The Melancholy of Resistance

The Melancholy of Resistance (Hungarian: Az ellenállás melankóliája) is a 1989 novel by the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai. The narrative is set in a restless town where a mysterious circus, which exhibits a whale and nothing else, contributes to an apocalyptic atmosphere. Krasznahorkai adapted the novel into a screenplay for the 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies, directed by Béla Tarr.^[1]

Written at a time when the Eastern Bloc was undergoing major social unrest, the book is a political allegory. A train bringing an outside force of rabble rouses, headed by a mysterious Prince can be taken for totalitarian ideology which had been pushed on Hungary from the outside. Likewise, the villainous Mrs Eszter who controls the town under the auspices of fighting off the mysterious combatants is herself as well a criticism of totalitarian ideology as much as the people she uses to attain power.

Reception

James Wood of The New Yorker wrote in 2011: "The Melancholy of Resistance is a comedy of apocalypse, a book about a God that not only failed but didn't even turn up for the exam. Less manic, less entrapped than War and War, it has elements of a traditional social novel." Wood continued: "The Melancholy of Resistance is a demanding book, and a pessimistic one, too, since it seems to take repeated ironic shots at the possibility of revolution. ... The pleasure of the book, and a kind of resistance, as well, flows from its extraordinary, stretched, self-recoiling sentences, which are marvels of a loosely punctuated stream of consciousness."^[2]

Opera

The novel was adapted for Péter Eötvös's 2023 opera, Valuska, commissioned by Hungarian State Opera.^[3]

See also

• 1989 in literature
• Hungarian literature

References

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Works by László Krasznahorkai

Novels and
novellas

• Satantango (1985)
• The Melancholy of Resistance (1989)
• War & War (1999)
• Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens (2004)
• Seiobo There Below (2008)
• Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2016)
• Chasing Homer (2019)

Short fiction

• "The Bill: For Palma Vecchio, at Venice" (2010)
• The World Goes On (2013)

Screenplays

• Damnation (1988)
• Sátántangó (1994)
• Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
• The Man from London (2007)
• The Turin Horse (2011)

Category

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