Слика Јапана у прози Ласла Краснахоркаија
The Picture of Japan in the Prose of László Krasznahorkai

Summary/Abstract: The outstanding contemporary Hungarian prose writer, László Krasznahorkai (born in 1954), with his first two major novels, Sátántangó (Satantango, published in 1985) and Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance, published in 1989) established a completely new tendency within the Hungarian tradition of the allegorico-distopical novellistic sub-genre. With his extremely long, albeit very precise sentences, with his special irony and humour, and with the unique ability to create a specific apocalyptic atmosphere, Krasznahorkai set new standards not only in Hungarian, but in contemporary European prose, as well. When, in 1992, he published his novel Az urgai fogoly (The Prisoner of Urga), it marked an important thematic and philosohical turn in his writing, which we could name as the Far-Eastern Turn of his writing. From this point on, one very important line of his works was going to begin: in many forthcoming books, he would deal with themes strongly in connection with the Far East (Mongolia, China and especially Japan). He slowly allineated himself from the classical fictitious novellistic structures and began writing a prose that looks like a non-fiction travelogue, often with strongly recognizable elements of a lyrical-meditative, question-raising, essayistic narrative. This paper deals with the picture of Japan in Krasznahorkai’s books Északról hegy, Délről tó, Keletről utak, Nyugatról folyó (From the North by Hill, From the South by Lake, From the West by Roads, From the East by River), published in 2003, and in the collection of short stories Seiobo járt odalent (Seiobo There Below), published in 2008. Krasznahorkai’s picture of Japan and Japanese culture is strongly influenced by the writer’s obsession with arts and the concept of beauty. However, instead of sticking to a European-centered view and trying to verbalize and explain every aspect of art, the narrator of Krasznahorkai’s books is trying to see things from a Japanese, mainly zen-Buddhist perspective, by emphasizing the importance of a technically well-done art-producing process: the importance of the technical aspects of producing art must not be underestimated ever, it is this message we seem to be getting when reading this unique stylist’s long and dynamic, pulsating sentences. The other important aspect, from which almost everything seems to be originating in Krasznahorkai’s prose, is the author’s very deep anthropological pessimism, for evil, as he puts it, has come to Earth at the very moment when man showed up. Art, the very technical aspect of it, seems, however, to be the only plausible way to connect with the higher spheres of existence, and the only way to somehow try to get there would be to humbly work within one’s own artistic talents and technical abilities.

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