László Krasznahorkai, Herscht 07769 (Florian Herscht’s Bach
Novel), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, New Directions,
2024, 406 pp. (originally published in Budapest, 2021)
[Note: On October 9, 2025, László Krasznahorkai was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature. In honor of that award I repost here my earlier review,
in slightly revised form, of his latest novel.]
Introduction
Here is a pertinent citation from Dennis Overbye (NY
Times, 12/22/2024): “Everything that scientists have learned tells us that
the universe is dynamic, and so is our knowledge of it. Nothing lasts forever,
not even forever itself. Stars are born and they die, their ashes congeal in
new generations of flash and crash. And so the show goes, until the last,
biggest black hole gasps its last puff of subatomic vapor into the void.
“We don’t know what wonders await discovery back in the
first nanosecond of time or in the yawning eons yet ahead. We don’t know why
there is something instead of nothing at all. Or why God plays dice, as
Einstein put it as he mulled the randomness implicit in quantum mechanics, the
house rules of the subatomic realm.”
Herscht 07769—coming late in the career of the
world-renowned, now Nobel Laureate Krasznahorkai—treats the approaching End of
the World. The novel features a worldwide malaise that descends upon the earth
in the year 2017 or thereabouts. Or, more likely, the malaise has always been
around, but we humans often prefer to ignore the starkest truths. Lately,
however, the state of the universe has been expressing itself in ever more peremptory
tones: look at me! The setting of the novel is Thuringia, East Germany, and the
action describes how everyday denizens of a small town react to what craziness the
universe has been up to.
In the town of Kana, East Germany, lives our hero, Florian
Herscht, a naïve young man—gigantic in size and muscle power but gentle in
nature. As the novel opens, Florian, who appears to be somewhere on the autism spectrum,
has begun mulling over that same randomness implicit in quantum mechanics. Terrified
by the implications that physics presents, he sees a horrible calamity in the
offing, “a staggering presence, in his view, threatening the existence of the
country, indeed all of humanity.” Florian is writing his first letter to Angela
Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. He reasons that not only
is she percipient and politically savvy, but she also has been trained as a
physicist. She can deal with the crisis that physics has got humanity all tangled
up in, and can bring the issue to the attention of the Security Council at the
United Nations.
The title of the novel, Herscht 07769 is taken from
the return address (last name and postal code) that Florian puts on his
envelopes. Only on p. 327 do we learn his full address: Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse
38, 07769 Kana. A check on the internet reveals that the street is named after the
German politician and leader of the Communist Party of Germany from 1925 to
1933. Arrested by the Gestapo, Thälmann was held in solitary confinement
for eleven years. On the personal orders of Hitler he was executed (shot) at Buchenwald
in 1944.
Part of the developing plot involves Florian’s continuous writing
of letters to Merkel, to which, of course, he receives no reply. Early on in
the novel he undertakes a trip to Berlin, hoping to meet the Chancellor in
person, but this ends in frustration. Time moves fast in this book. By p. 30 a
year has passed since Florian sent his first letter to Angela Merkel, and by p.
161 it has been almost two years. Soon the narrative will be enveloped in 2020,
the Covid year.
At one point the naïve Florian thinks that Merkel might come
to him in Kana, arriving by train. He makes a sign with her name on it, goes to
meet the trains arriving from Jena, holds up his sign as the passengers
disembark. But Angela is never among them. This gives rise to a good deal of
mirth amongst the citizens of Kana, almost all of whom love the gullible and
childlike Florian.
An orphan attending a vocational school in a different town,
preparing for a career as a baker, Florian is initially brought to Kana by a
man described only as “the Boss.” This man becomes a kind of overbearing father
figure to him, commanding his every movement and employing him in his own
business, which involves the cleaning of graffiti from buildings. The name of
his company, ALLES WIRD REIN (All Will Be Clean), is a phrase that—expanded
from its literal meaning—has sinister implications: ethnic cleansing. For the Jew-hating
Boss is also the leader of a local neo-Nazi cell, and a major theme of the
novel treats the rise of right-wing politics in what was once a separate
country, East Germany.
A Novel Firmly Based
on German Realities
Herscht 07769 is a German novel, set in Germany and
populated entirely by German characters. Here we have the rather unusual
situation in which a writer from a different country and working in a different
language (Hungarian) convincingly and cogently presents personages and scenes
from a foreign setting. I can only presume that Krasznahorkai (hereinafter
abbreviated L.K.) spent considerable time researching his book in Thuringia. I
also presume that he speaks German well. The book is peppered with German words
and place names. Sometimes the translator leaves the original German word,
which, I suppose, is what L.K. did in his Hungarian original. Examples: Pfarramt
(the word for a parish office), Schloss (palace), Rosengarten
(rose garden). The names of characters are sometimes actual German words, e.g.,
Pförtner
(porter, who, by way of a joke, works as an actual porter, or gatekeeper, at
the Porcelain Factory).
The book is rife with facts relevant to the life of a German
citizen. Just one example, of many: Florian, along with lots of other citizens
of Kana, receives welfare checks known as “the Hartz IV benefits.” Everything
about the specifics of Florian’s journey to Berlin is related in detail. He
waits beside the dilapidated train station in Kana for more than an hour
“before the arrival of the earliest possible train from Orlamūnde.”
While waiting he is “worried he would end up missing the connection at Jena-Göschwitz
or in Halle.” These appear to be real connections in real places. L.K. as a
writer of fiction, of course, has the option of making up his facts, but
throughout this novel he anchors everything in reality. He does, of course, present
fictional characters, but I would not be surprised to learn that many of them
have prototypes in the town where he researched his book. He has teased
interviewers by suggesting that his main character, Florian Herscht, really
exists.
There is no town named Kana, described in the novel as
“nineteen miles from Jena,” but there is the town of Kahla, which seems to fit
almost exactly into the geography of the book. Look online, where you will see
Kahla described as located “on the river Saale, fourteen kilometers south of
Jena.” Many geographical features described in the book as associated with Kana
are, in fact, typical of Kahla. E.g. (1) The Saale; one of Florian’s favorite
places is on a bench, where he can watch the Saale River flow by. This is where
he ends up sitting in his final appearance in the book. (2) The Dohlenstein, a
mountain on the right bank of the Saale River; and the Leuchtenburg Castle that
towers above it. I repeat, apart from Kana, all other place names in the novel appear
to be real, and I suspect that all the names of the streets in Kana are actual
names of streets in Kahla. I checked online for Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse, the street
where Florian lives in Kana, and, sure enough, there is such a street in Kahla;
its postal code, 07768, is off one numeral from Florian’s.
