book - the cynic who hopes constantly to be proven wrong. I recognize Krashnahorkai's transcendent imagery because it is ingrained. I appreciate his honesty because it returns me to my reality, and, in the final analysis, tickles my sense of humour. He made me laugh out loud as he pulled the rug out from under me. I rarely laugh.
This book takes us through Japanese monasteries, Renaissance ateliers, cathedrals, village cultural centres, museums,train stations, an island of exile and more. We learn about Renaissance art, Baroque music, Noh theatre and Japanese religious practices. (Take the time to look up the historical references. You lose a great deal without it.) The book is fascinating.
Finally, there are 17 chapters: numbered 1 - 2584. Krashnahorkai has chosen to use the Fibonacci sequence to numbering system for the chapters. (Look that up too. Fun.) My take on it is that we are caught in an eternal spiral in life for Krashnahorkai. Perhaps like Dante's vision, except that there is no heaven and we never know if we're going up or down.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fun vision of Hell. Dante would be proud.
July 5, 2017
I dissent.
Look, I think Krasznahorkai is one of the most interesting writers working today (that I know of). I wish more of his books had been translated; I think 'Melancholy' is one of the greatest novels of the last century, and I wish all the people writing in English today would read his books and try to get closer to his baroque style than they are to the dishwater-dull post-minimalism that everyone seems determined to practice. Now, all that said, this is the worst of his books to have been translated so far (leaving aside Animalinside), and it isn't even close.
The wonderful style of the earlier novels was already leaning toward mannerism in 'War & War,' and here it tips over completely. Perhaps it's just the translator (I'm not qualified to judge) but these 'long sentences' aren't long sentences, they're run-on sentences. They're not the product of complex syntactical maneuvers, they are the product of simple addition *and* that process of addition never seems to stop *and* there is no reason for the sentences to be strung together like this *and* they could easily have been divided up (etc...)
The bleakness of the earlier novels is supposed to be alleviated a bit here, which might be good? Or not? I guess it's a question of taste. But regardless of your opinion there, I find it hard to believe that people really find this 'life is made worthwhile by the approach to beauty' stuff convincing--not because that idea is inherently unconvincing (though, well...), but because it isn't convincing *in this book.* A large part of this failure is probably due to the unnecessary length of the thing.
You, devotee, are going to say there's some master plan here involving fibonacci sequences, or, as the front flap suggests, Seiobo overseeing human attempts to reach beauty and so on. If there is, I demand that you explain it to me! I'm not so thick that I can't get it if someone tells me what I'm meant to be getting. Is it all the variations on a theme? This is not the Diabellis; this is a minimalist hammering one tone 233 times, then shifting one semi-tone and hammering that one 377 times. There is variation, yes. But variation to what end? It isn't clear.
The worst thing about the book, though, is that too many of the pieces could be replaced by a good color plate of the art-work with which they start, and we would lose very little.
Perhaps if you read one story a week for a few months, this would be less of an issue, and I encourage potential readers to do so, because there are rewards here. The first piece, in particular, is wonderful--and avoids the dull cliches about reticent Japanese artists, or money-grubbing Renaissance European artists that fill the rest of the book. Also well worth it: 'The Exiled Queen,' which actually develops, rather than over-doing one point; 'Distant Mandate,' in which the long sentence serves some function; 'Private Passion,' a funny rant about music, an actual variation in a very visual-art-heavy collection; 'Ise Shrine'; and 'Screaming Beneath the Earth.'
Look, I think Krasznahorkai is one of the most interesting writers working today (that I know of). I wish more of his books had been translated; I think 'Melancholy' is one of the greatest novels of the last century, and I wish all the people writing in English today would read his books and try to get closer to his baroque style than they are to the dishwater-dull post-minimalism that everyone seems determined to practice. Now, all that said, this is the worst of his books to have been translated so far (leaving aside Animalinside), and it isn't even close.
The wonderful style of the earlier novels was already leaning toward mannerism in 'War & War,' and here it tips over completely. Perhaps it's just the translator (I'm not qualified to judge) but these 'long sentences' aren't long sentences, they're run-on sentences. They're not the product of complex syntactical maneuvers, they are the product of simple addition *and* that process of addition never seems to stop *and* there is no reason for the sentences to be strung together like this *and* they could easily have been divided up (etc...)
The bleakness of the earlier novels is supposed to be alleviated a bit here, which might be good? Or not? I guess it's a question of taste. But regardless of your opinion there, I find it hard to believe that people really find this 'life is made worthwhile by the approach to beauty' stuff convincing--not because that idea is inherently unconvincing (though, well...), but because it isn't convincing *in this book.* A large part of this failure is probably due to the unnecessary length of the thing.
You, devotee, are going to say there's some master plan here involving fibonacci sequences, or, as the front flap suggests, Seiobo overseeing human attempts to reach beauty and so on. If there is, I demand that you explain it to me! I'm not so thick that I can't get it if someone tells me what I'm meant to be getting. Is it all the variations on a theme? This is not the Diabellis; this is a minimalist hammering one tone 233 times, then shifting one semi-tone and hammering that one 377 times. There is variation, yes. But variation to what end? It isn't clear.
The worst thing about the book, though, is that too many of the pieces could be replaced by a good color plate of the art-work with which they start, and we would lose very little.
Perhaps if you read one story a week for a few months, this would be less of an issue, and I encourage potential readers to do so, because there are rewards here. The first piece, in particular, is wonderful--and avoids the dull cliches about reticent Japanese artists, or money-grubbing Renaissance European artists that fill the rest of the book. Also well worth it: 'The Exiled Queen,' which actually develops, rather than over-doing one point; 'Distant Mandate,' in which the long sentence serves some function; 'Private Passion,' a funny rant about music, an actual variation in a very visual-art-heavy collection; 'Ise Shrine'; and 'Screaming Beneath the Earth.'
October 10, 2017
Art is your only chance at touching the transcendent. Pray that it doesn't blind or kill you, or blind you and then kill you.
And that concludes our one-time exercise in two-sentence book summaries.
And that concludes our one-time exercise in two-sentence book summaries.
February 7, 2017
This collection of thematically related stories has some of the most incredible writing about the making and appreciation of art that I’ve ever read (a far shorter, but also wonderfully imaginative collection on the same topic is Saul Yurkievich's In the Image and Likeness, which I published back in 2003). It also has sections where the author’s extremely detailed approach didn’t work for me, where I found myself skimming over dully-presented TMI. But the great writing is more than worth it. Don’t worry about the first section of the novel; it gets much more readable.
