Enough About Angels: The Nobel Lecture

by László Krasznahorkai, Ottilie Mulzet (Translator)

Elhangzott 2025. december 7-én, a Svéd Királyi Akadémia ünnepi ülésén. A Svéd Királyi Akadémia az irodalmi Nobel-díjat 2025-ben Krasznahorkai László magyar írónak ítélte oda "meggyőző és látnoki életművéért, amely az apokaliptikus terror közepette is igazolja a művészet erejét".

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Nobel Prize, Hungarian Literature, Literature

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2025

About the author

László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter who is known for critically difficult and demanding novels, often labelled as postmodern, with dystopian and bleak melancholic themes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2025.

He is probably best known through the oeuvre of the director Béla Tarr, who has collaborated with him on several movies.

Apart from the Nobel Prize, Krasznahorkai has also been honored with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his English-translated oeuvre.

Reviews

[Kuszma]

Megszakítottam egy fél órára Bodor Ádám összegyűjtött novelláinak olvasását, hogy bedaráljam Krasznahorkai stockholmi beszédét. És közben azon gondolkodtam, milyen szerencsés vagyok. Úgy értem, lövésem sincs, Dúró Dóra vagy Kövér László szerint pontosan miért is jó magyarnak lenni. Szerintem azért, mert az ember eredeti nyelven Bodort olvashat, majd megszakíthatja, hogy Krasznahorkait olvasson, ugyancsak eredeti nyelven. Gyanítom, Dúró és Kövér nem ezért szeret magyarnak lenni. De akkor miért?

A remény elfogyott, de angyalok vannak, állítja Krasznahorkai. A reményt illetően nem nyilatkoznék, de az angyalokról eszembe jutott valami. Egy metafora. Hogy ezek a szárnyatlan angyalok, akikről Krasznahorkai beszél, talán épp a nagy írók, akik közöttünk járnak-kelnek. Nem ismeri fel őket a sarki zöldséges, se a BKV-ellenőr, de mi, akiket az irodalom kiválasztott magának, igen. És mi azt is tudjuk, hogy ezek az angyalok a Paradicsom építészmérnökei. Szavakból hozzák létre a mennyei tereket, ahol huriktól övezve megpihenhetünk, szánkba mézédes szőlőszemek hullanak, miegymás. Köszönet érte.

És most megyek vissza a Bodor-kötetbe. De jó nekem.

[Anna]

Krasznahorkai's Stockholm lecture is a masterpiece in its own right, with intertextual echoes of his entire ouevre. The unknown narrator of the tripartite lecture in The Universal Theseus inhabits the author himself who, by never getting off the train, becomes the elusive grandson of Prince Genji, the protagonist of the wonderful and luminous A Mountain from the North.

The key themes of melancholy, revolt, and possession from The Universal Theseus are expanded here, in a different order: a melancholy portrait of angels in street clothes is followed by a terrific summary account of humanity's possession, its own history, and then by an expectation of revolt.

By a linguistic touch perhaps unintended but just as masterful and inspiring, the whole of humanity and humanity's search for meaning are placed in a metaphysical context that I found simply extraordinary in its subtlety: we are all, just as the author or narrator of the Nobel lecture, en route from Kreuzberg ["Mount of the Cross"] to Ruhleben ["restful life"]. Of course, no station is worth getting off at.

[Daniel García]

Súper sugerente y muy bien escrito. Por el título, esperaba otra cosa. Tal vez hubiera estado mejor titularlo "Sobre los ángeles, la dignidad humana y la rebeldía". Creo que el autor se pierde un poco en su laberinto, pero da gusto verle perderse así.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

Enough About Angels: The Nobel Lecture

Book by László Krasznahorkai #László Krasznahorkai #Krasznahorkai26 translated by
Ottilie Mulzet #readinganactofsharedsolitude

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYNb3l...

[Fin]

Ah, enough about angels! ... Ah, enough about human dignity! ... no, the rebellion that I'm thinking of will be different, because that rebellion will be in relation to the whole.

[Scott Bielinski]

I’m glad Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize. He’s a phenomenal writer. I have basically no idea what this speech means. It seems to be a lament over humanity’s (necessary?) abandonment of beauty, moral truth, and transcendence, even as it still believes art can testify to what’s been lost after the (moral and cultural) apocalypse.

[Descending Angel]

So glad one of my favourite living writers won the Nobel prize for Literature, didn't think it was gonna happen. This is the speech he gave, which is true to form, not too many writers could get away with something like this.

[Sarah (menace mode)]

Gorgeous little meditation on angels, humans and the rebellion of the whole against the ending we’ve written for ourselves.

[James Ullyott]

7.6


Hard to grade this given the small quantity of work actually in it. So I think I'm compensating with the rating.

I found it interesting but I don't believe much of it spoke to me so explicitly. Perhaps, something will come to me from it later.

I know that I enjoyed reading it but that it did not necessarily feel like there was the strongest message within it. Maybe faint ideas of Good behind Evil, maybe it's today stuck in the Martian SpaceX mud.

That seems right.

