Book review:
I am reading Satantango at my parents' house. A communist block of flats, tiny cubicles with thin walls, through which the noise of a Tv set penetrates from my neighbor upstairs. Later on, my mother comes in my room and falls asleep on my bed. Poor mom, she is always so tired... Soon, the muffled noise of the Tv intermingles with my mother's snores. I am expelled from the depths of evil; I leave behind the colony, the putrid rooms, the decay. I come back to my banal reality. I glimpse at the half-eaten cake, the orderly room, my warm feet. I hold the book open with my toes, fingers plucked deep in my ears. Slowly, word upon word, I can hear once again the rumbling of thunder, the incessant tapping of rain. Shadowy hands pull me once more inside the sickening gloom and despair. I am back in the colony, caught up in a maddening Satan's tango.
Back to Bucharest, I finish the novel. Rain has followed me around, accompanying my reading of Satantango. I couldn't have arranged for a better setting for this bleak, absurd novel, which dragged me through a world in a deepening state of decay. Civilization seems to have been erased, people decimated by an unknown plague, with only an isolated community which survived an apocalypse.
For a long time, I had no notion of time and space, nor of the purpose of me being there. No explanations, no causes, only a sour taste in one's mouth, as a sign of impending death. The few people left in the colony retreat, powerless, in the face of an abstract disease, incapable of defending or saving themselves. Everything around them crumbles and rots. Paint flakes, roofs collapse, mold creeps along walls, furniture and clothes. Unseen spiders weave their cobwebs in silence, trapping objects and beings alike in silvery cocoons, in an attempt to preserve, to hold the world still.
It is a life adrift, Sodom and Gomorrah on a smaller scale - men crave for their neighbors' wives, young girls sell their bodies, the school master no longer teaches the young, the doctor no longer heals the sick. Nothing works anymore - the mill and the shops are deserted, the fields are abandoned. The only one standing is the tavern, where people gather to drink and dance madly until dawn.
The inhabitants dream of escaping, of leaving their colony behind. Thoughts of starting a better life elsewhere fade away the minute they take shape. They place their hopes in an outward salvation. One day, a tragedy befalls them, followed by a miracle witnessed by few, but they can't read the signs; their minds are too numbed, their souls too hardened to understand. And when the much awaited savior arrives, they abandon every shred of reason and follow him blindly. In his hands, the once hopeless puppets return to life, as he infuses them with hope and renewed energy. Docile, they walk the road their master puppeteer has chosen for them.
Krasznahorkai's prose has a hypnotic, overwhelming power. I allowed myself to be carried away by his words, by the rhythm of his long, winding phrases. Slowly, I immersed into the suffocating world of the colony; I could sense the moans of collapsing houses, the lament of an eternal rain, the weaving of cobwebs, the advancing of mold. I could almost smell the heavy stench of mud and putrefaction, oozing from the crumbling walls and the skin of their helpless inhabitants.
In twelve steps of a dance executed in circle, the narrative opens and closes with the mysterious ringing of bells. Behind a window, safely tucked under blankets, there is a hand that writes in notebooks. Reality and imagination commence to overlap; it is either a descent into madness or an ascent towards truth.
*Spoilers below, most likely*
In so many ways, Satantango is not a dystopia. It is, in effect, real life. Crude, unforgiving life, in which we can bring the apocalypse onto ourselves through our ignorance, indolence and depravity.
Page after page, I started to realize that the unnamed plague, the unmentioned disaster did not happen from external causes. The so-called catastrophe was brought by the people themselves, through their laziness, vice and fatality. Dehumanized, hopeless, they linger in a state of lethargy; their will is paralyzed. It is the kind of disease that is eating them from the inside; they have condemned themselves. Instead of relying on their own powers, they hope for salvation from elsewhere; they ultimately subject to a higher will, because it is always easier to be led than to lead. Ironically, the salvation they await for could mean, in the end, a further downfall.
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