November 28, 2013
...but if it does occur, then anyone can comprehend that above us and below us, outside of ourselves and deep within ourselves, there is a universe, the one and only, which is not identical with the sky looming above us overhead, because that universe is not made of stars and planets and suns and galaxies, because that universe is not a picture, it cannot be seen, it doesn't even have a name, for it is so much more precious than anything that could have a name, and that is why it is such a joy to me that i can practice seiobo; seiobo is the emissary who arrives and says i am not the desire for peace, i am peace itself; seiobo arrives and says do not be afraid, for the universe of peace is not the rainbow of yearning; the universe, the real universe - already exists.perhaps not since the 2008 translation of roberto bolaño's superlative 2666 have i read a novel that was at once so heartbreaking, so beautifully composed, so frustrating, so imperfectly epic, so singular, so striking and effortlessly alluring, so sprawlingly reflective, so... comprising the gradations of earthly reality and its many hues of horror and hopefulness. lászló krasznahorkai's seiobo there below (seiobo járt odalent) - if such an achievement could even be distilled without imperiling its potency - is a work of art and beauty about art and beauty. with the sacred, solemn, and sublime swirling ever nearby, seiobo's stories stake their claim in opposition to a world that increasingly cherishes the disposable and frivolous while overlooking and discarding the sacramental or magnificent.
...i, he added, am speaking of something else, that is to say that there lies before us, after the hazy bestial zero, a long continuum arising from all the noises and rhythms having to do with music, which then reaches - as it did indeed reach a perfection no longer perfectible - the roof of a seemingly infinite celestial vault, a particular border of heaven close to the godly spheres, so that something - in this case music - comes into being, is born, unfolds but then it's all over, no more, what must come has come; the realm dies away, and yet lives on in this divine form, and for all eternity echo remains, for we may evoke it, as we do evoke it to this very day and shall evoke it for as long as we can, even if as an ever more faint reflection of the original, a tired and ever more uncertain echo, a misunderstanding ever more despairing from year to year, from decade to decade, in a disintegrating memory that no longer has a world, no longer shatters people's hearts; no longer elevates them to that place of such achingly sweet perfection, because this is what happened, he said, and he straightened his suspenders, such a music came into being that shattered people's hearts, if i listen to it, i still feel, at some given point, after an unexpected beat, i feel, if not that my heart is being shattered, that at least it is falling apart, as i collapse from this sweet pain, because this music gives me everything in such a way that it also annihilates me, because how could anyone think that they could get away without paying the price for all of this, well, how could we even imagine that it is even possible to traverse that distance where this music exists and not be annihilated one hundred, one thousand times - if i listen to them, i am in a thousand tiny pieces, because you can't just roam around in the company of the geniuses of inexplicable musical fulfillment and at the same time, say be able to fill out a personal income tax form or prepare the technical blueprint for a building while this music is sinking to the depths of your heart, well, it doesn't work, either this person filling out tax forms or completing technical blueprints is annihilated, or will never understand where he has arrived...with meticulous, melodious sentences of a length that would have given the estimable saramago cause for blushing, krasznahorkai's prose enchants with a rhythm and movement that, alone, make seiobo there below beatific and bewitching. seiobo there below's chapters are arranged to follow the fibonacci sequence - which can perhaps be understood as a commentary on the oft-overlooked beauty inherent around us (whether in mathematics or the natural world that adheres to its laws). whereas the hungarian novelist's works are often identified with darkness and dystopia, seiobo there below instead offers a glimpse into the fleeting nature of temporal exquisiteness - aesthetics and qualities that offer easy admiration were they not so frequently neglected.
...the world had changed over the past two thousand years; that part of humanity, thanks to which it had not been in vain for the venus de milo to stand anywhere and to signify that there was a higher realm, had vanished; because this realm had dissipated, vanished without a trace, it was not possible to understand what the one or two remaining fragments or pieces dug up could even mean today, chaivagne sighed - and he moved his toes in the cold water - there was nothing higher and nothing lower, there was just one world here in the middle, where we live, where the number one and the four and the seven run, and where the louvre stands, and inside it is venus, as she looks at an inexpressible, mysterious, distant point, she just stands there, they put her here or they put here there, and she just stands there, holding up her head proudly in that mysterious direction, and her beauty emanates, it emanates into nothingness, and no one understands, and no one feels what grievous sight this is, a god that has lost its world, so enormous, immeasurably enormous - and yet she has nothing at all.a novel as ambitious as seiobo there below could not possibly reveal itself (much like its subjects) in one mere reading. like the great, vast works before it, only subsequent immersions could reveal the multi-layered brilliances shimmering within. krasznahorkai is clearly a writer of great consequence and seiobo is easily one of the finest books of the aging decade (to say nothing of it being an exemplar of the myriad powers of translated fiction). after seiobo's final pages, one is left with both tranquility and the fluid sense of having just witnessed something breathtaking and beyond description - or even comprehension.
the allure of sirens without the inevitable shipwreck to follow. beauty exists - why must we forever recoil from its delights?
...he stands in not-knowing, and despite all of this dazzledness there is something of disillusionment within him, it is as if a mild, unwished-for gentle breeze of recognition strikes him as he departs, it is as if he already suspects that the alhambra does not offer the knowledge that we know nothing of the alhambra, that it itself knows nothing of this not-knowing, because not-knowing does not even exist. because not to know something is a complicated process, the story of which takes place beneath the shadow of the truth. for there is truth. there is the alhambra. that is the truth.
~translated from the hungarian by ottilie mulzet (krasznahorkai's animalinside)
June 14, 2021
Seiobo auf Erden ist der Titel einer von siebzehn Erzählungen, die allesamt von der Kunst handeln, das Überirdische mit Hilfe der Künste wahrnehmbar zu machen. Sei es das japanische Nō Theater, eine Arie J.S. Bachs oder die Architektur der Alhambra, sei es wenn eine Buddhastatue in einer durch und durch ritualisierten Zeremonie restauriert und endlich enthüllt wird, wenn ein Meister der Renaissance die Menschen mit seinen Farben in den Himmel erhebt oder wenn der Anblick einer russischen Ikone einen versehentlichen Museumsbesucher in den Wahnsinn treibt, immer dann wird für einen kurzen Augenblick der Nebel über den Dingen gelichtet, jemand wirft einen Blick tief ins Innere und erlebt schauernd das Leuchten des Seins in seiner geheimnisvollen Schönheit.