I think the translation let's it down, I'm sure it's more evocative in it's natural language, but as its the speech from last year - and from what I can see of the shelved number it doesn't seem to be the most in-demand book - I'm not surprised that it hasn't gotten a majorly attentive translation.

I do keep thinking about the plain clothes angels, though.

NEXT READ: The Pearl by John Steinbeck

[Ben Schulte]

1.5*

Take this review with a grain of salt, because this is the first I’ve read Krasznahorkai; if I do read any other of his works, I’ll come back and reread this, as I can recognize reading an author’s lecture might ask of the reader some familiarity (thematically speaking, especially) with a speaker’s body of work. That being said, this lecture is bound as an independent piece, so I don’t think it’s wholly unfair to judge this as a piece of literature on its own merits.

I’d say this project—a trisected platform that seeks to define the contemporary as some sort of inflection point—is just unsuccessful. The meta-textual elements are under-explored and thus feel lightweight and gimmicky, and the extended philosophical exploration of angels and Biblical allusions to capital G and E Good and Evil feel weak relative to their textual, narrative embodiment; the destination the interwoven threads reach, then, feels appropriately noncommittal. When the word “revolt” is invoked in relation to a immensely potent story about a unhoused fellow and a cop, I’m deeply disappointed by the subsequent image of listlessly riding a subway and a wink towards some flighty, unsubstantiated idea of “hope.” As a whole, it all feels more concerned with being academically or aesthetically relevant than it does radical, and comes off scared to state anything plainly, choosing instead to hide behind metaphors of “angels in plain clothes” and train-stops blurring by. The indulgences in Biblical abstraction and tangential anthropology makes the mention of Elon Musk all the more meaningless, as if a universal punching bag labeled “Bad Guy” is set up and supposed to be as satisfying as a more carefully composed, intentional critique of fascist, authoritarian, and/or oligarchical power would be. Why is Musk the lone flesh and blood human given a name in this lecture? Even the narrator, however ostensibly Krasznahorkai they may be, is functionally anonymized by first person pronouns, meaning the specificity offered to Musk seems to convey a preverse sort of honor—as if he was granted the named title of “Oligarch of the Year” for the lecturer to shake their fist at amidst an otherwise unnamed collection of characters and bodies. A carefully composed, stubbornly undefined revolution simply does not interest me—and it certainly isn’t a catalyst for “rebellion,” as the synopsis suggests. I’d rather read something a little uglier.

[Jenina]

The textual pleasure of stopping to read this a second third fourth time, and there are more and more underlines each time. Rewards digested read vs rushed consumption


Angels wear street clothes

[George Gonzaga Deoso]

Alas! A Krasznahorkai book I don't really like. At roughly 40 pages, a 699-peso retail price (?!?!?), and four staggered days of parsing through a speech, this tiny volume gave me almost nothing--when clearly our dear writer was trying to do the most.

Which is sad because I DEVOURED what I've read from him and was more than satisfied (Satantango, The Last Wolf, A Mountain to the North...). There are big ideas here and pretty neat observations, and of course his looping clauses which can either be a pleasure or a pain to read (I'm simply used to them at this point--used to, I mean, reading and not understanding everything at once).

I don't think he used a very flattering metaphor when he wrote that "tower" scenario--exactly the kind of accusation thrown at dead or geriatric white people who write notoriously difficult texts. Real or not, ivory tower or one built from "the cheapest Norway spruce planks" (p. 11), the extended use of this image is just...icky...for me. Can't really explain why except perhaps it just sort of reinforced the accusation of being out of touch, which I never really leveled at him before because his works are so grounded in grit and reality albeit of course filtered through rambling sentences and breathtaking cosmic/divine abstractions.

Here, the abstractions didn't work for me. And that section about the policeman and a urinating man isn't really delivering its intended message for me. What I see is a bystander who witnessed a minor public scandal before riding a train, wrote about it later and attached the words "rebellion" and "angels" and "Good" and "Evil" to it and made a Nobel speech out of it...and it didn't make sense to me at all :((((

Some would say it will later, and maybe it will, but FTLOG right now this book just strikes me as a strange exercise of a GREAT writer who has to write a short piece when he could only truly speak clearly when there are no constraints.

Anw i dont really like it but im still giving three stars because I want to convince myself I didn't waste my money.

And I'll still continue reading him. still love his works. but when i see another Krasznahorkai volume thats less than 100 pages, istg i'll still pick it up, pay for it, but my face will be like this:

[Peter Brown]

From divinity to evolution via basic human instincts (micturation and necrophagy) to dignity, compassion and rebellion.
Angels no longer have wings and seemingly for Krasznahorkai his ‘stores of hope have ‘definitively’ come to an end,’.

‘Ben Reads Good’s’ vlog recently looked at the International Booker longlist and ranked them according to their first sentences, different, amusing, so I’m now looking at first sentences with heightened curiosity - the first sentence here goes on for 14 pages - to a degree it’s an affectation used by many writers, particularly modernists from Joyce through Beckett to Thomas Bernhard and all too easily achieved by the (obsessive) use of conjunctions, dashes, commas etc. - but here are just the first few words as to give the sentence entire would be a copyright contravention:

‘I walk around up and down and I’m thinking about angels,’.