Neo-Nazis in
Thuringia
Apparently much chagrined by the proliferation of right-wing
politics throughout Europe—in his home country of Hungary as well—L.K. makes the
presence of Nazis a major theme. In fact, much of the novel’s action revolves
around the activities of the neo-Nazi cell led by “the Boss” in Kana. These
days, for the first time since WWII, a far-right party, Alternative fūr
Deutschland, has been garnering electoral support, not only in Thuringia, but
also in other parts of what was once East Germany, such as Saxony. Never
mentioned by name in L.K.’s novel, the AfD party has come out vehemently opposed
to Merkel’s opening of the borders (in 2015) to a million refugees from Syria,
Afghanistan, and other nations. The party’s popular chairman in Thuringia, Björn
Höcke,
has publicly denigrated the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, calling Germans “the
only people in the world who stuck up a monument of shame in the heart of their
capital.” This white-nationalist party calls for the “remigration” of refugees,
especially Muslims, supports the policies of Putin in Russia, and at times has
embraced antisemitism. Our disgraceful/despicable new American Vice President,
Vance, has recently come out in support of this party.
At various points in his novel L.K. alludes to the
activities of far-right groups in Thuringia. He mentions “how the Thuringia
Heimatschutz came to an end, what happened in Leuchtenburg and the Timo [sic,
should be Tino] Brandt case, what happened to the Hate-brothers, or
Wolfleben or Madley.” Tino Brandt, a neo-Nazi from Thuringia, became, at age
nineteen, an informant for Germany’s domestic intelligence service. From 1994
to 2001 he went on working as informant but used the money he was paid to
support neo-Nazi groups. L.K. skips over details of one of the most notorious
of scandals in Thuringia, that of the National Socialist Underground murders—the
Heimatschutz alluded to above. From 2000 to 2007 two young men and one young
woman went on a crime spree, murdering eight ethnic Turks and one Greek. I take
much of my information above from a book review by Joshua Hammer: “Making
Germany Hate Again,” in NYRB, Dec. 19, 2024.
The Bach theme in the novel appears early on, when the
Bachhaus, a museum in Eisenach, is desecrated by graffiti: the painting of a
wolf head and the word WE. The Boss is called to clean up the graffiti, and he takes
with him his assistant Florian to do the job. Here we learn a rather improbable
fact about the Boss: he is a lover of classical music, at least of Bach, whom
he considers “an empyrean presence sent from heaven, a prophet, a saint who . .
. inscribed into every single note the essence of the German spirit.” Even more
improbably, the Boss has founded a symphony orchestra in Kana, made up largely
of amateur musicians, and he is its unofficial conductor, rehearsing the group
every Saturday. He forces this cowed group to play Bach’s music, but they never
get it right. First violinist is Herr Feldmann, retired German and Latin
teacher, who would really prefer playing pop music, as would most of the other
members of the orchestra. When he learns of Florian’s obsession with quantum
physics, the Boss slaps him around a bit (an everyday occurrence) and tells him
that “a real Thuringian German gets involved with Bach and not with the
universe.” Later in the book Florian will, indeed, get involved with Bach.
Among Jewish characters in the book are Herr Feldmann, Herr
Ringer, and Herr Köhler. Ringer is a formidable presence, who fulminates
against the Nazis in Thuringia and in his home town of Kana. The Boss fears him
and has plans to blow up his auto repair shop at some convenient time in the
future. Ringer blames the Nazis—and, in particular, the Boss—for the graffiti
attacks on Bach memorial sites. This is ironic, in light of the fact that the
Boss is incensed over the attacks, getting all the members of his cell involved
in efforts to catch the perpetrators. We do not learn much else about the
activities of the neo-Nazi cell, at least not until they attack a local gas
station and kill the husband and wife team from Brazil who work there (Rosario
and Nadir). This comes after one of the Nazis, Jūrgen, attempts to rape the
beautiful Nadir and is beaten up and detained by her husband. In an act of
revenge for Jürgen, who is arrested, the neo-Nazis blow up the station.
Later we are presented with a chilling scene, in which the only woman neo-Nazi,
Karin, recalls how her cell members once beat and tortured six children whom
they suspected of spray-painting graffiti. This is the only explicit example in
the book of the group’s brutality. The children, so it turns out, were
innocent.
Small Town Living
The most impressive thing about L.K.’s novel is his ability
to take us into a small town in Germany and show us the ordinary people living
there. The book has a multitude of characters, all German, and they pop up
sometimes in a paragraph that started out devoted to someone or something
entirely different. Some are left undeveloped, but a good many others take on
more and more flesh as they work their way through the book—ending up as
rounded, extremely well-delineated, believable personages.
The first of these townspeople introduced are Jessica and
her husband Herr Volkenant, who run the local post office. They post Florian’s
letters to Angela Merkel, but advise him against writing them. Everyone else in
Kana—practically all of whom know and like the man-child Florian—has the same
advice for him. Midway through the novel (p. 210-11), when Florian brings one
more of his letters to the P.O., we have one of L.K.’s long looping sentences
describing the Volkenants at work:
“he stood in front of the post office right at opening time,
and he was fairly anxious as to whether Jessica would have the right size of
envelope for his letter, but there was no point in being nervous because
Jessica did have it, we have everything here, she smiled at him proudly, and
once again when Florian handed her the envelope, she didn’t look at the address
but only tossed it onto the scale and said, one euro and fifty cents, then she
took the euro and fifty cents and said: it’s good to see you again, and already
she was calling the next person to the counter, because just then there were a
lot of people, the door could hardly be closed even though it was already
fairly cold outside, too cold for the door to stay open, so the line snaked off
to the left, Volkenant also came out to organize the queue, because this is a
post office, please don’t stand around in one big jumble, he said, stand a
little closer together and right behind one another, well, that’s it now, he
praised the waiting people who obediently formed a neater line, and he went
back to his office while Jessica continued to diligently stamp letters, she
counted change and issued receipts and took money or credit cards, I don’t know
what came over them, she looked at her husband uncomprehendingly when they were
finally able to put out the lunch break sign, and they went up to their
apartment for lunch, no holiday, nothing, and they start trooping in here like
an army, I’m telling you this seriously—she took a sandwich from the paper bag
and gave it to her husband, because they always had their sandwiches delivered
for lunch . . . old auntie Ingrid brought the sandwiches and the coffee for
them, auntie Ingrid who lived not too far away on Margarethenstrasse near the
Demokratieladen; [translates as “democracy shop,” whatever that is; note the
full stop here, by way of a semicolon, URB] once, when the post office was
being relocated to a new building, and overhearing the Volkenants talking about
how short their lunch break was, auntie Ingrid had suggested, namely, she
stepped forward with the idea, that since she had nothing to do and was bored
to death, she’d be more than happy to bring whatever they wanted for lunch from
the Hubert Bakery downstairs, and that’s what happened, they all approved the
idea, and ever since then auntie Ingrid was like a clock to them, because, as
Jessica put it, auntie Ingrid was always on time, the clock didn’t strike noon
above their heads, but instead auntie Ingrid set the clock moving every noon,
because she was the one who, exactly at twelve noon, pressed down the door handle
of the post office, at first carefully unpacking the two plastic cups of coffee,
then putting the plastic bag on the counter, and taking out the two sandwiches,
and all she would say was Mahlzeit [enjoy your meal], and then she was
gone, because she knew there was no time for chitchat, although that
realization filled her with regret, because she could talk about something
every day, there was always something going on she wished to converse about,
and, well, she couldn’t always be bothering Frau Ringer in the library,
although it would have been good to talk to her, especially now with these
explosions on her mind just like they were on everyone’s, because that’s all
you hear about nowadays, she told Frau Ringer, when she had her library day,
you hear about this and that, about how they [the neo-Nazis] have their nest
here in Kana, and all of our Thuringia is full of potential terrists, she
always said ‘potential terrists,’ and no one ever corrected her, everyone
always let auntie Ingrid say whatever she had to say, for everyone knew how
hard the solitude was for her to bear, my husband died, she would swoop down on
this or that unsuspecting tourist when they asked her for directions, the poor
thing has been gone for seventeen years now, ever since then I’ve been on my
own, and with these legs of mine” . . . etc., etc., etc.