[Perugino - Die Wanderung Moses durch Ägypten - um 1482]
Wie wohltuend, dass dieser Magie der Kunst keine übergeordnete Bedeutung aufgesetzt wird, es ist so, wie es ist und wird nur beschrieben, nicht interpretiert, so bleibt das Geheimnis erhalten. Der Blick ins Paradies hat jedoch seinen Preis, der nicht verschwiegen wird und so setzt Krasznahorkai immer auch ein kontrapunktisches, ein dunkles Element dagegen, durch das die Geschichten selbst zum magischen Meisterwerk werden. Er zeigt, oft mit Humor und subtiler Ironie, wie schnell die Erhabenheit in ihr Gegenteil verkehrt werden kann, wenn das Ritual zur Bürokratie entartet oder wenn gelehrte Auseinandersetzung über kunsthistorische Details zu Geschwätz und Selbstzweck werden, und als der berühmte Perugino von Florenz nach Perugia heimkehrt, weil er erkennt, dass seine Schaffenskraft erlischt, wird klar, dass am Ende auch die Kunst der Hinfälligkeit allen Daseins unterworfen ist. Und so nimmt auch manche der Erzählungen ein sehr überraschendes oder ernüchterndes Ende.
Die siebzehn Geschichten sind nach der Fibonacci Reihe nummeriert, es fehlen nur die Null und die erste Eins. Dieses Prinzip bestimmt auch die Verbindung der Geschichten untereinander, jeweils zwei vorhergehende führen zur nächsten. Die Erzählungen sind auch sprachlich ganz einzigartig. Die Worte fließen wie in endlosen Mäandern dahin, es gibt kaum Punkte, jeder Absatz ein Satz, die 50-seitige Geschichte vom Neubau des Ise Schreins besteht überhaupt aus nur einem Satz. Ich fand das gar nicht störend, hatte ich mich einmal gewöhnt, erzeugt es einen meditativen Flow, der mich angenehm entspannt durch die Geschichten trug.
W.G. Sebald und Thomas Bernhard klingen im Text immer wieder wie eine Ehrung an - natürlich ohne den aufgeregten Zynismus Bernhards, Krasznahorkai ist alles in allem ein gelassener und in sich ruhender Beobachter und wohl einer der ganz großen zeitgenössischen Meister.
[Perugino - Die Wanderung Moses durch Ägypten - um 1482]
Wie wohltuend, dass dieser Magie der Kunst keine übergeordnete Bedeutung aufgesetzt wird, es ist so, wie es ist und wird nur beschrieben, nicht interpretiert, so bleibt das Geheimnis erhalten. Der Blick ins Paradies hat jedoch seinen Preis, der nicht verschwiegen wird und so setzt Krasznahorkai immer auch ein kontrapunktisches, ein dunkles Element dagegen, durch das die Geschichten selbst zum magischen Meisterwerk werden. Er zeigt, oft mit Humor und subtiler Ironie, wie schnell die Erhabenheit in ihr Gegenteil verkehrt werden kann, wenn das Ritual zur Bürokratie entartet oder wenn gelehrte Auseinandersetzung über kunsthistorische Details zu Geschwätz und Selbstzweck werden, und als der berühmte Perugino von Florenz nach Perugia heimkehrt, weil er erkennt, dass seine Schaffenskraft erlischt, wird klar, dass am Ende auch die Kunst der Hinfälligkeit allen Daseins unterworfen ist. Und so nimmt auch manche der Erzählungen ein sehr überraschendes oder ernüchterndes Ende.
Die siebzehn Geschichten sind nach der Fibonacci Reihe nummeriert, es fehlen nur die Null und die erste Eins. Dieses Prinzip bestimmt auch die Verbindung der Geschichten untereinander, jeweils zwei vorhergehende führen zur nächsten. Die Erzählungen sind auch sprachlich ganz einzigartig. Die Worte fließen wie in endlosen Mäandern dahin, es gibt kaum Punkte, jeder Absatz ein Satz, die 50-seitige Geschichte vom Neubau des Ise Schreins besteht überhaupt aus nur einem Satz. Ich fand das gar nicht störend, hatte ich mich einmal gewöhnt, erzeugt es einen meditativen Flow, der mich angenehm entspannt durch die Geschichten trug.
W.G. Sebald und Thomas Bernhard klingen im Text immer wieder wie eine Ehrung an - natürlich ohne den aufgeregten Zynismus Bernhards, Krasznahorkai ist alles in allem ein gelassener und in sich ruhender Beobachter und wohl einer der ganz großen zeitgenössischen Meister.
January 5, 2024
I had to come from that world where form itself is resplendent
I have really fallen in love with Krasznahorkai's dismal Hungarian novels, which telegraph in their anxious urgency an apocalypse which either looms threateningly, or, more likely, has already arrived. In those novels, like in Noh (an artform central to Seiobo There Below), there reappear archetypal figures: The False Prophet, The Divine Idiot, The Desperate Politic. And those roles appear in smaller doses in the present work. But whereas his Hungarian novels (Satantango, Melancholy of Resistance, War & War, and Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming) focus on the machinations of power, the impotence of knowledge, the loss of illusion and hope, Seiobo poses the questions of: what is beauty? what is the divine? and perhaps superseding them both: are we in modernity even capable of attending to or noticing them, if they exist at all? Or have beauty and/or our capacity to feel it, been lost in epistemic extinction?
...tradition of the highest order, creates revolutionary forms, never before experiened, and in doing so elevates all human existence, elevates the whole, to a very high level; and now this sitation, this death sentence: because human existence holds its own needs at a very low level, they always have been held at a very low level and will be held at a very low level for all eternity, for the human being simply has no need for anything save a full stomach and a full coin box, he wants to be an animal...
Among the themes explored in these questions are the Profane and the Sacred, Pilgrimage and Tourism, the West and the Orient, Art and its Study, as well as Originality versus Imitation.
