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Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

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Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#101

Post by ericmcer »

derbOac wrote: post #66

Can anyone comment on the translations of Krasznahorkai's works into English? Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult. Of course, I still happily read and e…

In the early 1900s a bunch of the big Russian works were translated to english. If you read about career translators competing to get the "best" ones you really get disenchanted with translated works.

As pieces on their own they are great, but how close are they to the original? Like some translations are garbage others are amazing so how much of the original spirit is intact.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#102

Post by simonh »

rsynnott wrote: post #98
simonh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is basically a cut-and-paste of the British constitutional model of the 1780s, but with an elected King George III and upper house. Presidents are just elected kings. The modern parliamentary model is much better.

This is a pretty common model for countries which became independent of the UK; Ireland did more or less the same copy-paste job, but in the 1920s, so ended up with a _way_ weaker president than in the US model (the Irish presidency is more or less a standin for a constitutional monarch, with ~no real powers) and upper house, and stronger lower house.

Good point, and I think the fact that most commonwealth countries adopted more recent and therefore more modern iterations of the british model is a good thing.

In comparison the US system seems hopelessly outdated, and even riven with the many of the same problems we had during the George III mad king era, except we managed to move on.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#104

Post by BrtByte »

haunter wrote: post #3

You can't mention Krasznahorkai without Béla Tarr. Tarr's main filmography is basically Krasznahorkai's main bibliography: Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011). I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text c…

Tarr and Krasznahorkai are basically artistic soulmates

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#105

Post by BrtByte »

madcaptenor wrote: post #18
b2ccb2 wrote: post #10

I am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will: "All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the precedi…

The Nobel Prize hasn't been a prize for work done in the previous year in a long time. This originates in the science prizes because some prizes were given to discoveries that were later discredited. But even the literature prize is generally given in honor of a body of work. And if you look at the list on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit... ), even those who are cited for a pa…

In Krasznahorkai's case, it's pretty clear they're recognizing the sustained impact and distinctiveness of his entire body of work

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#106

Post by [deleted] »

notesinthefield wrote: post #45
throw_m239339 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From a Latin American perspective, racism seems to be a rising thing in the "old world" (i.e. northern hemisphere, east of the Atlantic). Plenty of racism in India, Pakistan, China, MENA (where slavery is common, Libya has open air black slave markets), and Africa itself. And let's not even get started how plenty of these places are ravaged by petty sectarian, ethnical violence, or straight out civil wars between c…

Northern Sudan, Congo, Palestine, Yemen and…?

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