I cite this passage at length as a typical example of L.K.’s
narrative method, by way of which characters take on their fleshed-out
existence and become real to us. So real that we feel for them when fate steps
in—as so happens with the Volkenants and the Ringers, and many others late in
the book—to devastate their carefully cultivated, ordinary, smalltown life. For
L.K. emphasizes again and again that nearly all the denizens of the town of Kana
want nothing more than to live out uneventful lives in calm and contentment,
but life’s path is riddled with huge pits, into which we fall.
Such as well are Ilona and her husband, who run a buffet,
the Grillhäusel,
“Ilona was a saint in the eyes of the regulars, as soon as she spoke her wish
was fulfilled, Ilona was the star here, Hoffmann frequently said it good and
loud so that the person he was speaking about would also hear him, even if the
electricity were shut off, we’d still be able to see in her shining light, at
which everyone raised their glasses and they drank to her, they drank to Ilona,
they drank to this island of peace that was truly the only light in their
lives, and although they referred to Ilona as their queen, who of course did
not think that way at all, she was aware her customers loved the Grillhäusel,
but it was enough for her to know that her customers were satisfied, that was
her goal, the business went on, it didn’t bring in a lot, but it was enough to
survive in this great unemployment when she had arrived here all the way from
Transylvania to get married; . . .” Late in the book L.K. disposes of Ilona and
her husband in an almost offhand manner, not even devoting a separate scene to
their murder by the Nazi Karin. Our Krasznahorkai is not one to coddle his
characters.
First introduced as a nice librarian who is kind to Florian,
Frau Ringer is another character who is developed throughout the whole 400
pages of the book. She and her husband are featured in an episode when, while
out picnicking at Leuchtenburg Castle, they are attacked by a wolf, thereby
throwing the whole town into a frenzy. From this point on things go downhill
for both of the Ringers, who deserve a better fate than the one they are handed
near the end of the action. Immediately following this wolf attack comes more
dire news to rattle the already frazzled nerves of Kana: the Covid pandemic of
2020. The leitmotif of the wolf—the return of wild wolves to Germany after 150
years of near extinction—runs throughout the novel.
Auntie Ingrid, the lonely old lady who helps out the
Volkenants with their lunch, stops strangers and locals on the street—including
the ever kind and gentle Florian—to tell them her troubles. She makes her first
appearance on p. 65. There she is depicted in a discussion with Frau Ringer at
the library, on the topic of pork chops with potatoes, topped off by a special
brown sauce, much favored by Herr Ringer. Then she, auntie Ingrid, does not
show up again until the passage I’ve just cited (p. 210-12). Later on she is
shown as blissfully ignorant of the anxiety pervading the town, over the Covid
pandemic, over the rumors about wolf attacks, mysterious explosions, over the
desecration of Bach sites by graffiti, and the activities of the local Nazis.
For lack of anything else to do, auntie Ingrid decides to start a movement in
Kana, to see who can grow the best chrysanthemums: The Auntie Ingrid
Chrysanthemum Competition.
Then, a hundred pages on into the novel, she shows up for
the last time, discussing with the Volkenants the impending retirement of
Chancellor Merkel. In her opinion, given how hard she has worked for the
Germans, Angela Merkel deserves some peaceful years, and auntie Ingrid “held
her hands apart.” This gesture of weary relinquishment—the spreading of one’s
hands palms upward—appears over and over throughout Herscht 07769, as if
all of the characters were constantly repeating, “Well, what are you going to do?”
One page after expressing her sympathy for the retiring Merkel, auntie Ingrid
goes home, sits down in her favorite rocking chair, dozes off, and rocks
herself off into the next world. We the readers love her by this point, feel
for her, and are sorry to see her go.
Another central character is the above-mentioned Adrian Köhler,
a local man much respected by his fellow residents of Kana. Now in retirement
from his job as teacher of physics, he runs his own amateur weather station. He
also offers an evening class on quantum physics in an adult education program.
He befriends the main character Florian, who has attended his night class
repeatedly. Köhler tries to assure him that particle physics does not
guarantee—as Florian has surmised—the approaching end on all life on earth. The
subplot revolving around A.K. also includes a friend of his, Dr. Tietz, a
psychiatrist who lives in the neighboring town of Eisenberg. At one point A.K.
suddenly disappears from his home, only to reappear much later in the book.
Two neighbors of Köhler, Frau Burgmūller
and Frau Schneider are ladies who spend most of their time “peeking out the
window to see if something was going on out there.” They compete with one
another to establish who is privy to the best local gossip and provide a comic
backstory to all the action. They take great interest in the disappearance of
their neighbor, and rejoice in his return. But when A.K. begins going senile,
his friend Tietz takes him in, moves him to Eisenberg, and the two fraus are
nonplussed at this turn of events. Like most of the other townspeople who love placid
Florian, these two turn against him in the second half of the book, when he
becomes a fugitive from justice. Frau Burgmūller informs detectives from
Erfurt that Florian is a shady character and a disgrace to Kana.
A plethora of characters populate the pages of the novel,
and the author has a special facility for describing smalltown people and life.
