Laszlo Kraznahorkai: The Last Wolf and Herman

The love of animals is the one true love in which one is never disappointed.


... for how could he describe what so weighed him down, how could he explain how long ago he had given up the idea of thought, the point at which he first understood the way things were and knew that any sense we had of existence was merely a reminder of the incomprehensible futility of existence, a futility that would repeat itself ad infinitum, to the end of time and that, no, it wasn't a matter of chance and its extraordinary, inexhaustible, triumphant, unconquerable power working to bring matters to birth or annihilation, but rather the matter of a shadowy demonic purpose, something embedded deep in the heart of things, in the texture of the relationship between things, the stench of whose purpose filled every atom, that it was a curse, a form of damnation, that the world was the product of scorn, and god help the sanity of those who called themselves thinkers.


... and whereas our techniques—having realized in the wake of our sorry experiences that we were not questing heroes but merely dumb victims of the thinking mind—were based on paraphiliac fulfillment, unbridled pursuit of pleasure, the ceaseless apocatastasis of an eden missing from primal imagination, and took refuge in transgression, herman's deliberately paltry means were called into being by hubris, a hubris that believed in the invincibility of weakness.


He couldn't write about anything, for really, what could he possibly do with his hopelessly complex, labyrinthine thoughts and sentences, but never mind.