The opening story, Kamo-Hunter, features an ooshirosagi (Japanese egret), removed from time in perfect stillness, awaiting its prey - small fish, insects, reptiles. Its poise and elegance and concentration are described in striking and beautiful detail. Meanwhile modernity thrashes along just meters away, where no one takes any notice of its natural grace. Buses chuff along, office workers bike to work; where the egret is poised in total concentration, the humans of Kyoto have lost their ability to concentrate and notice. Oblivion and anxiety swarm the minds of man, drifting farther and farther from the divine that exists all around them.
In Cristo Morto, a man is on a pilgrimage to see a small portrait of Christ in Venice. To preserve his oxfords he has strapped them with braces, which clatter as he walks the city. He notices a man following him and he becomes paranoid. When he finally returns, after 11 years to the painting, he is totally absorbed and terrified - recalling Rilke's "all angels are terrible" - beauty and the divine have become alien, unnamable. Another man on a sort of pilgrimage is the unnamed man in Up on the Acropolis. He has always dreamed of seeing the Acropolis, which he believes is the height of man's art and ability. After the usual indignities of travel, he does arrive at the Acropolis, but because the sun is so bright and hot, and he hasn't worn sunglasses or brought water, he is not able to see or appreciate the ruins at all. Throughout Seiobo there are many of these hapless travelers. Arriving at their destinations they are incapable of quite being saved by the beauty and divinity in their subjects.
Frequently in the background, scholars debate the provenances and significances of these artworks, rather than simply admire or appreciate their otherworldly beauty. In Distant Mandate, theories abound but none can be proven about the provenance and significance of the Alhambra. Not even its name is likely to be accurate (if it even had one). In The Exiled Queen and Cristo Morto, art historians appear to be concerned only with who painted these images, rather than appreciating them; in Private Passion, an overwrought academic speaks in absurd reverence of the music of the Baroque - to 6 elderly and hapless attendees of a small town library, perhaps missing the point of art's unnamability by bloviating about the music's perfection.
Core to Seiobo is the art of the ancient Orient, and particularly Japan. In The Preservation of a Buddha, the ritual of restoring a temple's Buddha statue is painstakingly documented. The abbot is wracked with anxiety over the need for perfection of the ceremony, which concerns the most sacred aspect of his duty - the preservation of the God Buddha, meanwhile the attendees of the rite feel an exquisite boredom (shared at times by the reader), of the many prayers and attendant movements of the priests, feeling the aches in their backs and legs from hours of standing - still they feel something not quite definable occurring. In The Life and Work of Master Inoue Kazuyuki, the god Seiobo briefly descends to earth to inhabit the eponymous Noh actor, briefly imbuing his act with the divine for only a moment. When the show is done, he is frustrated by worldly concerns, having to shake hands, and never being free from assistants, admirers, even his family, he finds his only moments of solace in the toilet before a performance. In the Rebuilding of the Ise Shrine, East and West meet in the form of a traveler from Europe and his Japanese friend and host. While the foreigner doggedly pursues (through his friend as interpreter) access to the Shinto ritual of rebuilding a sacred shrine. The host frequently feels shame at imposing on the temple, while the foreigner seems oblivious to his imposition. Both feel something of the divine in the rites, which are so perfectly honed. These episodes, which deal more directly with the divine, where beauty is in ritual, act, recalled for me Calasso's Unnamable Present:
All of this follows from a time in history when procedures have taken command over rituals. A moment that is elusive, hard to establish, since the two powers also have features in common. First of all, they are both formalized actions. But they aim in opposite directions. Ritual aims toward perfect awareness, which for Catholics is the moment of transubstantiation. Procedures, on the other hand, point toward total automatism. The more procedures multiply, the more the realm of automata expands.
In Seiobo, there is the feeling that in the West, all has become automata. After centuries of industrialization, modernization, the rotting creep of capitalism into the Western value system, it has become impossible to see past the gloss of images, to the core of beauty. For centuries the cultures of Japan and China have been preserved through isolation from these ideas, but in recent history these same corrupted values have incurred the same cultural corrosion. In the performances of these rites, there exists a tension between the anxieties of perfection and the immanence of the spiritual. Enclaves still exist in these practitioners who devote their lives entirely to it, but still modernity creeps in like rust at the edges, where it comes in contact with secularism.
The book closes with a brief and meditative vignette, Screaming Beneath the Earth, which examines the buried warriors of the Shang dynasty, meant to guard death. These warriors and their animal attendants have all but disappeared from the corrosion of time. Earth has begun to reclaim them, and any memory even of the Shang dynasty (as separate, distinct, other from Modern China) has ebbed away. Time and death with reclaim everything. Perhaps for everything of immanent beauty, it already has.
December 29, 2019
. . . so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that — breathe your last.
There were two sections I loved: the tourist in Athens and the Louvre security guard. I also liked the lecturer on Baroque Music but otherwise I thought each piece was an interesting point of departure with the process being a Buddhist snapshot of creation. That grew tired. My opinion is largely contrary to the prevailing.
There were two sections I loved: the tourist in Athens and the Louvre security guard. I also liked the lecturer on Baroque Music but otherwise I thought each piece was an interesting point of departure with the process being a Buddhist snapshot of creation. That grew tired. My opinion is largely contrary to the prevailing.
March 26, 2023
"Y Seibo descendió a la tierra", de László Krasznahorkai
“Me quité la corona y, adoptando forma terrenal, mas sin ocultar los rasgos de mi rostro, descendí entre ellos con el propósito de visitar al soberano Chu, el rey Mu, para lo cual tuve que abandonar las llanuras interminables del Cielo, el Territorio radiante de la Luz, bajar de aquel mundo en el que irradia, emana y fluye la forma y de ese modo todo lo colma la nada, tuve que echar pie a tierra, por así decirlo, desprenderme de la pureza de lo Celeste y trasladarme al instante, porque nada dura tanto como él, pues él no dura ni siquiera eso, de tal modo que mi descenso, de hecho, tampoco duró más que un instante, en el que, sin embargo, caben tantísimas cosas, cabía el camino, como dicen, el camino, como lo llaman, el sendero en esa torpe lengua, la relampagueante aparición del rumbo que tomé para venir de allí aquí, la bajada e incluso la gran pompa con que descendí, ya que cabía todo en él, cabían los primeros pasos como ser humano en la Tierra, donde mi guía, mi único y mudo acompañante, me orientó enseguida y con suma discreción para que encontrase el sendero”...