I wondered if the Nobel prize audience laughed, or fidgeted unsure how to receive this seeming parable on hope and rebellion that concludes in a magnetic equilibrium between a clochard and a policeman ‘all because of ten meters’ which is reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy escapade or a Beckett absurdity à la Vladimir and Estragon. No, all is quiet and respectful. But there’s also something quasi-religious in the void established in perpetuity ‘between good & evil’.

The lecture is translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, one of Lásló Krasznahorkai’s primary translators - she was born in Toronto in 1960. The speech was given in Hungarian by Lásló of course and immediately followed by a young woman in English. If this is a translation of what we’ve just heard in an ‘unknown language’ it is not the Nobel lecture as here printed but something quite different.

[Kate Curtis-Hawkins]

It feels a bit like a miracle that Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize in the first place, given that the award seems to have passed over any number of postmodernists and experimentalists that have well deserved the canonization which comes with the Nobel. But it feels like a further miracle that this was the lecture he delivered at the actual ceremony.

Not a miracle in the sense that I can't believe he wrote it, or that it isn't commenting on the same themes that he's spent a career working on, but in the sense that his remarks are more like a parable than anything else. There's little I wouldn't give in order to have been a fly on the wall in the room where he delivered it, to have seen the reaction on the faces of those who got to attend.

In three short segments, Krasznahorkai delivered a dissection of his work if it was viewed from 30,000 feet. Covering the futility of resistance, the evolution of humanity towards self destruction, and our total abandonment of anything even remotely approaching God. He also managed to do it in his trademark long sentences. I am tempted to recommend this as an entry point to his bibliography, but I am not sure that the uninitiated will fully understand the way in which this speech works intertextually with the rest of his work. To read this lecture is to go on a journey, or more accurately, to be pulled along on one that László has been writing for nearly 40 years.

I only wish it was longer.

[Patrick]

Ya he leído otros discursos pero este es diferente y me gustó especialmente, porque es profundamente literario en el sentido de que se asemeja más a un relato de ficción (incluso se divide en capítulos que abordan diferentes temas —ángeles, dignidad humana, rebeldía, el tratamiento colectivo del Bien y el Mal como opuestos funcionales en la sociedad— pero que están conectados), es sutil y sugerente. Por supuesto que ya hay discursos legendarios como el de García Máquez con su «La soledad en América Latina», pero que se sienten mucho más cercanos en cuanto a interpelación directa y casi ensayística en algunos casos, o anecdótica y vital en otros (como el de Vargas Llosa). En cambio este de Krasznahorkai perfectamente podría ser parte de su producción literaria, y al mismo tiempo nos dice mucho sobre ciertas cosas (aunque con pesadumbre y desesperanza).

[Delaney Johnson]

“Enough About Angels” left me with the distinct feeling that I had missed both the point and a prerequisite reading list. It reads like eavesdropping on the stream of consciousness of the smartest person in the room after they've had three espressos and stopped explaining themselves. We moved from ancient angels to modern ones, contemplated human dignity, took a train ride through Berlin, and somehow arrived at rebellion without ever asking my permission. I can't confidently tell you what it all meant, but I did love Krasznahorkai's idea that angels walk among us in street clothes—and honestly, that image may be the thing that stays with me the longest.

[Joan Osborne]

Requires reading a few times to get the gist of it. He write, poses questions, statements in a ‘non-traditional’ way. Almost reads like a dystopian novel, like someone on the outside looking in. However, he opines about the past world of biblical angels, about modern angels, human dignity, good vs evil and asks, what’s next? A rebellion?

[Dylan]

It feels like a speech mostly about nothing. Krasznahorkai is really frustrating to me as a reader. His style and subject matter feel like they should work great for me, but everything I have touched of his has just not been great.

[Ross Yenerich]

kind of confused ngl! very quick read, might do this one again. the style is so cool… maybe i’ll read more of him. i love the style i wonder how it was written because it was a speech… enjoyed but not amazed by this!:) biggest takeaway was the crazy syntax and fun punctuation…

[Mark]

I never know what to think after reading Krasznahorkai. I'll never stop trying...

[Barbara Hale]

Not at all sure what I just read - too esoteric for my simple mind.

[Mary Bence]

only this guy could make me cry in ~50 pages

[Nick]

It's a pamphlet, but it's a good pamphlet.

[Hilly]

it felt like when you’re old uncle is rambling on and on but occasionally has some insane wisdom in that rambling

[Melinda]

Not sure what to feel. Plain clothes angels, wandering around as the semi tangible sacrifice of or to our abandonment of belief? I’ll be thinking about this one for awhile.

[Gus]

It was a little depressing but in a funny way?

[KADEN]

"human being--astonishing creature--who are you?"

[Jeremy]

Un discurso plenamente literario.

[Bị Lùa Gà]

Hơi hậm hực nha bác ơi.