Sometimes it appears that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of this town in
Thuringia, throwing in details that only local residents could know. The
neo-Nazi sect led by the Boss is depicted repeatedly drinking beer together. At
one point they brag on how many different beer brands are brewed in Thuringia
(409), and L.K. provides the brand names of the most popular beers. Multitudes
of details about the characters help bring them alive. Herr Köhler
loves tomatoes on the vine. Jessica and her husband Volkenant get along well,
but she can’t stand the way he throws his dirty socks all over the place. We
are frequently treated to long descriptions of what people like to eat. Here is
Dr. Tietz, puzzled and perplexed over the disappearance of his best friend Köhler:
“I’m not hungry, the doctor pushed the plate away, listless,
even though it was his favorite meal, fried pork liver with potatoes, parsley,
and beetroot, he really liked this, although he kept this a secret from his
guests, because then the first course was always Zwiebeltiegel or something
like that, as the season permitted, then for the main course there would be
Tote Oma or Frikadellen, that kind of thing, or, if they were receiving more
distinguished guests, such as the pharmacist from Erfurt or the head
psychiatrist of the Helios Clinic, then they served oysters, shrimp cocktail,
or flounder roasted with vegetables, but never pork liver, only he could get
that, and only when it was the two of them alone, and this, too, was infrequent
because his wife looked after his health and allowed him to have pork liver
once every two weeks, sometimes once every three weeks, but no more than that:
there was a meat day, followed by three fish days, then a pasta day, well, and
then sometimes his favorite, fried pork liver garnished with a bit of ground
pepper, or—his secret favorite—boiled knuckle of pork with a glass of beer,
well, this he got really only very infrequently, maybe once every two months,
because his wife said: at your age, a person needs to look after his health,
and since you’re not willing to do so, I’ll tell you what to eat and when,
because if it were up to you, you’d eat meat every day and more meat, and maybe
some liver too, and it doesn’t work that way, my dear—unfortunately, the doctor
added to himself—however, his wife continued, . . .” [here we grade off into
more discussion about what could have happened to their friend Adrian (Köhler);
this continues for half a page more, but then we’re back into the issue of the
edibles]:
“but he had no appetite, the police interrogation in his
office had set his nerves on edge so much, but still liver was liver, and the
fragrance of the freshly ground pepper overcame the doctor’s resistance while
his wife just kept on talking, because she kept on going on about Adrian this
and Adrian that, and Adrian would show up . . . and he, Dr. Tietz, should calm
down already, and eat his lunch properly while the doctor gulped down one bite
after the other, the meal was tasting better and better, so that at the end he
asked for a small second helping, and his wife, in view of the extraordinary
circumstances, gave him a second helping, because the food would get cold if he
didn’t eat it, she had eaten her fill, so she gave him everything left in the
pot, and [note the abrupt transition to a completely different character in the
same sentence, typical of the style of the whole narrative, URB] otherwise the
Boss too was very fond of pork liver, even if he cooked pork liver very rarely
himself, he usually pan-fried it, or course for that you had to get up early,
because those louse-ridden hags [now we get the Boss’s words, not, however, in
quotations, since L.K. eschews quotation marks] were already standing there
when the shop opened, he growled at Florian sometimes, standing around in front
of the Netto even before it opened so they could pounce on the fresh pork
liver, because it was cheap, so that he had to talk to someone in deliveries,
if pork liver comes in, set aside two packages for me; you just call me, Boss,
and you stop by for them anytime, the unloader winked at him, usually this
happened on Fridays . . .” etc., etc., etc.
“If you’re a reader perhaps not interested in what a minor
character likes to eat, I’ll tell you anyway”—so the author L.K. seems to be
saying—“and I’ll make it interesting. Or maybe you’ll be at least interested in
the fact that one of my main characters, the Boss, likes to eat the same thing
as Dr. Tietz, although he has to go to a bit of trouble to purchase that same
thing and he cooks it mostly in different ways.”
Other central characters are Herr Feldmann and his wife, the
deputy superintendent at the Hochhaus, where Florian lives (described only as
the Deputy), a local forest ranger who sells honey on the side, Frau Hopf, who
runs a small eatery with her husband, Hoffmann, the main jokester who hangs out
in the IKS pub and at the Grillhäusel, and many, many more. New
characters slide into the narrative unobtrusively in the middle of a sentence;
then the author develops them in further appearances throughout the book, until
at the end we have a multitude of highly rounded personages.
In his novel The Melancholy of Resistance—a
thoroughly misanthropic book written thirty-six years earlier—L.K.’s hatred and
contempt for the Hungarian bourgeoisie is, to say the least, intense. But here
he treats most of his German characters with gentle irony, mocking their petty-bourgeois
ways. He seems on the whole to feel affection for his personages; he does, however,
kill them off without mercy (see above, Ilona). Four of the main characters die
suddenly near the end of the story: Herr Ringer (suicide by hanging), Herr
Feldmann and the Deputy (brain hemorrhages), and Jessica (traffic accident).
Sometimes it seems as if L.K. just can’t get enough of
sticking in new characters, even if he has to leave them undeveloped. Such a
man is Torsten, the school janitor, who steps into the action only a time or
two. Then there’s the dentist, Dr. Henneberg, who does not find purchase in the
novel until p. 375. So that the author simply does not have enough time and
space left to get him developed; we learn only that he hates his job, “this
goddamned life with these pliers and drills and excavators and spatulas and
root lifters and scissors, to hell with all that, sometimes it burst out of him
. . .”
May Day in Kana, and
the Lugubrious Schlagbaum
Krasznahorkai has a facility for describing lovely little
set scenes, lyrical in nature, which reveal still more about how it feels to
live in a small German town. One of these depicts “the renowned May Day
celebrations in Kana,” always held in the Rosengarten. This year they are observed
in a somewhat subdued way, given Kana’s troubles with wolf attacks, the new
pandemic, neo-Nazis, explosions, even murders. The second half of the book
shows Kana, and apparently the rest of Germany, in a fearful state of disquiet.
Among the early arrivals in the Rosengarten is Frau Uta, proprietor
of the Herbstcafé, she who, in better times, had Florian to help her out by
serving ice cream. Her main concern today is keeping her husband at some
distance from the beer stand, but she eventually relents, allows him to go off
for his first stein, calling after him, “only one glass!” She notes the arrival
of other “local celebrants of May Day,” who come by way of the underpass “that
led here beneath the rail tracks”: “at first smaller families, clearly finding
their charges somewhat hard to bear, but then the lonely older people began to
drift in, and the married couples . . . “ beer flowed from the kegs,” and “the
first Bockwursts were being thrown onto the cooker.”
Next come the members of the “so-called Enlarged Kana
Symphony,” who climb up on the stage in their “lovely red uniforms.” They take
their seats and begin tuning up, “here and there the tuba or the trombone or
the saxophone honked, the musicians in the first string section mewled on their
violins.” Finally the tuning was done and “the first beats sounded at the
gesture of Herr Feldmann,” and the onlookers perked up, “steins were clinked
together, the first Rostbratwurst went down the hatch, of course with Bautz’ner
mustard, only with Bautz’ner” [note how L.K. is always aware of what kind of gravy,
or beer, or mustard the citizens of Thuringia prefer].
Meanwhile, here by himself, the Deputy grumbles that the
right May Day atmosphere is missing, and the orchestra plays “Yesterday,”
because, “according to Herr Feldmann [first violinist and orchestra conductor,
who seems totally in charge now], this always went down well. “The wind players
veins bulging, stage fright clearly visible on all of their faces, almost the
exact same expression on the faces of the audience watching them, as if each
were waiting for the other to launch the May Day celebrations with their
inimitable atmosphere, but this inimitable atmosphere did not begin for quite a
while yet.” Missing from this event is the Boss, the one-time unofficial
conductor of the orchestra; in a shocking turn of events he has been murdered
about a hundred pages earlier. Also missing is Florian, who has absconded from
Kana and is now a fugitive from justice.
For that “inimitable atmosphere,” of May Day to set in it
takes time, and beer. “Somehow the first sip of the third stein always brought
about the miracle: the men’s gazes cleared up, the conversation no longer
seemed as if gagged and stuttering, but suddenly came to life, laughter was
heard to the left, then to the right, and within minutes the crowd was buzzing
like a beehive, Hoffmann seemed in particularly good spirits, walking back and
forth among the tables, a wide grin on his face as he greeted anyone he could
chat with . . .” On plays the symphony, until it takes a short intermission. By
now the beer has done its work and the crowd beings singing “a dear little
ditty from the old times,” Wenn Mutti früh zur Arbeit geht [When
Momma Goes Early to Work].