Una vez más traigo a este blog una reseña del húngaro László Krasznahorkai. Primero creo que fue “Melancolía de la resistencia”, la que considero su mejor obra de las que están traducidas al castellano a día de hoy; luego ese pequeño y grandísimo libro de “Al norte la montaña, al sur el lago, al oeste el camino, al este el río”, repleto de orientalismo y con algunos pasajes de una gran belleza que se te quedan grabados a fuego en la memoria. Porque la prosa de Krasznahorkai es una de las más obsesivas y perturbadora que se pueden encontrar en el actual panorama literario. Alumno aventajado de Kafka, Bernhard y Beckett, por citar algunas de sus muy palpables influencias, ha diseñado un estilo propio que ya parece marca de la casa, y que en el alto sentido intelectual es inimitable, porque hace falta ser un místico desesperanzado para escribir como él lo hace.
En esta ocasión, en “Y Seibo descendió a la tierra”, se atreve a utilizar de guía a una deidad japonesa en cuyo jardín florece un melocotonero cada trescientos años y que se va a contemplar durante 17 segmentos narrativos o bien las grandes obras creativas de la historia humana o momentos peculiares en las que la búsqueda de la belleza está presente. Esto sobre el papel y sobre la contraportada, pero estamos ante un libro en la que los géneros se pulverizan, los siglos confluyen, las neuronas se vuelan, las numeraciones se aplastan, pues se tiende hacia el infinito en la numeración o sucesión matemática que sugirió Fibonacci, en la que al principio se comienza normalmente con 0 y con 1 y luego se va sumando cada término con la suma de los dos anteriores, y así nos encontramos en el segmento 5 y en el segmento 8, por ejemplo, y de pronto pasamos al segmento 13, que si yo no fallo haciendo cuentas es el resultante de la suma anterior.
Pero no contento con eso nos lleva a un viaje planetario sobre la creatividad humana y nos encontramos en diversos lugares y diversas épocas, y viajamos, por ejemplo, del imperio aqueménida (o babilónico si se prefiere, deteniéndose en la figura de la reina Vashti, presencia bíblica en el Libro de Ester) a un monasterio budista o a una pintura renacentista, y así en 17 segmentos, la mayoría de ellos en un único párrafo, o en muy pocos párrafos, complementando lugares tan conocidos (incluso para los que no los han visitado) como la Acrópolis de Atenas o la Alhambra de Granada. No obstante, prevalecen los pasajes dedicados al Japón, ya sea con restauradores de monasterios zen a hacedores de máscaras del teatro Noh, o el también bellísimo “Ze ´Ami se va”, el autor desterrado del manuscrito Kintosho, que es el penúltimo segmento y uno de mis preferidos, junto al primero de “El cazador del río Kamo” y el luminoso “Il Ritorno in Perugia”. Hay mucho y bueno para elegir.
Eso sí, la literatura de Krasznahorkai nunca ha sido sencilla. En “Guerra y guerra”, por ejemplo, muchas veces no sabes qué voz narrativa te está hablando, fundamentalmente son dos las que se entrecruzan continuamente, de ahí la repetición en el nombre del título, pero se pasa de una a otra con tanta velocidad que la lectura se hace muy compleja. En “Tango Satánico”, obra coral y quizá la más conocida por la adaptación cinematográfica de Bela Tarr, acabas enfangado de barro y de esa lluvia que cala y que azota todo el libro, con la música de las campanas de fondo resonando en tu cabeza, en lo que es una historia dura e inmisericorde.
Y así sucesivamente. Y no es fácil porque exige al lector una atención suprema. Y de todas las que he leído hasta el momento creo que esta es una de las más complicadas, puesto que esa búsqueda de lo sagrado y de la belleza necesita de un conocimiento previo del arte. “Solo el hoy lo significa todo”, afirma un personaje, y casi podríamos darlo por válido como prueba del pensamiento vital y filosófico del escritor húngaro. Por decirlo de una manera clara: esto es un libro de onanismo intelectual, y para disfrutarlo en toda su extensión es necesario saber en cada momento de qué cuadro o de qué obra arquitectónica o máscara del teatro Noh se está hablando. Si se hace un trabajo previo de búsqueda (al parecer la editorial Acantilado considera a todos los lectores de Krasznahorkai autónomos y muy capacitados, y no ha considerado incluir un glosario de las obras de artes que en el libro se citan) sí se puede disfrutar del libro, siempre y cuando no se tema a los meandros por los que discurren esos párrafos inmensos. Pero como yo estoy acostumbrado a escribir así, incluso, a veces, con menos pausa que el húngaro, pues para mí esto es como darme un baño y masaje en un hotel de cinco estrellas. Es música que conozco y no me desentona, para nada. Me transporta cual un extasiado grano de polen por los márgenes del libro. Pero reconozco que si no se está acostumbrado conlleva una dificultad.
Sin embargo, los libros que exigen son los libros que perduran. La mayoría de los libros sin exigencia, que son por otra parte casi todos los que llegan a la lista de libros más vendidos, vivirán poco más de unas pocas décadas, pues de forma inexorable serán aplastados por el paso del tiempo. Solo los escritores que escriben hacia el infinito y contra el tiempo, en un duelo inútil y condenado de antemano al fracaso, y cuyas dotes implican un absoluto dominio del lenguaje, emprenden esa búsqueda (individual o colectiva, eso lo mismo da) de lo sagrado que en algunos casos los conducirá a la marginación y la locura y en otros al reconocimiento y la admiración de un puñado de lectores. Solo esos, “los aniquiladores de las convenciones y las verdades asentadas”, y solo en algunos casos, serán capaces de sobrevivir literariamente; tendrán acaso la posibilidad de llegar a las manos de los lectores dentro de cien o doscientos años. Serán los autores de nuestra época que se leerán en el futuro para desentrañar nuestras miserias y nuestras torpezas, y tal vez así comprender las propias bajezas y contradicciones que padezcan los seres humanos del mañana. Como siempre ha pasado por otra parte. Esto no es nada nuevo y viene ocurriendo desde los primeros días en la historia de la palabra escrita, desde los primerísimos textos sumerios.
