As a child, I had heard that the end of the world would come just when no one was thinking about it, and so I spent many nights thinking hard about the end, because I might be the only one. 

I have endeavoured on more than one occasion to convey that I take the original meaning of the word apocalypse to be the most relevant: that is, apocalypse is not some end-of-the-world event that threatens us but is yet to come. No, apocalypse is the form of existence right now. Each and every moment is apocalyptic. 

By the way, Thomas Bernhard – the saviour of post-War German-language prose literature – may have been pitiless in his works and public statements, that’s true enough, but Bernhard himself cannot be said to have been devoid of compassion. There is a memorable documentary about Bernhard attending a bullfight, on a trip to Spain. The camera is glued to his face throughout, that face is all you see, with the sounds of the audience in the background, and when at the end the death-dealing thrust takes place, you can observe how this face goes to pieces. I looked at this devastated face, and saw it was full of compassion for the bull. Ah, Herr Bernhard, I said to myself, all is well after all.

As in AnimalInside, your book created with the artist Max Neumann, your compassion is for the animal, but also for the creature that we are. You often return to the creaturely – why?
LK It is not that I return to it; I have never left it. The creaturely is there in the inferno of our existence and there it remains. You see, I perceive all of the terrestrial world in its entirety at once – nothing is missing, everything is here simultaneously, there is no time for this thing or that one, because there is no such thing as time if we think of everything at the same time.

Who the hell is interested in what I say here or have said previously? Literature in terms of prose is finished, and it is washed away by exactly the same repulsive forces that had brought it into being. Remember? Literature first showed up in the form of chapbooks displayed in marketplace stalls, as pulp fiction placed upon the tarp laid out by the side of the booth. By now even the best writers are waiting in line, their books in hand, hoping for permission to put them on display. Prose literature? It’s a market! “Come on in!” the vendors say. Only poetry remains – because poetry always survives. Poetry always finds a way to manifest itself. Of course, we are mere mortals. I wonder what will happen when the snail or the rat launch into our funeral dirge and sing of us.

Krasznahorkai, interviewed