For three pages the dreary unease that hangs over Kana, and
Thuringia, and all of Germany seems to have been dispelled. That is, until the
railway crossing barrier (Schlagbaum) puts the quietus on the
celebration. The singers “sat hunched over, banging their steins on the table,
by the end they were yelling, so that nobody could complain about the
atmosphere, and there were no complaints until the early afternoon, and the
railroad crossing proved to be the only reason for the sudden silence of the
celebratory crowd . . . they’d heard it thousands and thousands of times, as,
twenty-five or thirty meters to the left of the tunnel, the mechanism that
signaled approaching trains began ringing with its own peculiar timbre, of
course, from here below, in the Rosengarten, they couldn’t see it, they only
heard it, but they knew what was going to happen: namely that the rail-crossing
gate would creak enormously and lower, and the wait would begin for the train,
and they too now began waiting for the train coming from the north or the
south, either from Jena or Saafeld . . . they waited and waited, two minutes
went by, three minutes, five minutes, nothing happened, the orchestra stopped
playing and came down from the stage, but the revelers were still waiting for
the train, although they waited in vain, because no train arrived either from
the south or the north, and what happened next was merely what always happened
these days:
“the rail-crossing gate, after eight or ten minutes, as if
it too had been waiting in vain for something to arrive, began to rise with a
somewhat sadder creaking than before, well, and that was the end of May Day,
people struggled to their feet, and they slowly began walking to the underpass
. . .” on their way home. For me the sad performance—slowly down, then slowly
back up—of the creaking railway gate that has greeted no train is, perhaps, the
climax of the whole novel, emblematic of the sorry state of Thuringia, and all
of Germany (and, maybe, of the whole world?). The universe these days is in a
mess, and the trains we expect to come, bringing aid and succor, do not arrive.
Thirty-five pages later, while police are combing the town for Florian, he sits
calmly watching the operations of a different rail-crossing gate across town,
which performs the same creaking and sorrowful movements: slowly down until
reaching a stop; then stopping, waiting . . . then giving up on the train and
slowly working its way back up.
The Apocalyptic Theme
Herscht 07769 features a series of events in the town
of Kana that leave the nerves of the locals in tatters. Nearly all of the
smalltown characters want nothing more than to be left alone to live out their
quotidian lives, but life has other ideas. The main plotline, driving the
action of the book, concerns the activities of neo-Nazis in East Germany. But from
the beginning of his novel it is clear that L.K. has in mind not just the dire
socio-political scene in Thuringia and Germany, but also the even more dire
metaphysical state of the world as a whole.
The epigraph of the novel is this: “Hope is a mistake.” In
an interview the author has explained that this is not to be construed as a
pessimistic take on human life. The point, maybe, being that the universe came
about by way of a blunder or mistake, and hoping for humanity is caught up as
well in the consequences of that mistake. Florian Herscht first learns about
quantum theory when he attends evening classes in adult education, conducted by
a retired teacher of physics, Adrian Köhler (here and above I use the
abbreviation A.K. in reference to him). In his apparently autistic way of
thinking, Florian settles on a simplistic interpretation of the complex facts.
For him it is as if God were mixing thunderbolts, playing around one day—for
lack of anything constructive to do—and He accidentally pounded together two of
the wrong thunderbolts, and then the universe went ‘Big Bang.’
Puzzling out what Herr Köhler was trying to say, Florian
reasons that “this meant that the entire universe rested upon the inexplicable
fact that in a closed vacuum, in addition to every one billion particles of
matter, one billion antiparticles also arise, and when matter and antimatter
meet they extinguish each other, but then suddenly they don’t, because after
that one billion and first particle, the one billion and first antiparticle
does not arise, and so this one material particle remains in existence, or
directly it brings existence into life: as abundance, as surplus, as excess, as
a mistake, and the entire universe exists because of this, only because of
this, namely without it, the universe never would have existed . . .”
One huge problem for Florian is A.K.’s assertion that so far
science has not been able to explain a lot of this. Jumbled up in Florian’s
head are several points from the lectures. For example: “Herr Köhler
had explained that the process within a closed vacuum begins in such a way that
within nothing and out of nothing suddenly there will be something, or rather:
this event begins, which is fully impossible, nonetheless it begins with the
simultaneous birth of those one billion particles of matter and those one
billion antiparticles that immediately extinguish each other such that a photon
is released . . .”
The citations above are taken from the first five pages of
the book, but on p. 15 we learn that, faced with this “special vacuum in which
from nothing there will be something,” A.K. has “ceased his own inquiries into
quantum physics . . . turned away from quantum physics because it could not be
reconciled with common sense.” In his lectures he emphasizes the wonderful
world of elementary particles, while in the back of his mind he mulls over
“the horrific world of elementary particles.” In his retirement Köhler
has turned to something less esoteric and more practical; he has begun running
his own amateur meteorological station. He has “fallen in love with meteorology,”
since it is nothing like quantum theory, “where acceptance of the absurd was a
basic requirement.”
Meanwhile, Florian has interpreted what he learned at the
lectures to predict the imminent destruction of the whole universe. A.K. tries
to reassure him, telling him to go back to being a baker, a profession for
which he was trained in vocational school. “Why not stick with what you
studied?” Surely “one day the quantum physicists will figure things out, only
we won’t live to see the day.” Woebegone Florian tells A.K. “that he would
never be the same as he was before, because he never could have thought that
the world, under the danger of a redoubtable fact, would be laid open to a
destruction that could occur at any moment . . . if, in fact, everything
teeters on this knife edge of destruction, then it must have been this way when
we came into being as well . . .” Florian’s misgivings lead Köhler
to ponder ever more pessimistically the fact that “physics did not know the
answers to the most essential and fundamental questions.”
Florian assumes that Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel, a
physicist herself, is the perfect one to approach with his fears for the
universe. She can perhaps convene a special session of the Security Council of
the United Nations, where experts will discuss how “the relativity of time and
space and so-called events would sooner or later lead to the inevitable
disappearance of reality.” The apocalyptic danger, as viewed through Florian’s
eyes, is amplified at several other points in the novel. On his way to Berlin,
hoping to meet personally with the Chancellor, Florian cogitates over what he
will tell her: “inasmuch as it is true that something arises from nothing, it
can also occur that after the emergence from nothing of one billion
antiparticles along with one billion particles, the one surplus material
particle does not appear as it presumably occurred during the Big Bang . . .
but that instead, due to a diabolical breaking of symmetry in the usually
balanced emergence of particles and antiparticles, there could suddenly arise,
in one horrific moment, one surplus antiparticle, and while the one
billion particles and one billion antiparticles are busy annihilating each
other, and the well-known one billion photons are floating away, the remaining
single surplus antiparticle could be creating a new reality, an anti-universe,
the lethal mirror image of reality . . .”
In Florian’s mind the essential problem lies in the fact
that God, or Somebody, made a mistake right at the beginning: “the world arose
by sheer contingency, and that sheer contingency could just as easily take it
back.” As for quantum physics and the consolations of science, there is
certainly no consolation that “for the deepest, the most important, the most
fundamental questions there were no answers and there would never be any
answers.” Elementary particle physics would never be able to come up with the
answers “simply because particle physics was always placing barriers before its
own self, barriers it could never overcome, because these barriers ensued from
the system of human logic, and at that point thought became, as it were,
entangled in its own self . . .”
