Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

nobelprize.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 106 posts

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#41

Post by stevenwoo »

justonceokay wrote: post #31
simonh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, but I suspect the interpretation is that the impact should be during the preceding year, the wording doesn't say the work has to occur in the preceding year. So arguably the work could have been decades ago, but if the impact has only recently become apparent that counts. I think that's fine. Often it's not really possible to assess the impact of a contribution until long after, it takes a lot of contex…

I don’t think we should consider too strictly the intention of someone who has been dead for 130 years.

This is a sensible and reasonable proposition, which is ironic considering the USA is run based on interpretations of intentions of slave owners or those copacetic with slavery who have been dead for almost twice as long.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#42

Post by b2ccb2 »

ajkjk wrote: post #23
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…

I'm curious about the moral underlying an objection like this. Why do you care about whether the prize exactly reflects his will? And why specifically for this prize, when your objection has applied for most of a century across every field?

It was a genuine question, I have no objections. I am rather illiterate about the Nobel Prize, it just caught my attention this year. I just noticed a discrepancy after checking the body of his work after reading the will. That's all.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#43

Post by pavlov »

stevenwoo wrote: post #41
justonceokay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we should consider too strictly the intention of someone who has been dead for 130 years.

This is a sensible and reasonable proposition, which is ironic considering the USA is run based on interpretations of intentions of slave owners or those copacetic with slavery who have been dead for almost twice as long.

Conveniently those interpretations can be whatever suits the current lifetime-appointed guardians of the sacred legal text. It helps that the text is old and originally ambiguous.

When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#45

Post by notesinthefield »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #28
diego_moita wrote: post #20

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). In particular, it seems to be inversely proportional to fertility rate. The lower the fertility rate, the more racist countries seem to be (e.g: Italy, Korea, Hungary, Japan, etc).

> 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…?

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#46

Post by wahnfrieden »

He's my favorite working author! (Well, maybe that's Pynchon)

I recommend not only his early works like Satantango but also his recent ones like Seiobo There Below (lucky to have a signed copy of this one).

The short ones are interesting too. Animalinside (with Max Neumann), The Last Wolf.

Interested in checking Chasing Homer which has musical accompaniment: "Publishers Weekly described the book as a cross between a Jean-Claude Van Damme film and the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka"

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#47

Post by wahnfrieden »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #9
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #7

I've never heard of them. Does anyone have a top suggestion for checking out his works or standout book? And for those of you that have read him, what did you get out the experience? Should I just read Satantango?

Satantango or the melancholy of resistance are good places to start. His books aren't all the same but there are some qualities they all share. They're intricate, reference-heavy, postmodern novels with a lot of the emotional intensity purposely occulted behind the prose style. If you like Gass or Sebald you'll have fun.

His recent works are also incredible and very different from the early works. Try Seiobo There Below.

You can also appreciate him through his screenplay work on Bela Tarr's movies.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#48

Post by kkukshtel »

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…

They truly feel like a match made in heaven. Krasznahorkai's own writing is lovely and lyrical, and Tarr's interpretation of it projects the same ideas onto the films but also in a way that makes it stand distinct as a medium.

I could watch this scene from Werckmeister Harmonies every day for the rest of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5X2t_s9g8

And The Turin Horse as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s

Think of some magical Tarr adaptation of Seiobo There Below...

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#49

Post by zeroonetwothree »

stevenwoo wrote: post #41
justonceokay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we should consider too strictly the intention of someone who has been dead for 130 years.

This is a sensible and reasonable proposition, which is ironic considering the USA is run based on interpretations of intentions of slave owners or those copacetic with slavery who have been dead for almost twice as long.

France has had something like 16 constitutions since 1791. I think I’ll take the US model.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#50

Post by OskarS »

zpeti wrote: post #15
kome wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Considering the amount of threats and hate jewish people with no connection get about Israel vs Palestine, you don't think there's at least some legitimacy for his position? Considering there was literally just an attack on a UK synagogue by an arab, after which many people protested on the side of the attacker in London, you don't think there's a tiny legitimacy to his views? Of course this is a rhetorical question,…

Your argument is that it’s not ok to think of all Jewish people as a monolithic group, and therefore his statement where he considered all arabs as a monolithic group is ”legitimate”? Seriously?

Just like it’s not ok to see all jews as part of the same murderous conspiracy, it’s not ok to see all arabs as part of one either.

Post reply on HN