09/10/2025
No seu día publicaramos 'Ao norte unha montaña, ao sur un lago, ao oeste uns camiños, ao leste un río', en tradución de Sergio de la Ossa e Veronika Gergely, mais tivemos que descatalogalo hai uns anos. Tes a sorte de contar co teu exemplar na biblioteca?
The 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in literature László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess.
But there are more strings to his bow, and he soon looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone. The result is a string of works inspired by the deep-seated impressions left by his journeys to China and Japan. About the search for a secret garden, his 2003 novel ‘Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó’ (‘A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East’, 2022) is a mysterious tale with powerful lyrical sections that takes place southeast of Kyoto. The work has the sense of a prelude to the rich ‘Seiobo járt odalent’ (2008; ‘Seiobo There Below’, 2013), a collection of seventeen stories arranged in a Fibonacci sequence about the role of beauty and artistic creation in a world of blindness and impermanence. Alongside his quintet of epics, it represents Krasznahorkai’s major work. Particularly unforgettable is its opening scene in which a snow-white heron stands motionless in the middle of the River Kamo in Kyoto, waiting for its victim in the whirlpools below. Invisible to the masses of people passing by, the bird becomes an elusive image of the particular situation of the artist.
The common thread running through the book is the Japanese myth concerning Seiobo, who according to legend protects the garden which, every three thousand years, produces fruit that grants immortality. In the book, the myth is about the creation of a work of art and, in a string of episodes, we follow the genesis of such a work in the most diverse of times and environments. Often the act of creation occurs after a lengthy period of preparation marked by tradition and practiced craftsmanship. Works may also come about as a result of delayed or confused circumstances, as in the story of the perilous transport of an unfinished painting by the renowned Renaissance artist Pietro Vannucci from Florence to Perugia, the city of the latter’s birth. While everyone believes that Perugino, as he is commonly known, has given up painting, it is in Perugia that a miracle takes place.
The artist himself is, as so often in ‘Seiobo There Below’, absent from these stories. Instead, we are presented with figures that stand slightly to one side of the work that is soon to come into being. These might include janitors, onlookers or devoted craftsmen, who rarely or indeed never comprehend the meaning of the work in which they participate. The book is a masterful portrayal, in the course of which the reader is led through a row of ‘side doors’ to the inexplicable act of creation.
Discover more of Krasznahorkai’s literary world: https://bit.ly/4pMBORJ
