László Krasznahorkai Receives the Nobel Prize in Stockholm

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai was presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature by Swedish King Carl Gustaf XVI at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in the Stockholm Concert Hall on Wednesday.

In her opening address, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, chair of the Board of the Nobel Foundation, stated that "the prize in literature is awarded to an authorship where melancholy and apocalypse seem to dominate the picture, but where the force of art and creation, unfathomable as it is, may still transcend the dark and violent powers… Through knowledge, integrity and excellence, through creativity and inspiration, the laureates offer hope."

"We must not just be passive spectators, but active contributors in defending the freedom of science and literature and the strive for peace to transform the world into a better place for humankind," she added

Praising the Hungarian writer, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said it was "Krasznahorkai's greatness as a writer to have succeeded in combining an artistic gaze, entirely free of illusion, that sees through the fragility of the orders established by man, with an unwavering faith in the power of literature". He praised Krasznahorkai's 1985 novel Satantango in which the writer "portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a dejected group of souls on a largely abandoned collective farm just before the fall of communism".

"This apocalyptic theme is further heightened in Krasznahorkai's second major novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, which is set in a small town in a Carpathian valley," Olsson said.

In his later works, Krasznahorkai "further develops his existentially penetrating writing, rooted as it is in a central European tradition of dark absurdism and burlesque humour that extends from Franz Kafka to Thomas Bernhard… Krasznahorkai's signature as a writer is a flowing syntax that encompasses both weightiness and lightness, melancholy and elation, tall tales and poetic intensity," he added.

Krasznahorkai was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art."