This notion of human reason tangled up in its own self
suggests the philosophical concept of the antinomy (not mentioned in the
novel). There are many classic examples. Take this one. Draw a square and write
the following words within the square: “All sentences written within this
square are false.” So you are attempting to express a truth, but since your
truth is written within the square, then it too must be false. Logic is entangled
in illogicality, words are stuck in perpetual hiccups, with the implication
that if we must express our logic in potentially treacherous words, that logic
must always be potentially flawed.
The sudden disappearance of Köhler from his home in Kana is
never explained. He is gone for over a year, then suddenly reappears. Florian
assumes that world leaders have heeded his warnings and have taken Köhler
off to the U.N., or to some scholarly enclave, where they can pick his mind
over the intricacies of quantum physics. Another explanation, more than
dubious, could be that the physicist in A.K. gets caught up in the paradoxical
mess that quantum physics has produced: he, a surplus antiparticle, or a
photon, is spirited away into a different dimension. When he returns he is a
changed man; soon he descends into dementia and dies at the end of the book. As
for the apocalyptic theme of Herscht 07769, it haunts the entire
narrative, making the malaise that envelops the denizens of Kana not just a quotidian
malaise, but a metaphysical conundrum.
One problem for me, and, surely, for countless other readers
of the novel: we are not physicists, so we lack the basis for evaluating the
argument presented against quantum physics. We wonder: to what extent does the argument
have validity? I would like to see a review of this novel written by someone
who is an expert on precisely this topic. The Bach theme of the novel suggests different
problems, but in some ways its quandaries resemble those to which the apocalyptic
theme gives rise.
The Bach Theme
Love of Bach apparently developed early in L.K.’s life and
works. One example: his novel published thirty-six years ago, in 1989, The
Melancholy of Resistance, contains an extensive treatment of music theory, the
intricacies of harmonics, with a particular emphasis on Bach. Quite possibly
the author’s decision to live and research a novel in Thuringia was based on
the historical importance of Bach in this region. Johan Sebastian Bach’s prominence
in the plotline of Herscht 07769 is established near the beginning, when
the Boss and his assistant Florian—who work as graffiti removers—learn that the
Bachhaus in Eisenach has been desecrated. Two large graffiti, depicting a
wolf’s head and the word WE have been spray-painted on either side of the
entrance gate to the museum. In trying to explain how this happened, the museum
guard “held his two hands apart,” one more gesture of resigned helplessness. Arch
patriot that he is, the Boss is outraged by this act, since he views the music
of Bach as heaven-sent, the embodiment of the spirit of Germany. Soon he has
his Nazi cell working to prevent further incidences of spray-painting and
trying to apprehend the perpetrators. This continues throughout the action of
much of the novel, as more graffiti appears on Bach sites around Thuringia.
The Boss has put together a small group of amateur
musicians, who gather for rehearsals every Saturday. While they prefer playing
pop tunes, he forces Bach upon them. In prospect is a big concert of classical
music, the inaugural event of this new Kana Symphony, but since they never can
quite get Bach down right, this concert must be continually postponed. The
Boss’ neo-Nazi cohort is equally unreceptive to the music of Bach, and even
when he is murdered 250 pages into the novel, the Boss is not treated to any
Bach music at his funeral. Nazis attend from all over Germany, even from a few
other European countries, to honor this staunch adherent of fascism, but the
music played, ironically, is “Yesterday,” by the Beatles. We are not told who
selected the musical pieces to be played, but surely this is the work of Herr
Feldmann, first violinist and retired Latin and German teacher. Feldmann is a
Jew, but there is no indication that he deliberately picks for the funeral music
that the Boss hated. Rather, Feldmann loves the Beatles and probably assumes
that it is a great honor to have “Yesterday” played at one’s funeral.
Later on the Bach theme of the novel plays itself out most
prominently in connection with the main protagonist, Florian Herscht. The Boss
has been forcing Florian, whom he has made into a sort of stepson, to attend
the Saturday rehearsals. He hopes that the naïve young man will pick up an
appreciation of Bach’s music—even though the orchestra plays Bach badly at
these rehearsals. Eventually, somehow miraculously—this comes some one hundred
pages into the book—Florian does begin to appreciate listening to Bach on his
laptop: “and not only the Brandenburg Concertos, but other pieces as well, for
example the great Passions, he was immediately entranced, and he himself didn’t
understand why, at the beginning of the beginning, he hadn’t listened to the
Boss when he said that every secret of life is in Johan Sebastian . . .”
Soon he has begun immersing himself in the cantatas and
feels that “the messages were getting through to him, that’s what he called
them—messages—the sounds and the ensemble of sounds, although he did not want
to decipher them, moreover, his immediate impression was that these messages
had no meaning, they were beautiful in and of themselves, they were wondrous in
and of themselves, they merely were, he did not wish to translate them, and
there was no need, because they were not transmitting something, they only were
what they were . . .” Soon he is considering “going to Leipzig and listening to
a Bach performance in the Thomaskirche.” This is a trip I’m sure that L.K. himself
made, when he was residing in Thuringia, researching and writing his novel.
Florian begins sensing that the music of Bach contains
instructions in the event of a catastrophe, but he does not know the exact
contents of the instructions. In one of his letters to Angela Merkel he decides
to let her in on what he has learned about Bach: “before Bach he’d been deaf,
and after Bach he became deaf to everything else, he admitted that he had no
need of any kind of music which was not composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, for
him this encounter had granted him an experience that seizes a person in the
presence of greatness and he had been seized by Bach, seized by genius . . .
for him Bach was not even music but heaven itself, and he was certain that the
Chancellor would understand this . . . he was not a religious person . . . when
he was brought here to Kana as an adult, there was no chance to get close to
any religion, but now he had gotten close to Bach . . . and what was necessary
now was for the Chancellor to clearly understand the necessity of involving
Bach in the negotiations which, he presumed, were taking place, although as of
yet behind closed doors . . . and how did he know that the universe was much
more capacious . . . than what the human mind accepted as extant? well, from
him!!! it was precisely Bach who had shown him, it was Bach who could show
anyone . . .”
By this point Bach has become a kind of deity for Florian,
and in this, his most recent letter to Angela Merkel, he presents Bach as a
solution to the looming catastrophe instigated by quantum theory. The
Chancellor must listen to Bach, and the Security Council of the U.N. must
listen to Bach, and Bach’s music must be played incessantly “on every
television station, every radio broadcast, in every school, every department
store and sports stadium . . . for this dear Earth, and everything that we
think about it and the universe that surrounds us, is perhaps but a mere misunderstanding
. . .” In a word Bach must become “something like the air” all around us, the
universe has come into existence by mistake, and all of our apprehensions are
but misapprehensions, and Bach, and only Bach, can rectify the malaise in which
the human race finds itself enveloped.
