Satantango has some truly amazing and wonderful sentences in it:"He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity ... and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself--utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials--into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying an order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home" (4)."Green mildew covered the cracked and peeling walls, but the clothes in the cupboard, a cupboard that was regularly cleaned, were also mildewed, as were the towels and all the bedding, and a couple of weeks was all it took for the cutlery saved in the drawer for special occasions to develop a coating of rust, and what with the legs of the big lace-covered table having worked loose, the curtains having yellowed and the lightbulb having gone out, they decided one day to move into the kitchen and stay there, and since there was nothing they could do to stop it happening anyway, they left the room to be colonized by spiders and mice" (7)."The rain that had been gently pouring till now suddenly turned into a veritable deluge, like a river breaking over a dam, drowning the already choking fields, the lowest lying of which were riddled with serpentine channels, and though it was impossible to see anything through the glass he did not turn away but stared at the worm-eaten wooden frame from which the putty had dropped out, when suddenly a vague form appeared at the window, one that eventually could be made out to be a human face, though he couldn't tell at first whose it was, until he succeeded in picking out a pair of startled eyes, at which point he saw 'his own careworn features' and recognized them with a shock like a stab of pain since he felt that what the rain was doing to his face was exactly what time would do" (12-13)."The brief moment it took her to blink was enough for her to recognize them, since that was all she needed, because the shadowy forms of her mother and sister were constantly imprinted on the scene before her in the throbbing air: she could sense their presence without seeing them, she knew they were there, that she was facingthemdown there,just as she knew that they were rising above her to the point that if she once looked up and saw them, their image might crack right across, because their intolerable right to tower above her was so unarguable that the vision she had of them might well be enough to explode them" (109)."Outside the water rushed, unobstructed, from the tiles, in a hard, straight line and beat at the earth by the walls of the Horgos farm, forming an ever-deeper moat, as if every individual drop of rain were the product of some hidden intent, first to isolate the house and maroon its occupants, then slowly, millimeter by millimeter, to soak through the mud to the foundation stones beneath and so wash away the whole thing; so that, in the unremittingly brief time allowed for the purpose, the walls might crack, the windows shift and the doors be forced from their frames; so that the chimney might lean and collapse, the nails might fall from the crumbling walls, and the mirrors hanging from them might darken; so that the whole shambles of a house with its cheap patchwork might vanish under water like a ship that had sprung a leak sadly proclaiming the pointlessness of the miserable war between rain, earth, and man's fragile best intentions, a roof being no defense" (115).And, in the penultimate chapter, there are many jokes about bureaucratic language and state monitoring of private individuals, e.g. ..."But as soon as the clerks got to the part relating to Mrs. Schmidt, they immediately found themselves in the deepest difficulty, because they didn't know how to formulate such vulgar expressions as stupid, big-mouth, and cow--how to retain the import of these crude concepts so that the document should be true to itself while at the same time retaining the language of their profession. After some discussion they settled on 'intellectually weak female person primarily concerned with her sexuality' but they hardly had time to draw breath because next they came across the expression cheap whore in all its awful attendant crudity. For lack of precision they had to abandon the idea of 'a female person of dubious reputation,' of 'a woman of the demimonde' and 'a painted woman' and a mass of other euphemisms that seemed alluringly attractive at first glance; they drummed impatient fingers on the writing desk across which they faced each other, painfully avoiding each other's eyes, finally settling on the formula 'a woman who offers her body freely,' which was not perfect but would have to do" (252).Furthermore, the structure of the novel--patterned after a tango--and its metafictional moment are brilliant. There's really a great deal to appreciate about this book, and I'm very nearly inspired to go watch the 7-hour film adaptation to see if its famously long takes are as engrossing as the novel's famously long sentences.Unfortunately, the novel also has crazy big piles of seriously vapid dialogue that I could not stand, and I found the one brief passage describing animal cruelty pretty painful to read.