Les dejo “con el escritor del fin del mundo”, con alguien que podría resumir en sí mismo todo el legado literario que el ser humano ha alcanzado hasta llegar a nuestros días, con un curioso pasaje radical de este híbrido de cultura, esplendoroso y complejísimo que es “Y Seibo descendió a la tierra”
“El domingo transcurrió como un espanto que se posa sobre el hombre y no lo suelta, que lo mastica y lo consume y lo muerde y lo desgarra, porque ese domingo no quería ni empezar ni continuar ni terminar nunca, y a él siempre le ocurría lo mismo, odiaba los domingos, mucho, muchísimo más que los otros días de la semana, cada día poseía algo que atenuaba un poco, aunque solo fuese por unos instantes, la angustia de comprobar que todo resulta insoportable, pero los domingos no mitigaban en absoluto esa angustia, y lo mismo sucedía también allí, en España, en vano era Barcelona diferente de Budapest, en vano era todo diferente porque, de hecho, nada era diferente, el domingo se posaba también allí con todo su terrible peso sobre el alma, no quería comenzar, no quería progresar, no quería acabar” .
Viene incluido en el segmento titulado: “Así nació un asesino”. Pero en realidad podría haberse titulado “Así nació un escritor”, porque blandiendo el cuchillo jamonero entre los dientes es como nace la literatura perenne que sacude los cimientos. El resto es perder el tiempo.
Hasta otra.
“Me quité la corona y, adoptando forma terrenal, mas sin ocultar los rasgos de mi rostro, descendí entre ellos con el propósito de visitar al soberano Chu, el rey Mu, para lo cual tuve que abandonar las llanuras interminables del Cielo, el Territorio radiante de la Luz, bajar de aquel mundo en el que irradia, emana y fluye la forma y de ese modo todo lo colma la nada, tuve que echar pie a tierra, por así decirlo, desprenderme de la pureza de lo Celeste y trasladarme al instante, porque nada dura tanto como él, pues él no dura ni siquiera eso, de tal modo que mi descenso, de hecho, tampoco duró más que un instante, en el que, sin embargo, caben tantísimas cosas, cabía el camino, como dicen, el camino, como lo llaman, el sendero en esa torpe lengua, la relampagueante aparición del rumbo que tomé para venir de allí aquí, la bajada e incluso la gran pompa con que descendí, ya que cabía todo en él, cabían los primeros pasos como ser humano en la Tierra, donde mi guía, mi único y mudo acompañante, me orientó enseguida y con suma discreción para que encontrase el sendero”...
Una vez más traigo a este blog una reseña del húngaro László Krasznahorkai. Primero creo que fue “Melancolía de la resistencia”, la que considero su mejor obra de las que están traducidas al castellano a día de hoy; luego ese pequeño y grandísimo libro de “Al norte la montaña, al sur el lago, al oeste el camino, al este el río”, repleto de orientalismo y con algunos pasajes de una gran belleza que se te quedan grabados a fuego en la memoria. Porque la prosa de Krasznahorkai es una de las más obsesivas y perturbadora que se pueden encontrar en el actual panorama literario. Alumno aventajado de Kafka, Bernhard y Beckett, por citar algunas de sus muy palpables influencias, ha diseñado un estilo propio que ya parece marca de la casa, y que en el alto sentido intelectual es inimitable, porque hace falta ser un místico desesperanzado para escribir como él lo hace.
En esta ocasión, en “Y Seibo descendió a la tierra”, se atreve a utilizar de guía a una deidad japonesa en cuyo jardín florece un melocotonero cada trescientos años y que se va a contemplar durante 17 segmentos narrativos o bien las grandes obras creativas de la historia humana o momentos peculiares en las que la búsqueda de la belleza está presente. Esto sobre el papel y sobre la contraportada, pero estamos ante un libro en la que los géneros se pulverizan, los siglos confluyen, las neuronas se vuelan, las numeraciones se aplastan, pues se tiende hacia el infinito en la numeración o sucesión matemática que sugirió Fibonacci, en la que al principio se comienza normalmente con 0 y con 1 y luego se va sumando cada término con la suma de los dos anteriores, y así nos encontramos en el segmento 5 y en el segmento 8, por ejemplo, y de pronto pasamos al segmento 13, que si yo no fallo haciendo cuentas es el resultante de la suma anterior.
Pero no contento con eso nos lleva a un viaje planetario sobre la creatividad humana y nos encontramos en diversos lugares y diversas épocas, y viajamos, por ejemplo, del imperio aqueménida (o babilónico si se prefiere, deteniéndose en la figura de la reina Vashti, presencia bíblica en el Libro de Ester) a un monasterio budista o a una pintura renacentista, y así en 17 segmentos, la mayoría de ellos en un único párrafo, o en muy pocos párrafos, complementando lugares tan conocidos (incluso para los que no los han visitado) como la Acrópolis de Atenas o la Alhambra de Granada. No obstante, prevalecen los pasajes dedicados al Japón, ya sea con restauradores de monasterios zen a hacedores de máscaras del teatro Noh, o el también bellísimo “Ze ´Ami se va”, el autor desterrado del manuscrito Kintosho, que es el penúltimo segmento y uno de mis preferidos, junto al primero de “El cazador del río Kamo” y el luminoso “Il Ritorno in Perugia”. Hay mucho y bueno para elegir.
Eso sí, la literatura de Krasznahorkai nunca ha sido sencilla. En “Guerra y guerra”, por ejemplo, muchas veces no sabes qué voz narrativa te está hablando, fundamentalmente son dos las que se entrecruzan continuamente, de ahí la repetición en el nombre del título, pero se pasa de una a otra con tanta velocidad que la lectura se hace muy compleja. En “Tango Satánico”, obra coral y quizá la más conocida por la adaptación cinematográfica de Bela Tarr, acabas enfangado de barro y de esa lluvia que cala y que azota todo el libro, con la música de las campanas de fondo resonando en tu cabeza, en lo que es una historia dura e inmisericorde.
