(POST)COLONIALISM IN (POST)COMMUNIST DISGUISE: LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI’S THIRD JOURNEY TO CHINA

Text topic: Globalization and Literature

Text author: Марко Чудић

Travelogues about the Far East are an important part in the work of the contemporary Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai (1954), despite the fact that they went relatively unnoticed compared to the wide international recognition of his earlier books, especially his first two novels, Satantango (1985) and The Melancholy of Resistance (1989). This article deals with some cultural aspects of Krasznahorkai’s non-fictitious travelogue Destruction and Sorrow Underneath the Sky (2004) in which the author/narrator gives an account on his third journey to China undertaken in May 2002. He goes there with the presumption that China is the only country in the world where a productive symbiosis of the ancient cultural and spiritual heritage on one hand and the (post)modern way of life on the other is still possible. However, as the journey progresses, his disappointment grows bigger and bigger. He realizes that in today’s market and business-oriented China all the important historical sights (even the seemingly most hidden, once inapproachable Buddhist monasteries) have been ruthlessly turned into vulgar tourist-attractions. The vast majority of the interviewed subjects (mostly directors of major national cultural institutions) give irritatingly shallow and dogmatic answers to almost all the questions posed by the narrator. The only genuine and honest answers about their reparable and tragic gap between the traditional values of the ancient Chinese civilization and the contemporary westernized lifestyle based on consumerism and comfort, come from marginalized individuals without any influence on the society or the decision-makers. Stressing the importance of these marginalized voices seems to remain one of the greatest values of Krasznahorkai’s writing, along with the trademark of his earlier books – the extremely long sentences – which give his works a unique and inimitable pulsating rhythm.