Irimiás scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale-blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army. p. 47Now when someone asks me that inevitable question: are there any movies that are better than the books they are based on? I will have a definitive answer. Because as good as this book was, it is overshadowed by Bela Tarr's amazing 7 and a half hour film (it takes longer to watch the film than to read the book in this case). The movie takes the best elements of the book: namely the oppressive mood, the rain, the real-time unfolding of events, and makes them so tangible. So visceral. It also does away with some elements of the book that weigh it down, like the clever ending and the narrator's slightly mocking tone. The film is also more mysterious, as the characters' thoughts must be implied and are not explicitly spelled out. Having seen the movie, though, it was nice to read the book and figure out all the intricate workings behind what was simply on screen; I finally get all the connections now.Not to be too negative either, because maybe it's unfair to judge this book by the film. This particular way of telling this particular story was perhaps always meant to be filmed; perhaps there is no way to surpass that medium in this case. I was happy, however, to finally read a Krasznahorkai novel after hearing so much about him. His prose is not consistently great. But when it is, it sings with such omniscient authority and rhythm that there is no good place to stop. His writing operates on a principle of accumulation. It was dangerous for me to type out this excerpt, because, as you can see, I almost typed out the rest of the book! I finally just had to stop somewhere, randomly:There she retreated into a wounded silence, clutching the Bible to her bosom, looking over the heads of the others into a kind of heavenly haze, her eyes misting over with a blissful sense of certainty derived from above. In her own mind she stood, straight as a post, high above a magnetic field of bent heads and backs, the proud unassailable place she occupied in the inn, a space she was unwilling to vacate, like a vent in the closed bar, a vent through which foul air could escape so that numbing, frozen, poisonous drafts from outside might rush in and take its place. In the tense silence the continual buzzing of the horseflies was the only audible sound, that and the constant rain beating down in the distance, and, uniting the two, the ever more frequent scritch-scratch of the bent acacia trees outside, and the strange nightshift work of the bugs in the table legs and in various parts of the counter whose irregular pulse measured out the small parcels of time, apportioning the narrow space into which a word, a sentence or a movement might perfectly fit. The entire end-of-October night was beating with a single pulse, its own strange rhythm sounding through trees and rain and mud in a manner beyond words or vision; a vision present in the low light, in the slow passage of darkness, in the blurred shadows, in the working of tired muscles; in the silence, in its human subjects, in the undulating surface of the metalled road; in the hair moving to a different beat than do the dissolving fibers of the body; growth and decay on their divergent paths; all these thousands of echoing rhythms, this confusing clatter of night noises, all parts of an apparently common stream, that is the attempt to forget despair; though behind things other things appear as if by mischief, and once beyond the power of the eye they no longer hang together. p. 89-90
Do You like book Satantango (2012)?
Thanks to the title, to the hip sort of publications that spruik this novel, the glorious cover art, the unpronounceable last name, and the publisher, I was expecting something like Pynchon for people who find Pynchon too easy to read, too plot-based, and too intellectually void. And yet I read it anyway, which suggests all sorts of Freudian things about me. Luckily, however, Satantango is just kind of a romp. A gloriously allegorical romp, yes, in which we're asked to consider huge questions about human history, social, economic and cultural; in which a few of the usual markers readers love so much are removed (it takes a few pages before you realize what a chapter is about), sure, but a romp nonetheless, with a fabulously snarky plot, great set pieces, terrors and laughs in their hundreds. We have a messiah who's really just a nark and a thug, and everyone else in the novel is worse than him. We have some possibly supernatural goings on. We have lots of drinking. And then, for no particularly good reason except that this novel was published in 1985, we have -- spoiler! -- a metafictional undercutting of everything that's more or less boredom incarnate. Wait wait wait, I want to say to these authors--you mean what I just read was written by someone? It didn't really happen? WOAH! MIND BLOWN DUDE! BECAUSE LIKE HOW CAN YOU WRITE WORDS ABOUT THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED?!* So, as another reviewer suggested, maybe skip the last chapter. You won't lose anything, but you'll gain wonders. * I just learned that '?!' (or possibly '!?') is known as an interrobang. That is all.
