MELANCHOLY & RESISTANCE
In early March of 2020, I travelled to Sicily on holiday. The day after I
arrived, Italy announced that it would become the first European country to enter
a state of national lockdown in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic.
I carried with me ‘The Melancholy of Resistance’ by László Krasznahorkai, a novel set
in a small, unnamed Hungarian town where it is made clear - from the beginning of
the book - that an ominous change is looming. The weather has been unseasonably cold.
Trains are becoming increasingly unreliable. Menacing groups of people are
collecting in public spaces. And acting as a catalyst to chaos, a circus rolls into
town advertising an exhibit of “the biggest whale in the world”. From here on
out tensions rise, defence mechanisms are tested and any semblance of
order that the town’s inhabitants once found solace in begin to decay.