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Between Hope and Misfortune
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Still from Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, written by László Krasznahorkai
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Can we say it? The last one and a half or two weeks have been encouraging, even hopeful. This hope has come to us from the most unlikely of sources — from literature. No book has ever brought the dead back to life, nor has any text ever extinguished a fire. The best books know how powerless they are. And yet, they are still written.
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László Krasznahorkai's novels and screenplays deal with themes of loss and contemporary desolation. The fact that the Hungarian has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature is the first reason for optimism: Here is an artist who writes about the darkest godlessness — and creates a “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
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This year's German Book Prize winner Dorothee Elmiger, whose novel Die Holländerinnen is a subtly-rendered story of violence (behind which the violence of history shines through) is also aware of her own futility. The fact that such searching, fragile literature is being honored is the second reason for the optimism that has prevailed for the past two weeks. Receiving the prize at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, Elmiger concluded her acceptance speech with a line (a quote from the German rock band Tocotronic) which offers its own form of encouragement: “Misfortune must be fought back everywhere.”
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The Diasporist wants to commit ourselves to the same spirit:
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For those looking for hope in contemporary German-language literature, we featured one new voice. Last month, we published Swiss writer Nora Osagiobare's contribution to this summer's Bachmann Competition, along with a transcript of the jury's discussion.
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Even in the frontlines of misfortune, there is still room for literature. Fabian Wolff writes about the attempt to look at a lost cause in his new Seifenblase about Null, Polish writer Szczepan Twardoch's latest book.
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With each passing week, we are better acquainted with misfortune. With each text, we try to fight it back — your gift to the Diasporist helps us fight a little harder.
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- Ron Mieczkowski, Contributing Editor
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Nora Osagiobare
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Translated by Martha Turewicz
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Two Women on the Shore by Edvard Munch, 1898
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Tons of girls have deadbeat dads. They forget birthdays, live at the office, and spend their weekends at the bar. Some of them really do “go out for cigarettes” and never come back.
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What would happen if we offered the average dad a million to break off all contact with his daughter, forever? Would he finally realize how much he really loves his little princess, or would he take the money and run?
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Find out on “Daddy Issues: The Worst Dads in the World.”
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Finally, I take a deep breath and cap off my presentation with a freshly bleached smile. The five men sitting around the conference table look to me like guard dogs at rest. I know how to read silence in a room. So I also know that I’ve just pitched the next hit reality show.
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Fabian Wolff
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Soldier stories come in two registers: the heroic ballad, brave men fighting against the enemy in the name of glorious whatever, or the report from hell, filled with anti-heroic assholes who grumble “welcome to the suck” to new recruits. Koń, the protagonist of Szczepan Twardoch’s novel “Null” about the Ukraine war, is too smart to be a hero and too wistful to be a true cynic. He is mostly hoping not to die.
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Koń is an alienated Warsaw intellectual who enlists not because his own country might be Russia’s next victim but because his grandfather was Ukrainian, Insurgent Army and everything, and besides — this is the alienated Warsaw intellectual part — he feels he’s dead already.
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Twardoch had been writing about war for a decade when one broke out right next door. He, unlike his protagonist, didn’t enlist — and he doesn’t live in Warsaw but in Pilchowice — but he did join the fight and went to the front, as a writer.
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