In the latter pages of the novel, after Florian has become a
fugitive from justice, after he has begun living like a wild animal, he can no
longer keep his laptop charged. But he has no need of the laptop, because
Bach’s music is now in his ears and head perpetually, even in his sleep. Bach
has become for him “a personal state of being, namely, he was no longer
hearing Bach, he was inside Bach . . .” Now he realizes “that the remedy for
the Last Judgment perhaps did not lie in science or the politics it had given
rise to, but that the remedy lay wholly and singularly in Johan Sebastian Bach,
the path to Bach led through the structures of his works, and these structures
were perfect, and therefore if the structures were perfect, then the themes
built upon them were also perfect, then the harmonics embodying these themes
were also perfect, and if the harmonics embodying these themes were perfect,
then every single note was perfect . . .” etc.
So goes the Bach theme in the novel, which presents a kind
of intuitive answer to the theme of the apocalyptic. As if the only answer we
have to the conundrum of the whole universe being mired in an irrevocable
mistake is to steep ourselves in artistic genius, which somehow, intuitively,
can guide us past the maelstrom. As mentioned above, there are several problems
inherent in making Bach’s music such an important structural element of the
novel. For one, most readers—such as me—have only a superficial understanding
of the music of Bach. To really appreciate the Bach theme in the novel you have
to be a musician; and you have to know Bach well. This limits the readership of
the novel radically. Or, rather, limits the number of readers who can truly
grasp and appreciate the novel. Who else but the brilliant L.K. could write a
novel that demands—for full appreciation—a profound knowledge of both quantum
physics and the music of Bach?
Another issue: when an author lends music such importance in
his novel, he is somehow trapped by the medium in which he works: words on
pages of a book. Here is a possible comparison. What if someone wrote a novel
about Claude Monet, featuring his life and all his artistic works? The book
might contain detailed descriptions in words of what Monet’s impressionistic
paintings look like. But if the reader cannot actually view and contemplate the
paintings themselves, think of how much is missing from the book. Even if the
author includes reproductions of the paintings as illustrations in the book,
these illustrations are a meagre substitute for the actual paintings
themselves. For the Bach theme to be presented validly and fully, we need an
audiobook, and in that audiobook the musical pieces mentioned must be played. I
wonder if L.K. has considered this issue in commissioning audiobooks of his latest
novel, to be read in any number of languages.
Sagging
Verisimilitude
L.K. is a master at writing rounded, believable characters. He
dares in his works to present highly esoteric themes in a more than demanding
writing style. In Herscht 07769, however, he is not entirely successful
at showing us what the bad guys, the neo-Nazis are like, and he has problems
putting together an action narrative. The leader of the Nazis and Florian’s
mentor, known only as “the Boss,” is something of an enigma. His right-wing
views ring true, but so much else about him does not. Why, e.g., would he
decide, in effect, to adopt this young, semi-retarded youth and bring him to
live in Kana? What kind of background does the Boss come out of? We don’t know.
We know literally nothing about his past, nothing of his parents or siblings,
and we wonder why he has no family attachments. I, for one, also find it highly
improbable that this man, a deeply flawed Nazi thug, has founded and now leads the
local Kana amateur orchestra.
When the Ringers—the Boss’s most vehement enemies in
Kana—are attacked by a wolf while on a picnic, the Boss is one of the first to
hear the news. He rushes home for a weapon, drives to the scene of the attack
at the Leuchtenburg Castle, and shoots the wolf. Given time and space
restrictions, this appears to have been an impossible act. Later on one of the
most shocking events in the novel occurs when the neo-Nazis bomb the local gas
station, killing Rosario and Nadir, who run the station. Improbably, the Boss
decides to record this act on a cell phone, although the most savvy of the
Nazis (and the only woman) Karin tries to stop him. Why would he do something
so stupid as to provide the police evidence of his own crime?
Later the Boss hands over this cell phone, containing the
incriminating videos, to the naïve Florian. Not likely. Even almost impossible.
At some point the Boss would have realized he never should have made the
videos, and he would have destroyed this evidence. The fact of the existence of
these videos drives subsequent developments in the plot. The ingenuous Florian
eventually watches the videos on the cell phone, and this so shocks him that he
takes on an entirely new, murderous personality. In sum, the most important
events in the second half of the novel are predicated on facts that are almost
entirely lacking in verisimilitude.
As for Karin, she is portrayed as highly intelligent and
cunning, but we never learn much about her. Why and how did she become a Nazi?
Does she have any education, any factors in her past that lead her to adopt
such a life? We don’t know. L.K. tells us more about such minor characters as
auntie Ingrid, and he makes minor characters more rounded than any of the
members of the Nazi cell. It appears as if the author, who finds the neo-Nazi
characters repellant, is reluctant to get into their heads and lives, the way
he does with so many of the locals featured in the book.
The main protagonist, Florian Herscht, is one in a long line
of literary characters who are kind, gentle, extremely naïve, sexless, even a
bit retarded. Everyone in Kana loves Florian, and with good reason. In the
first half of the book he is depicted as a gentle giant, always prepared to
lend a hand to the locals. One of his main confidants, Frau Ringer, opines that
“for him sexuality was shameful, that it was subjugation, a lack of
transcendence with regard to nature from which everyone must try to liberate
themselves.” This sounds more like the views of Frau Ringer (or the author)
than those of Florian, who would not have pondered this deeply into the issue.
He is simply afraid of sex and women.
In the last third of the book Florian becomes obsessed with
Bach, which is, I suppose, possible. But he also turns into a vicious killer,
which is much less believable. When he discovers the videos of the bombing on
the cell phone that the Boss has entrusted to him, Florian seems to snap. His
whole personality changes, and he kills a man who has been almost a father to
him, the Boss. The rest of the book describes Florian on the lam, avoiding the
police, while carrying out still more murders—in an attempt to eliminate the
entire neo-Nazi contingent from Kana. In a rather skewed plot development,
Karin also is out to murder her former cohorts—who have fled Kana to other
cities. Apparently she wants to eliminate all possible evidence of the crimes
they committed together. Toward the final pages of the book all the neo-Nazis
from Kana are dead except Karin. She and Florian are back in Kana, hunting each
other down.
The novel presents certain mystifications that are never
cleared up. We have already mentioned the disappearance of Köhler
and his reappearance over a year later, an event never explained. A central
question of the first half of the book involves who is responsible for the
spray-paintings of graffiti at the Bach sites. Both the neo-Nazi cell led by
the Boss and the local police try their best to stop the desecrations and catch
the perps, but they are all unsuccessful. Then, late in the book, Florian—who
is a fugitive, living in the wild—returns to the Bachhaus in Eisenach, “with
its Bach statue in front of the entrance.” Here, again rather improbably,
Florian catches, with very little effort, the fifteen-year-old boy who has been
doing the spray-painting. The boy explains why the graffiti always consists of
a wolf’s head and the word WE. He was supposed to paint the words WE ARE COMING
but never had time to finish more than the first word. Who are the WE who pay
the boy to spray the graffiti? Apparently some secret lovers and defenders of
wolves, but the whole business of who is behind the spray paintings—and why
Bach sites are selected as targets—is left vague.
