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After reading a certain chapter of this book I had to put it down. I felt it would take me not a few days but a few years to recover.

And it’s not László Krasznahorkai’s description of a certain thought nor its plausibility, it is a sense of mortifying realization that such a thought is inevitably real and human.

When I resumed my reading, the book informed:

What is behind me still remains ahead of me.

Written a few years before the fall of Communism, Satantango reads as a political allegory, Susan Sontag hailing Krasznahorkai “master of apocalypse which never happens��, but despite its post or pre apocalyptic premise and bleak imagery, there is so much more beneath the surface.

A narrative permeated with rain, mud, earth and rot consolidates into familiar forms, yet it is not always clear what is going on, there is a fog. Spiders crawl through sentences and spin their webs of meaning. But meaning might not exist anymore.

There’s no sense or meaning in anything. It’s nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressures. It's only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of decay.

And there is so much rain, it’s the reign of rain, rain is persistent and continuous, rain destroyed time, rain is time. The characters themselves are not interested in any kind of measure of time anymore.

Time was passing very slowly and, luckily for them, the alarm clock had long ago stopped working so there wasn’t even the sound of ticking to remind them of time.

Satantango’s characters cheat, lie, drink, debouche and wallow in their misery. They exist doing nothing in a continuous nothingness until their mate comes back from the dead. He says he can “make it great again��, promising Eden on Earth, their Kingdom Come. Is he a savior? Is he God? Is he Elvis? Or a scam artist? Satan from the title?

The black rain come down
Oh water water everywhere
Where no bird can fly, no fish can swim
No fish can swim
Until The King is born -

The premise of this book might sound quite biblical or Faustian and while it’s not necessarily symbolist, one might spend an eternity pondering on metaphors and finding unexpected discoveries.

In addition to a literal tango there is a kind of time-image tango. Even the internal structure of Satantango is composed as a kind of dance - as I was spinning through the chapters, every time I thought I arrived at a certain destination I found myself right back at the start. And it’s the language, at least in translation, that really hits the mark. Thoughts are continuously thinking, discussing and interrupting other thoughts. Substance and style inform each other, while the author’s long looping sentences create a rather hypnotic rhythm. There is a process of continuous accumulation which reminds me of José Saramago’s work - who needs paragraphs or punctuation when one can just go with the flow? And although it’s quite rare, Krasznahorkai doesn’t break his sentences for nothing.

Though on the surface this novel is bleak, depressing, pessimistic and even nihilistic, there is a certain solace found in the author’s humour as well a hint of hope, maybe not exactly between the lines of this novel, but in its effect after reading - in its afterglow. In addition, having previously read somewhat lighter in tone and content A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East made me see a rather cosmological perspective to Krasznahorkai’s work. The descriptions of nature, animals, light and even rain are not necessarily those of something wicked or meaningless. All in all, I see this book as an antidote to the totalitarianism of mind. An incentive to keep on fighting against lethargy increasingly symptomatic in today’s world. And even more importantly, I feel it’s an ode to literature, poetry and art. Krasznahorkai said in an interview:

True artists, just like saints, were never ‘members�� of our society. So the art they create is not an integrated, clearly defined and material part of society. Such art resides in a separate spiritual space that is perceived as part of reality.

While Krasznahorkai’s Satantango is a masterpiece on its own, his narrative combined with Béla Tarr’s incredible cinematography is pure poetry. After watching the film adaptation I rushed to re-read some parts of the book and admired it even more. Without a doubt, I will spend a long time thinking about it, unraveling its genius and dancing my life away to the rhythm of tango.


In that case, I’ll miss the thing by waiting fot it. - Franz Kafka / Photography - Hiroshi Sugimoto