an author named Laszlo and an architect named Laszlo
a character who is a librarian and a character who builds a library
postmodern literature, modern architecture
asymmetry in form, symmetry in symbolism
stunning imagery and visuals; flashes of genius; wanting, plot-wise
striking passages from the book:
“…art is a cloud that provides shade from the sweltering heat, or a flash of lightning that splits the sky, where, in that shade’s shelter, or that lightning’s flash, the world simply becomes not the same as before.”
“…libraries (as I wrote near the end of my first notebook) are the most exceptional and exalted works of art…”
“Resist the idea that architecture is a building.”
striking passages from the film:
Van Buren: So, answer me one question; why architecture?
Laszlo: Is it a test?
Van Buren: Not at all.
Laszlo: Nothing can be of its own explanation – is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? You know, some years ago, in March, a stranger knocked at the classroom door of the university where I frequently lectured. At once, all that was familiar and important to us was gone. We were too well-known at home. I thought my reputation might help to protect us but- it was the opposite. There was no way to remain anonymous; nowhere for my family to go. There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects have survived and are still there in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe have ceased to humiliate us, I expect them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood. I already anticipate a communal rhetoric of anger and fear; a whole river of such frivolities may flow un-dammed, but my buildings were devised to endure such erosion of the Danube’s shoreline.
Erzsebet: Losing a mother – it’s an unfathomable loss, you see. To lose one’s birth mother is to lose the very foundation on which we stand. The mind may not know its loss but the heart does.
Erzsebet: I suppose that deep inside, he worships at the altar of only himself…
Zsofia: We are going to Jerusalem… Binyamin has family there.
Binyamin: My older brothers relocated with their families in 1950. They became citizens.
Erzsebet: Life is difficult there. Have you thought this through?
Zsofia: It is our obligation.
Laszlo: To whom?
The Book-Butterfly 