Late in the book, as one more spring arrives, a sort of
guardian angel figure, an enormous golden eagle, begins accompanying Florian as
he journeys around, looking for more Nazis to murder. When Karin comes back
into the picture, intent on killing Florian, the eagle attacks her twice. The
second time she manages to shoot the bird and kill it. Who sent this bird into
the plot and exactly why only L.K. knows for sure, but like several other
plotlines in the book, the appearance of the eagle is gratuitous.
One Long Sentence
Critics have made much of the sui generis structure of Herscht
07769, which is written in one long loop of a sentence, devoid of paragraph
breaks and containing only one full stop; this period comes on the last page of
the book, p. 406. Such a structure reminded me of another novel that is
considered a “difficult read,” Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald. Here is what
I wrote about that book in a review:
The Novel of User-Unfriendly
“I’ve seldom encountered a novel made deliberately so
difficult to read . . . The relentless narrative plods on inexorably, providing
no breaks for separate chapters, seldom even for paragraphs. The reader is
forced to swim through the choppy waters of the dense prose, finding no
purchase for a temporary rest. Only the occasional em-dash intrudes into the
incessant flow of words, and you grab onto it when you can, resting there
briefly and tenuously before breast-stroking off again, through lengthy
sentences with whitecaps rife with detail. Help, help, somebody throw me a life
preserver!
“There is a certain deliberate ‘Germanness’ in the way the
whole novel is written, as if the author wishes his very narrative style to
embody the way Germans need to have things thoroughly catalogued. Later on,
when we come to the heart of the story—the tale of the Holocaust—attention to
petty detail is a constant: emphasis on the German “mania for order and
purity,” descriptions of how the Germans plundered the personal belongings of
the Jews they arrested, made endless listings of all the household items, how
they kept detailed accounts of all activities in the concentration camps, how
efficiently and ruthlessly they murdered innocent people, crossing them off their
lists, one by one.
“A page full of dialogue is faster and easier to read than a
page crammed with narrative. Most novels use direct speech to give the reader a
break from long narrative descriptions. Not this one. How about throwing in a
bit of humor, to ease the strain? Nope. You won’t find a good laugh in the
whole of Austerlitz. What is the point of making the reading of a
book so unaccommodating for the reader? I can only assume that since the
subject matter concerns man’s inhumanity to man, Sebald wants to get a feel for
this subject into the very narrative style of the book. Austerlitz lives a life
of agony, the Jews suffered unspeakable things, so here, reader, in your face:
here’s a touch of how oppressive life can feel.” [full review of Austerlitz
is available on my blog, U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature, and on the
website for Dactyl Review]
There’s that oppressive malaise swathing the whole of Austerlitz,
spooking its style, and L.K.’s novel Herscht 07769 also concerns itself
with an unease that has descended on East Germany, and all of Germany, and even
all of the universe. So is the malaise expressed in the style of the book, in
the way the author chooses to tell it in that one long sentence? Is the style
of L.K.’s novel similar to that of Sebald in Austerlitz? Not really. I’ve
recently read and reviewed an earlier novel by L.K., The Melancholy of
Resistance (first published in 1989, when the author was thirty-five).
While it does use periods, the book frowns upon paragraphs and direct speech,
piling up words in dense glomps that pack full every page. For the reader this
novel presents a hard slog, much, much more difficult reading than Herscht
07769, and the darkness of its tone, its bleak pessimism is truly
oppressive.
Now seventy-one, L.K seems to have mellowed out a bit on the
brink of old age. The one long sentence of his latest work presents few difficulties
to the reader. Herscht 07769 is written in a style easy to read.
Although there are no breaks for paragraphs, there are convenient places for
new paragraphs to begin. Despite the subject matter, the style is not made
deliberately oppressive. Then again, the idea of the one long sentence, devoid
of full stops, is little more than a gimmick. Notwithstanding the absence of that
one punctuation mark, the period, there are plenty of full stops in the
narrative, indicated by semicolons, exclamation points, question marks, etc. Critics
emphasizing the lack of full stops are making much of nothing.
Although there are no chapters indicated, in the front
matter of the book, right before page one there is a page titled “Rainbow
Strands.” There are thirteen of these, which suggests that the book has
thirteen chapters. They are indicated without capitalization. E.g., the first
of these is “within nothing out of nothing;” the second is “from somewhere to
somewhere.” The titles of these “rainbow strands” suggest themes in the novel,
but those themes don’t appear to be directly expressed each time under the given
title. Sometimes, but not always, the titles come directly out of elsewhere in
the text. Here is an example: “he [Florian] had no need for any kind of music
not composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, for him this encounter had granted him
an experience that seizes a person in the presence of greatness and he had been
seized by Bach, seized by genius . . .” This cited passage comes on p. 206,
under the “rainbow strand” chapter titled “he served big scoops” (Ch. 8), which
begins on p. 203. But when we get to p. 222, we come to the next chapter (or
rainbow strand), Ch. 9, and its title is taken from the passage just quoted: “in
the presence of greatness.”
As for “he served big scoops,” this chapter title is taken
from another direct quotation in the text (p. 199), describing how Florian
sometimes helped out Frau Uta at the Herbstcafé “at the peak of ice-cream
season,” serving ice cream to children. What is the point of playing this kind
of game with the “rainbow strands” and the uncapitalized titles? I’m not sure
there is a point, although some percipient critic (not me) may suggest how this
sort of thing enhances the narrative structure of the novel or elucidates
certain themes. Personally, I think that L.K.’s works might profit somewhat by elimination
of the silly game-playing that he loves. But then, I’m not much of a game-player,
and although I appreciate Vladimir Nabokov—I consider him perhaps the best
fiction writer of the twentieth century—I do not much care for the gamey aspect
of his work either.
At times L.K. just seems to be having fun with his little
mystifications (see some of these discussed above). Unlike Sebald when he wrote
Austerlitz, the narrator of Herscht 07769 apparently enjoyed
writing his book, which—unlike the ponderous and oppressive Melancholy of
Resistance—is leavened throughout with light humor. Near the end of the
novel he throws in one more joke of an incident: so it turns out, Angela Merkel
finally has answered Florian’s many letters to her. Her letter, however,
arrives at the Kana P.O. when Florian is not in town to receive it, having gone
renegade and fled Kana. Postmistress Jessica is not there either, having died
tragically in a traffic accident, and her husband, Herr Volkenant, is so
grief-stricken that he is barely functioning. Therefore, there is no one among
the characters to open and read that letter, and only L.K. can know for sure
what the Chancellor had to say. Merkel is in retirement these days, no longer
preoccupied with matters of the state. Maybe someone could write to her and ask
her to reveal what advice she had for Florian in her letter.
d
Final thought: does L.K. deserve the Nobel Prize in
Literature? From what I know of him—and I have not read by far the majority of
his works—I would say absolutely yes. The two novels that I have read, and
reviewed, are direct descendants of Faulkner, Proust, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Joyce,
and many other great classical writers. This is literary fiction written at a
high level of skill and intelligence that hardly exists anymore. Just to speak
of American writers from the first quarter of the twenty-first century, I know
of no one—absolutely no American writer—who writes literary fiction so
profoundly.
