Your new book is called K dosszié (The K file), not Kertész or Klein File. In the preface you call it a novel, but with reservations. At other places you declare vehemently that an autobiography is not a novel. At the book launch, on the other hand, you accepted, or, at least, did not protest against the definition of an autobiographical novel. Well, we should not be too strict. If the term is used in a categorical sense, I protest. But if we are just chatting, I can accept it. In your introduction you refer to a script which is the result of your conversation with Zoltán Hafner, but you instantly lay down that this book has nothing to do with that document. You do not name the questioner but in The K File I often recognise you as one of the parties in the conversation. Yes, there was a series of interviews the material of which was all in a file which I pushed to one side. Hafner was a wonderful person to talk to, and I grew fond of the dialogue form. The outcome of these conversations was really inspiring. You can sense in it how the dramaturgy of the dialogues creates the questioner as a person. Really? Naturally, I think everyone is aware that probably in the event Zoltán Hafner, excuse me, the questioner, did not actually hold The English Flag on his knee, turning the pages. What the reader can feel is that you are playing around with the form. It was a truly entertaining game. Yes. I like playing and I needed the dialogue form in order to be able to talk about these things. In your book you mention the conflict between narration and linearity. Yes, it is there all the time. You could not have told Fatelessness in a linear fashion. At first sight the narrative seems linear, but in fact it is not. And this non-linearity enriches the whole story. Things happen which are unexpected and do not follow from anything that went before. You also revealed that you have a solid dislike for anecdotes which, if I may say so, are a basic building block of the Hungarian prose tradition. If you’ll accept it, we could say that what you permit in your novels are events. What is the essential difference between events and anecdotes? What is unique about events? Is it their structure? Or is a judgement of taste on your part? The difference is in the composition itself. It is interesting that you should have mentioned tradition. Modern Hungarian prose has no tradition. I see a rift after, say, Zsigmond Móricz, the like of which does not exist in other literatures. The history of the Hungarian novel does not have its Proust or its James Joyce. Hungarian prose, which uses anecdote, and at the same time covers up a great deal while aiming to entertain, has not reached the point that great European literatures have. A really interesting example is Eötvös’s novel A karthauzi (The Carthusian, 1839-41), which starts out in a really exciting fashion, particularly from our point of view, but then the author forgets about the whole thing and starts something totally different. There are lots of such promising beginnings in Hungarian literature, but I still feel that the new novel, from Ottlik through Nádas, Esterházy and Spiró, all the way to Darvasi and, say, Attila Bartis, in other words, all of these books have to create something which is more than just style: it is an attitude through which they view the world in this new situation. Hungarian writers have not recognised the importance of composition, the value of economy. Did they lack the kind of musical ear that is so important to you? Perhaps they lacked musical hearing, too, but most of all, I think, they lacked the experience of modernity. Hungarian development is totally different. If you think of the English gentry, in the 16th century they simply went over from land owning to industry, and this provided them with a solution. Now compare this with the Hungarian gentry… While we are on history - you once said that Auschwitz looms through the wafer of the Kádár regime. Now it seems as if Kádár loomed through certain other phenomena. At one point in this book you say that it is time we accepted freedom, somewhere else you state that we are living in a condition of collective self-delusion, in an organic extension of the Kádár era. Isn’t this covert continuity a survival of Auschwitz? This is a very difficult question. 1989 did not bring the kind of catharsis that had been expected of it. The commemorations are, of course, lovely, but they only take us further away from the possibility of catharsis. But why should I want young people of today to go through the scandal of Auschwitz? How could they go through it? It is still possible for a person to grow up (and this is something that has actually happened only recently to someone I know) without being told about his background. So he lives on as a Christian, until one evening somebody asks him at a dinner party, "So, how did your parents survive it?" "What?" "Well, Auschwitz." So he stands up, walks into another room and phones his parents who are living on a different continent, and asks them whether this was true. "Yes, it is true," they say, "but we did not want to burden you with it." At certain points of the book you say, "but let’s not go into that." Is this your doubt about the reader’s capability of truly identifying with the events, or is it a kind of tact? To me, the most powerful moment is when you recall the structure of the camp at Buchenwald and the reader feels that if you had your own way you would love to go into the details of the fight for survival between "red’"and "green" detainees, criminal and political convicts. You make a start, but then you say "it is best not to know the details." While in all your writings you turn against the so-called "humanist discourse" on the Auschwitz paradigm, in this work you choose silence and procrastination on a number of occasions. Why is this? Well, it must be just weakness. It is not that I do not want to talk about it, it is just that I can’t. It is not possible. I have written about it and now I am finished with it. I want to find peace now. It is a natural human reaction. I actually believe one grows lazy… I can understand it if someone, like in the case I mentioned to you, is given this new knowledge at the age of 38 that he is Jewish, so he wants to learn about this culture and religion, becomes familiar with Zionism, goes to Israel and then at one point says: I am not interested in all this. He goes through a great development, at the end of which he does not become a different person, and yet the whole thing somehow becomes incorporated into his life. You make a distinction between open and closed societies, and you say that closed societies are often chosen by open societies as a vision for their own future, voluntarily, either out of some misconception, a loss of self-confidence or under pressure from an aggressive minority. The knowledge you acquired at fourteen "they can shoot me any time" has not been invalidated in any way… No. Nothing has happened to make me withdraw that. How do you see Europe today in the light of all this? It is surely under very heavy pressure at the moment. Holland, which has always been perhaps the most tolerant state, is now having to face the limits of tolerance… The way I see it is that Europe is having to face the question whether it is able to survive at all. It is in a fundamental crisis, living in bad faith, an inauthentic state. It has chosen America as a rival and sees it as the exploiting power of the world, holds it responsible for globalisation, and in this state of bad faith Europe is refusing to accept that European values such as freedom and reason… … Auschwitz has discredited all the Enlightenment values…
Yes, this is exactly it. We give the reactions of a pacifist to Auschwitz, but if we are attacked, we put democracy and tolerance to one side. We need to fear that if Europe tries to defend itself, it will first of all curtail European freedom rights.
It is surprising to me in this book that the even-tempered geniality of pessimism that we have grown accustomed to in your writing is suspended for a moment of sentiment.
Is it really? "Hatred, when properly organised, creates a reality; just as love itself could create a reality." Do you mean that to happen without organisation?
(Laughing) That is a good question. Once it is organised, can you still call it love? That is a sentence you cannot write down. A utopia. Love? What do you mean by that? You can’t change the world. Supposedly, we have been liberated, freedom is here, socialism is over. But the overall tendency… is confused, chaotic. We are up shit creek without a paddle, if I may say so in a literary interview…
Why not? Well, then, we are up shit creek without a paddle. What a wonderful final note.
Interview by Gábor Németh
Translated by Orsolya Frank
Previously on HLO
The K file: A new novel by Imre Kertész | 