Y así sucesivamente. Y no es fácil porque exige al lector una atención suprema. Y de todas las que he leído hasta el momento creo que esta es una de las más complicadas, puesto que esa búsqueda de lo sagrado y de la belleza necesita de un conocimiento previo del arte. “Solo el hoy lo significa todo”, afirma un personaje, y casi podríamos darlo por válido como prueba del pensamiento vital y filosófico del escritor húngaro. Por decirlo de una manera clara: esto es un libro de onanismo intelectual, y para disfrutarlo en toda su extensión es necesario saber en cada momento de qué cuadro o de qué obra arquitectónica o máscara del teatro Noh se está hablando. Si se hace un trabajo previo de búsqueda (al parecer la editorial Acantilado considera a todos los lectores de Krasznahorkai autónomos y muy capacitados, y no ha considerado incluir un glosario de las obras de artes que en el libro se citan) sí se puede disfrutar del libro, siempre y cuando no se tema a los meandros por los que discurren esos párrafos inmensos. Pero como yo estoy acostumbrado a escribir así, incluso, a veces, con menos pausa que el húngaro, pues para mí esto es como darme un baño y masaje en un hotel de cinco estrellas. Es música que conozco y no me desentona, para nada. Me transporta cual un extasiado grano de polen por los márgenes del libro. Pero reconozco que si no se está acostumbrado conlleva una dificultad.
Sin embargo, los libros que exigen son los libros que perduran. La mayoría de los libros sin exigencia, que son por otra parte casi todos los que llegan a la lista de libros más vendidos, vivirán poco más de unas pocas décadas, pues de forma inexorable serán aplastados por el paso del tiempo. Solo los escritores que escriben hacia el infinito y contra el tiempo, en un duelo inútil y condenado de antemano al fracaso, y cuyas dotes implican un absoluto dominio del lenguaje, emprenden esa búsqueda (individual o colectiva, eso lo mismo da) de lo sagrado que en algunos casos los conducirá a la marginación y la locura y en otros al reconocimiento y la admiración de un puñado de lectores. Solo esos, “los aniquiladores de las convenciones y las verdades asentadas”, y solo en algunos casos, serán capaces de sobrevivir literariamente; tendrán acaso la posibilidad de llegar a las manos de los lectores dentro de cien o doscientos años. Serán los autores de nuestra época que se leerán en el futuro para desentrañar nuestras miserias y nuestras torpezas, y tal vez así comprender las propias bajezas y contradicciones que padezcan los seres humanos del mañana. Como siempre ha pasado por otra parte. Esto no es nada nuevo y viene ocurriendo desde los primeros días en la historia de la palabra escrita, desde los primerísimos textos sumerios.
Les dejo “con el escritor del fin del mundo”, con alguien que podría resumir en sí mismo todo el legado literario que el ser humano ha alcanzado hasta llegar a nuestros días, con un curioso pasaje radical de este híbrido de cultura, esplendoroso y complejísimo que es “Y Seibo descendió a la tierra”
“El domingo transcurrió como un espanto que se posa sobre el hombre y no lo suelta, que lo mastica y lo consume y lo muerde y lo desgarra, porque ese domingo no quería ni empezar ni continuar ni terminar nunca, y a él siempre le ocurría lo mismo, odiaba los domingos, mucho, muchísimo más que los otros días de la semana, cada día poseía algo que atenuaba un poco, aunque solo fuese por unos instantes, la angustia de comprobar que todo resulta insoportable, pero los domingos no mitigaban en absoluto esa angustia, y lo mismo sucedía también allí, en España, en vano era Barcelona diferente de Budapest, en vano era todo diferente porque, de hecho, nada era diferente, el domingo se posaba también allí con todo su terrible peso sobre el alma, no quería comenzar, no quería progresar, no quería acabar” .
Viene incluido en el segmento titulado: “Así nació un asesino”. Pero en realidad podría haberse titulado “Así nació un escritor”, porque blandiendo el cuchillo jamonero entre los dientes es como nace la literatura perenne que sacude los cimientos. El resto es perder el tiempo.
Hasta otra.
January 13, 2022
I could simply join the choir and say that "Seiobo There Below" is about art; or the essence of art. Or artists; or the essence of an artist.
It would be even easier to say what this book is NOT about, instead of trying to define it; alas, simplification is not a way out when it comes to a book that is meant to challenge the reader's capacity to even start to assimilate it, let alone get to its core.
This book is about something that has no name. It's about the impermanence of creatures trapped in the permanence of eternal change. It's about ways to see Seiobo, the Japanese goddess whose tree bestows the fruit of immortality to the mortals.
Seiobo, looking for perfection where perfection does not belong.
Seiobo, asking men to seek for it nonetheless.
If perfection is the order of the universe, then beauty is the means for earthly creatures to merge into it.
Beauty is the only (spurious) approximation of perfection we can hope to grasp, although from a distance. Accordong to Krasznahorkai, perfection is not in the eye of the beholder: it's the other way round. A heron hunting near a river, waiting motionless for the moment to strike; painters living to the extreme the early-Renaissance clash between flesh and soul; the restoration of a wooden Buddha, with the nuberless rituals to be performed all along; museum visitors witnessing strange epiphanies; a Noh mask-maker putting into question the very existence of art; a guard obsessing over the Venus de Milo; Gaudí's architecture and Japanese landscapes, the Alhambra, mysticism and madness, zen and baroque; they're all part of it, in numberless different ways. Thus Seiobo manifests herself in these stories, non-linear in time and space though numbered in the Fibonacci sequence (each number is the sum of the two before it), as well as in the author's unique writing style, characterised by endless, convoluted sentences - meandering on for pages, digressing, going nowhere, or maybe everywhere, losing themselves in a delta of meanings, a mirror-maze of concepts.
Just like us, worming our way through the labyrinthine layers of existence.
As a matter of fact, we aren't meant to survive the biological boundaries of earthly life, nor are the things we make. Our works are at least as perishable as our bodies. In the long run, Khufu's pyramid is as doomed to crumble as the pharaoh's flesh and bone.
And yet, something does survive. There's something we leave behind that does defy the centuries and therefore attains the earthly equivalent of eternity. It's not the artwork, but rather the artwork's soul, the essence of all human endeavours and the sufferings they often entail. It's the flame burning some from within and compelling them to jump into it, to become one and the same with it. A jump into the unknown, possibly into a void that leaves men hungering for more, screaming for more.
We are creatures, not creators. But the spirit of Creation is inside us, like a primal need no lifetime is long enough to satisfy or repress.
Seiobo There Below, indeed: the gift of eternal life, bestowed on the few who dare acknowledge its real essence.
"Seiobo is the emissary who arrives and says I am not the desire for peace, I am peace itself; Seiobo arrives and says do not be afraid, for the universe of peace is not the rainbow of yearning; the universe, the real universe - already exists."
... and Seiobo became flesh and dwelt among us.
Several times.
Here below.
It would be even easier to say what this book is NOT about, instead of trying to define it; alas, simplification is not a way out when it comes to a book that is meant to challenge the reader's capacity to even start to assimilate it, let alone get to its core.
This book is about something that has no name. It's about the impermanence of creatures trapped in the permanence of eternal change. It's about ways to see Seiobo, the Japanese goddess whose tree bestows the fruit of immortality to the mortals.
Seiobo, looking for perfection where perfection does not belong.
Seiobo, asking men to seek for it nonetheless.
If perfection is the order of the universe, then beauty is the means for earthly creatures to merge into it.
Beauty is the only (spurious) approximation of perfection we can hope to grasp, although from a distance. Accordong to Krasznahorkai, perfection is not in the eye of the beholder: it's the other way round. A heron hunting near a river, waiting motionless for the moment to strike; painters living to the extreme the early-Renaissance clash between flesh and soul; the restoration of a wooden Buddha, with the nuberless rituals to be performed all along; museum visitors witnessing strange epiphanies; a Noh mask-maker putting into question the very existence of art; a guard obsessing over the Venus de Milo; Gaudí's architecture and Japanese landscapes, the Alhambra, mysticism and madness, zen and baroque; they're all part of it, in numberless different ways. Thus Seiobo manifests herself in these stories, non-linear in time and space though numbered in the Fibonacci sequence (each number is the sum of the two before it), as well as in the author's unique writing style, characterised by endless, convoluted sentences - meandering on for pages, digressing, going nowhere, or maybe everywhere, losing themselves in a delta of meanings, a mirror-maze of concepts.
Just like us, worming our way through the labyrinthine layers of existence.
As a matter of fact, we aren't meant to survive the biological boundaries of earthly life, nor are the things we make. Our works are at least as perishable as our bodies. In the long run, Khufu's pyramid is as doomed to crumble as the pharaoh's flesh and bone.
And yet, something does survive. There's something we leave behind that does defy the centuries and therefore attains the earthly equivalent of eternity. It's not the artwork, but rather the artwork's soul, the essence of all human endeavours and the sufferings they often entail. It's the flame burning some from within and compelling them to jump into it, to become one and the same with it. A jump into the unknown, possibly into a void that leaves men hungering for more, screaming for more.
We are creatures, not creators. But the spirit of Creation is inside us, like a primal need no lifetime is long enough to satisfy or repress.
Seiobo There Below, indeed: the gift of eternal life, bestowed on the few who dare acknowledge its real essence.
"Seiobo is the emissary who arrives and says I am not the desire for peace, I am peace itself; Seiobo arrives and says do not be afraid, for the universe of peace is not the rainbow of yearning; the universe, the real universe - already exists."
... and Seiobo became flesh and dwelt among us.
Several times.
Here below.
April 4, 2024
Μετά από είκοσι+ ημέρες συντροφιά με τον Λάζλο, είναι φυσικά αδύνατο να μείνω ανεπηρέαστος. Έγραψα λοιπόν ένα σεντονάκι, μια άτεχνη, Λαζλοέσκ καταγραφή της αναγνωστικής μου εμπειρίας, ως παιχνίδι.. Δυστυχώς το έκλεψαν οι συμπονετικοί για τα ματάκια των φίλων μου καλικάντζαροι, όμως κατάφερα να διασώσω ένα μικρό μονάχα τμήμα του:
..Δεν το τέλειωσα δεν θα ήταν σωστό ούτε τίμιο να το τελειώσω το μονοπάτι αυτό είναι πολύ απόκρημνο και μου κόπηκε η ανάσα αν και όχι πάντα από δέος. Είχε σημεία που ήθελες να μείνεις για πολύ άλλα όμως σου απαγόρευαν την πρόσβαση και πολύ περισσότερο την περιπλάνηση. Ένοιωσα ότι έπρεπε να το αφήσω λίγο πριν το τέλος..θα επιστρέψω...
Ο δημιουργός ανακαλύπτει τη δημιουργία και ο αναγνώστης τα όρια της ανάγνωσης - κι όχι μόνο.. Το κεφάλαιο "Γεννιέται Φονιάς" συγκλονιστικό.
ΥΓ. Η εμπειρία του να παλεύει κανείς με τη γραφή του Λάζλο, εμένα τουλάχιστον μου μοιάζει με μία αντίστοιχη δική μου απέναντι σε κάποια δελφική αναθηματική επιγραφή. https://www.archaiologia.gr/blog/2012...
Προσπαθείς να καταλάβεις το νόημα, αλλά αυτό που κυρίως σου συμβαίνει είναι η άμεση, αισθητική εμπειρία της θέασης των λέξεων - κι όχι τόσο αυτή της κατανόησης τους. Στρέφεις κάποτε την πλάτη στο κείμενο, όμως αυτό είναι ήδη μέσα σου και δουλεύει μυστικά..
..Δεν το τέλειωσα δεν θα ήταν σωστό ούτε τίμιο να το τελειώσω το μονοπάτι αυτό είναι πολύ απόκρημνο και μου κόπηκε η ανάσα αν και όχι πάντα από δέος. Είχε σημεία που ήθελες να μείνεις για πολύ άλλα όμως σου απαγόρευαν την πρόσβαση και πολύ περισσότερο την περιπλάνηση. Ένοιωσα ότι έπρεπε να το αφήσω λίγο πριν το τέλος..θα επιστρέψω...
Ο δημιουργός ανακαλύπτει τη δημιουργία και ο αναγνώστης τα όρια της ανάγνωσης - κι όχι μόνο.. Το κεφάλαιο "Γεννιέται Φονιάς" συγκλονιστικό.
ΥΓ. Η εμπειρία του να παλεύει κανείς με τη γραφή του Λάζλο, εμένα τουλάχιστον μου μοιάζει με μία αντίστοιχη δική μου απέναντι σε κάποια δελφική αναθηματική επιγραφή. https://www.archaiologia.gr/blog/2012...
Προσπαθείς να καταλάβεις το νόημα, αλλά αυτό που κυρίως σου συμβαίνει είναι η άμεση, αισθητική εμπειρία της θέασης των λέξεων - κι όχι τόσο αυτή της κατανόησης τους. Στρέφεις κάποτε την πλάτη στο κείμενο, όμως αυτό είναι ήδη μέσα σου και δουλεύει μυστικά..
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