On Companion Animals in Krasznahorkai
On Companion Animals in Krasznahorkai

Summary/Abstract: László Krasznahorkai has one main method in his fiction: he reduces the scene to the bleakest of places and seasons, and then sub-divides the plot into thousands of tiny events that he describes in page-long sentences and chapter-long paragraphs. There is hypertrophy of description and near-elimination of dialogue. Often there are lots of well-defined, quirky agents in a barely coherent rural community, but his human characters are severely limited in social scope, intelligence, emotional range, or else they are smart murderers or con men. In the kind of place Marx would have described as showing village idiocy, there plays out a packed density of micro-event, micro-feeling. Theologically speaking, all is horizontal horizon with diminished human travellers and no vertical reach to divinity, no break in the autumnal gloom or incessant wind, nothing more than a glimpse of meaning, much less of joy. Affect, aspect, perspective: flattened. In his films of several novels, Hungarian director Béla Tarr has chosen well when he makes a big square frame for wide landscapes or in-your-face close-ups, on black and white stock.

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