Least worst options

Catastrophe, both real and imagined, looms throughout the work of László Krasznahorkai. In Spadework for a Palace (2018), the narrator proclaims that “total reality can only be seen as continual destruction, permanent catastrophe, reality is catastrophe, this is what we inhabit, from the most minuscule subatomic particle to the greatest planetary dimensions”. The bleakness of this world-view is often undercut by the eccentricities of the prophets who deliver it, allowing it to be read in a comic manner, the same way we might smile at a gloomy statement by Beckett or Kafka, perhaps as a form of defence against a threatening truth. In this mode, the more often a prognostication of doom is repeated, the funnier it gets.

The epigraph of Krasznahorkai’s latest work to appear in English translation, Herscht 07769 – “Hope is a mistake” – has the same serio-comic quality (and seems a deliberate echo of Kafka’s maxim that “there is hope, an infinite amount of hope, just not for us”). Before the end of the first page we are in familiar territory: someone is writing to Angela Merkel about a threat to “the existence of the country, indeed all of humanity”. Florian Herscht, the letter writer, is a gentle, trusting giant of a young man living in Kana, a fictional town in Thuringia, central Germany, an economically deprived area formerly in the GDR. He is well liked, despite his close relationship with an abusive father figure known only as the Boss, the leader of a gang of neo-Nazis. Florian’s fears are the result of his attending an evening class in quantum physics that has taught him the “desperate ungroundedness” of all concepts of time and space”. The Big Bang is what terrifies him most: he believes that if something came from nothing, everything can revert to nothing at any moment.

Florian’s anxieties are mirrored by the Boss’s response to a series of graffiti attacks on sites linked to J. S. Bach, which he takes as a personal affront given his worship of the composer. Although at no point is the Boss a sympathetic figure, the nuances of his portrayal, in particular the emotional insecurity that makes him try to maintain Florian’s dependency, prevent him from being a mere two-dimensional villain. The tenderness with which Krasznahorkai depicts Florian’s increasingly desperate attempts to contact Merkel keep him, too, from becoming purely comic: for the first half of the novel he is a Holy Fool.

If I only mention now that the entire novel takes place over a single sentence, it is partly because this has become such a trademark of Krasznahorkai’s work as to seem unremarkable; but the greater reason is that, in Ottilie Mulzet’s sinuous translation, being confined in this unceasing prose is an ease, not an impediment. Within this flow the novel’s shifts between the perspectives of Kana’s inhabitants create a remarkable sense of polyphony.

The theme that emerges is initially of regional decline: the young have left; most of the industries have closed down; the rail gates close, but no train arrives. Such a close correspondence between reality and fiction is an interesting departure for Krasznahorkai, whose work has often seemed to occupy such murky temporal and geographical territory that even the slightest contemporary reference produces a shock. In Herscht 07769, by contrast, there are many references to Lidl, Game of Thrones and, of course, Merkel; and when the townsfolk also start to foresee catastrophes – some political, some ecological – the resonance is powerful. The fact that the far-right AfD party recently won the most votes in Thuringia’s state elections only adds to the impact of the novel’s political concerns.

Apart from catastrophe, the other leitmotif of Krasznahorkai’s oeuvre is the quest for transcendence, usually through an aesthetic or spiritual route, as in A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East (TLS, February 3, 2023). Florian finds solace in Bach, in whose music he perceives there to be “instructions in the event of a catastrophe”. Only Bach, he believes, is perfect “and could not be destroyed, as opposed to the universe”. This does not prevent him from realizing that the Boss has been responsible for some recent murders – an awakening that triggers his transformation into an avenging angel of mythic proportions. His revenge mission follows genre conventions, but the almost offhand manner with which the eventual retributions occur suggests that the author doesn’t think they have much significance. The townsfolk, however, can now feel hopeful about the future. Although they have been hearing about a pandemic, no one takes it seriously.

The tragedy – or perhaps the joke – of this novel is thus that forecasting catastrophe offers no protection against disaster. By identifying the wrong threats the characters make themselves vulnerable to a misplaced sense of deliverance. But if hope is truly a mistake, and catastrophe inevitable, where does that leave us? One possible reading of Herscht 07769 is that all we can do is choose, to the best of our ability, which catastrophe we succumb to. It is debatable whether Florian chooses his eventual fate, but he exhibits a degree of acceptance that might be the least worst option László Krasznahorkai can offer us. Given these alternatives, perhaps the best balm available is still a little laughter in the dark.

Nick Holdstock is the author of China’s Forgotten People: Xinjiang, terror and the Chinese state, 2015, and the novel Quarantine, 2022

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