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

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#91

Post by reliabilityguy »

watwut wrote: post #87
reliabilityguy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What is “obscure” in the US constitution? The first amendment is the one thing that makes it impossible for authoritarian US to be reality.

Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection. We are watching US constitution collapse right now. Second, its meaning IS obscure. It get reinterpreted and modified by supreme court to unrecognizable degree. The words dont mean what they used to mean back then, because court used some alternative history to achieve their political goal. It is also not like…

> Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection.

Well, this is not true. As a matter of fact, you can talk about it without fear that you would be arrested for your speech. In real authoritarian regimes, e.g., Jordan, Qatar, China, Russia (de jure protections exist, de facto not so much) you have no protections at all. In those places speaking out means you end up in jail.

> We are watching US constitution collapse right now.

Can you give an example?

> Second, its meaning IS obscure. It get reinterpreted and modified by supreme court to unrecognizable degree.

What article do you think was interpreted to unrecognizable degree?

> The words dont mean what they used to mean back then, because court used some alternative history to achieve their political goal.

Can you provide an example for that as well?

> It is also not like the court was grounded in contemporary reality when making those decisions and explaining them.

I think this is the case with all the precedent-based judicial systems, no?

> Most of constitutional protections are weak. There is no recourse if your rights are broken, only ever increasing maze of special conditions and requirements you need to fill if you want those protections to apply.

In order to argue about that you would have to be specific. It seems to me that the constitutional protections are the only ones that actually work, e.g., 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments are really powerful, and go without saying.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#92

Post by astrange »

b2ccb2 wrote: post #42
ajkjk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's actually a second issue with the Literature prize, which is that it's supposed to be given for work "in an idealistic direction", but nobody knows what that means.

And since the literature committee tends to be run by extremely pretentious artists they don't like idealism anyway. Artists are supposed to be tortured postmodern souls you know.

A lot of people want Haruki Murakami to get the prize, but I don't think his work would pass this.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#93

Post by moralestapia »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #86
moralestapia wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sátántangó >Running time: ~8 hours Yeah, I'll pass.

How many Netflix series have you ever binged?

I don't know, a couple.

What does that have to do with this?

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#95

Post by greenie_beans »

mamonster wrote: post #77
greenie_beans wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re #2, this is part of culture whether you agree with it or not. just because you don't like her politics doesn't mean she's not influential. sounds like your beef is with what was trending in the marketplace of ideas at that time and you would never be happy if any left wing writer was chosen. don't worry, a reactionary will get their time soon enough again. last night, actually, my thought was: i bet it's gonna be…

It's not an issue of her being left wing, it's an issue of her being nominated for the Nobel Prize of Literature despite being horrible at writing(as in the actual technical skill of writing). As for reactionaries/conservatives winning, it's basically impossible for someone to win this award as a genuine "reactionary". The last genuine reactionary who won it was Solzhenitsyn, and it would never be awarded to him if t…

it's been a while since i've read ernaux but i can't remember hating her writing like that. but this exchange does remind me how french literature snobs are the worst. les immortels lol. coming from somebody who has never heard of krasznahorkai, no less!

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#96

Post by SpicyUme »

jaccarmac wrote: post #88
kruffalon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me this is todays new conceptual thought! Or something like this, just trying to express that I've never really thought about it like that. That we don't really interact with original works when we read/listen to translated works and thus we can't really say anything about the originals. Small mind blown moment!

I'm biased because I lived down the street from a bookstore connected to a translation publishing house, but I can't recommend translated fiction enough for opening one's eyes to the weird relationship between a person, their language, and the works they read.

There is a bookstore in Vancouver with a section of translations which is reliably fruitful when I visit. The last book I bought there was a translation of Yuri Herrera's Season of the Swamp. I devoured it, even though I agree that I wish it were more fleshed out. It made me think about reading some of his work in Spanish even though it would be a long process for me. I enjoyed the effort in spanish literature class, maybe I can do it again.

https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/season-swamp

On the topic of the OP, I struggled with Satantango on more than one occasion over the last 12 years. For whatever reason I couldn't get through it, but I've carried the book around through several moves. Maybe I'll try again.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#97

Post by qingcharles »

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…

Something is always lost in a translation, but I always advise everyone to read the reviews of available translations of any foreign book they are planning to read. The quality of translations varies wildly.

One of the biggest things is that there are lots of old public domain translations of popular works, but the translations are very outdated. They rank higher in Amazon because either they are cheaper, or their publishers use their power to rank them higher because they are making a bigger profit. The new translations of Les Misérables are superior, but the one that is pushed highest is the 100 year old translation that is the "official" version that the (excellent) popular musical have put their stamp of approval (and poster) onto.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#98

Post by rsynnott »

simonh wrote: post #73
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#99

Post by rsynnott »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #91
watwut wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection. We are watching US constitution collapse right now. Second, its meaning IS obscure. It get reinterpreted and modified by supreme court to unrecognizable degree. The words dont mean what they used to mean back then, because court used some alternative history to achieve their political goal. It is also not like…

> Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection. Well, this is not true. As a matter of fact, you can talk about it without fear that you would be arrested for your speech. In real authoritarian regimes, e.g., Jordan, Qatar, China, Russia (de jure protections exist, de facto not so much) you have no protections at all. In those places speaking out means yo…

> Can you give an example?

I mean, ol' minihands is certainly _trying_ to erode the first amendment. Now the question is whether the courts will let him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/politics/trump-freedom...

Re: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

#100

Post by jaccarmac »

SpicyUme wrote: post #96
jaccarmac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm biased because I lived down the street from a bookstore connected to a translation publishing house, but I can't recommend translated fiction enough for opening one's eyes to the weird relationship between a person, their language, and the works they read.

There is a bookstore in Vancouver with a section of translations which is reliably fruitful when I visit. The last book I bought there was a translation of Yuri Herrera's Season of the Swamp. I devoured it, even though I agree that I wish it were more fleshed out. It made me think about reading some of his work in Spanish even though it would be a long process for me. I enjoyed the effort in spanish literature class,…

I commented elsewhere: Satantango is easily my least favorite LK so far. If you want to try something else, I would recommend The Melancholy of Resistance as a novel with similar concerns but better execution, War & War as a metafictional odyssey, or the short stories.
Post reply on HN