—Justin Evans
I am reading Satantango at my parents' house. A communist block of flats, tiny cubicles with thin walls, through which the noise of a Tv set penetrates from my neighbor upstairs. Later on, my mother comes in my room and falls asleep on my bed. Poor mom, she is always so tired... Soon, the muffled noise of the Tv intermingles with my mother's snores. I am expelled from the depths of evil; I leave behind the colony, the putrid rooms, the decay. I come back to my banal reality. I glimpse at the half-eaten cake, the orderly room, my warm feet. I hold the book open with my toes, fingers plucked deep in my ears. Slowly, word upon word, I can hear once again the rumbling of thunder, the incessant tapping of rain. Shadowy hands pull me once more inside the sickening gloom and despair. I am back in the colony, caught up in a maddening Satan's tango.Back to Bucharest, I finish the novel. Rain has followed me around, accompanying my reading of Satantango. I couldn't have arranged for a better setting for this bleak, absurd novel, which dragged me through a world in a deepening state of decay. Civilization seems to have been erased, people decimated by an unknown plague, with only an isolated community which survived an apocalypse.For a long time, I had no notion of time and space, nor of the purpose of me being there. No explanations, no causes, only a sour taste in one's mouth, as a sign of impending death. The few people left in the colony retreat, powerless, in the face of an abstract disease, incapable of defending or saving themselves. Everything around them crumbles and rots. Paint flakes, roofs collapse, mold creeps along walls, furniture and clothes. Unseen spiders weave their cobwebs in silence, trapping objects and beings alike in silvery cocoons, in an attempt to preserve, to hold the world still. It is a life adrift, Sodom and Gomorrah on a smaller scale - men crave for their neighbors' wives, young girls sell their bodies, the school master no longer teaches the young, the doctor no longer heals the sick. Nothing works anymore - the mill and the shops are deserted, the fields are abandoned. The only one standing is the tavern, where people gather to drink and dance madly until dawn. The inhabitants dream of escaping, of leaving their colony behind. Thoughts of starting a better life elsewhere fade away the minute they take shape. They place their hopes in an outward salvation. One day, a tragedy befalls them, followed by a miracle witnessed by few, but they can't read the signs; their minds are too numbed, their souls too hardened to understand. And when the much awaited savior arrives, they abandon every shred of reason and follow him blindly. In his hands, the once hopeless puppets return to life, as he infuses them with hope and renewed energy. Docile, they walk the road their master puppeteer has chosen for them.Krasznahorkai's prose has a hypnotic, overwhelming power. I allowed myself to be carried away by his words, by the rhythm of his long, winding phrases. Slowly, I immersed into the suffocating world of the colony; I could sense the moans of collapsing houses, the lament of an eternal rain, the weaving of cobwebs, the advancing of mold. I could almost smell the heavy stench of mud and putrefaction, oozing from the crumbling walls and the skin of their helpless inhabitants. In twelve steps of a dance executed in circle, the narrative opens and closes with the mysterious ringing of bells. Behind a window, safely tucked under blankets, there is a hand that writes in notebooks. Reality and imagination commence to overlap; it is either a descent into madness or an ascent towards truth.*Spoilers below, most likely*In so many ways, Satantango is not a dystopia. It is, in effect, real life. Crude, unforgiving life, in which we can bring the apocalypse onto ourselves through our ignorance, indolence and depravity. Page after page, I started to realize that the unnamed plague, the unmentioned disaster did not happen from external causes. The so-called catastrophe was brought by the people themselves, through their laziness, vice and fatality. Dehumanized, hopeless, they linger in a state of lethargy; their will is paralyzed. It is the kind of disease that is eating them from the inside; they have condemned themselves. Instead of relying on their own powers, they hope for salvation from elsewhere; they ultimately subject to a higher will, because it is always easier to be led than to lead. Ironically, the salvation they await for could mean, in the end, a further downfall.
—Ema
Satantango, or Satan's Tango, is a wandering, twisted, dark, exhausting snarl of a book. It takes six steps forward, and six steps back, leaving chaos and the blackest of humor.The novel is an allegorical story of a dance with the devil - the characters in their bleak little rainy hole of a village futz around, and every time they try and move forwards, the inertia of their lives drags them back. They dream of the fool's prophet, Irimias, and regress further. Sink into the earth.It's more than Eastern Europeans Being Depressed. Seriously. Just read some of the sentences out loud.But the plot and all those things are secondary to the astonishing language and detail of the author. The sheer mass of the text is first intimidating, then wholly absorbing. Krasznahorkai has an astonishing grasp of the slowness of memory and time.4.5 stars. To reread.
—Hadrian
