AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Notes from underground10/2/2023 His hometown was not his hometown anymore - and that is one of the reason why I rate L’Ignorance so highly. Kundera left Czechoslovakia in 1975, seven years after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and started living in Paris. There was, however, a hiatus for a Czech reader some pieces got translated to Czech only a couple of years ago: La fete de l’insignificance (2020) and L’Ignorance (2021). I was continually reading Kundera’s work ever since my high school years. Reading Kundera is like going on a first date with a beautiful girl to a fancy restaurant I, unfortunately, am unable to find it at the moment. A reader must forgive me: an essay exists, or at least a translator’s note, somewhere, where Kundera’s hatred towards adaptation is mentioned and explained. This, existing on the very first page of the 2006 version of the book is in a sense comedic, considering the 1988 film directed by Philip Kaufmann, starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day-Lewis as Tereza and Tomas. The Unbearable Lightness of Being begins with a note: “any film, drama or television adaptations are banned”. Kundera is also interesting for the Czech reader due to another reason: his ban on artistic adaptation. That, however, seems like a battle to be fought some other time and somewhere else. Maybe in the future I will have more to say about the Czech author who was as loved as he was hated in his hometown. Bílek stated, in a review of the book, that Novák is “in the sphere of general and literary history an egocentric dilettante” due to his tabloid-like way of framing the author. A Czech literary scholar and critic Petr A. There, he framed Kundera as someone whose actions lead to imprisonment of others. Kundera’s name became heavily discussed in 2020 after Czech writer Jan Novák published an almost 900-page-long literary biography of him. Also, me being a follower of Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay The Death of the Author, I do not see anything useful or valuable in diving into controversies connected to the author’s private life. This text does not aim to explain the not-so-great relationship some Czech readers have with the author, as I do not view it as correct so close to his death. However, speaking of Kundera solely as a Czech author would do him injustice. Kundera is also interesting for the Czech reader due to another reason: his ban on artistic adaptation Kundera’s writing has been influenced by many, for example authors like Franz Kafka, Giovanni Bocaccio, and many classical music composers. He wrote to me in a message that he sees a connection between this novel and Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, as they “both present people as unhappy with the fact that they depend on other people”. He has only read The Unbearable Lightness, but he had recommended it to four other people to read. My classmate and friend, Kishan Katira, currently finishing his master’s degree in Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Warwick, is one of them. The connection between philosophical thought and fiction has obtained him many fans. However, his novels contained features of philosophical essays - from his long discussions of folk music in his first novel The Joke - a text that a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek called Kundera’s best - to an explanation of why girls always walk in pairs. ![]() He was also a poet, an author of plays, and, for some scholars, an essayist. Kundera has been a prolific writer and even though he has been mainly recognised for his novels - for an international reader, Kundera’s name is deeply connected to his 1984 novel: The Unbearable Lightness of Being. ![]() In Eduard and God, a boy starts dating a Christian, which is not deemed appropriate in communist Czechoslovakia, and thus he has to decide what to do. In one of the stories, titled The Hitchhiking Game, a couple going on holiday decides to act like strangers to each other lovers are, because of this, turned into enemies and see each other with disgust. But now, after 94 years of living and many years of writing, Milan Kundera died on 11 July, 2023.Ī series of stories, ranging in lengths and styles map love in all its forms. I remember opening the destroyed copy that has occupied my family’s nightstands for many years I found it intelligent, funny and also very playful. I must have been around the age of sixteen when my father, an avid fan of literature, recommended me a short story collection called Laughable Loves by a Czech author named Milan Kundera. There has not been a writer that stayed with me ever since my teenage years.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |