The Melancholy of Resistance

The Melancholy of Resistance (Az ellenállás melankóliája) is a 1989 novel by the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai. The narrative is set in a restless town where a mysterious circus, which exhibits a whale and nothing else, contributes to an apocalyptic atmosphere. Krasznahorkai adapted the novel into a screenplay for the 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies, directed by Béla Tarr.

Written at a time when the Eastern Bloc was undergoing major social unrest, the book is a political allegory. A train bringing an outside force of rabble rousers, led by a mysterious Prince, can be construed as a figure for a totalitarian ideology being pushed on Hungary from the outside. Likewise the villainous Mrs Eszter, who controls the town under the auspices of fighting off the mysterious combatants, can herself be read in terms of a critique of totalitarian ideology.

Reception
James Wood of The New Yorker wrote in 2011: "The Melancholy of Resistance is a comedy of apocalypse, a book about a God that not only failed but didn't even turn up for the exam. Less manic, less entrapped than War and War, it has elements of a traditional social novel." Wood continued: "The Melancholy of Resistance is a demanding book, and a pessimistic one, too, since it seems to take repeated ironic shots at the possibility of revolution. ... The pleasure of the book, and a kind of resistance, as well, flows from its extraordinary, stretched, self-recoiling sentences, which are marvels of a loosely punctuated stream of consciousness."

Opera
The novel was adapted for Péter Eötvös's 2023 opera, Valuska, commissioned by Hungarian State Opera.