Twenty years since its first publication in English Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is still waiting to be published in the Czech Republic
The novelist Milan Kundera is probably the best-known contemporary Czech author in the world. Next week the British publisher Faber and Faber is putting out a special hardback edition of his “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its first publication in English. Strangely enough, the Czech original of the book has never been published in Milan Kundera’s native country.
When the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” was first published, Milan Kundera was living in Paris where he had fled from communist Czechoslovakia in 1975. Since its first publication the book has been translated into scores of languages, but the Czech original was only published by an exile publishing house in Canada in the 1980s. Milan Kundera has never given Czech publishers permission to put out his most popular book. Jan Culik is a lecturer at Glasgow University.
“When Milan Kundera is asked about this, he says that he would have to revise the Czech original and he doesn’t have time to do it. He is known to be very very meticulous about the exact versions of his texts and he’s been changing the English and French editions over the years. If you go back through the editions through the years, you will discover minute changes throughout it. So this argument seems justified on the face of it.
“However, I seem to have discovered that this explanation is probably not true. Because some weeks ago I met a very well-known Romanian scholar who has translated many many Czech classics into Romanian. His name is Jean Grosu, and he actually received permission from Kundera to translate all these ‘banned’, as it were, books from the un-revised Czech originals into Romanian, and they have been published. So it would appear that Kundera doesn’t mind whether these novels come out as long as it is not the Czech Republic.”
It is often said that Milan Kundera is much more read and appreciated abroad than in his homeland and that Czechs have never really accepted his writing. But Jan Culik says it is not clear what is the cause and what is the consequence in this case.
Milan Kundera“It is very difficult to say because, obviously, if you don’t have the seminal works available in the country, then of course, his work is much less known than in other countries. It is true that say, in Britain, Kundera’s work is permanently available on the shelves of bookshops, which, of course, isn’t the case in the Czech Republic normally, even with Czech classics. So if these books were available, people would be interested, I think, in the Czech Republic.”
Nevertheless, at least from his part, Milan Kundera’s relationship to his native country is a difficult one. When he does visit the Czech Republic, he arrives incognito and he declines to speak to journalists. Jan Culik from Glasgow University says there might be a concrete reason behind Milan Kundera’s long-lasting reservations about his old homeland.
“Maybe, the reason for Kundera’s books from the 1980s not being published in the Czech Republic is the fact that when ‘The Unbearable Lightness Being’ was published in the West, it was a major success for Kundera, and Czech dissident critics slammed the book. They really didn’t like it. They thought it was kitsch, they said it was too black and white, they had various piddling criticisms. And I think Kundera was offended. It is not very easy when you come from Eastern Europe and try to bear witness about it to an absolutely different world, which was the West. And he did it. He managed to do this. So he expected praise and he didn’t get it.”
Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance”, a novel that offers insight into exile and memory
In this week’s programme we talk to Zuzana Krupickova about Milan Kundera, and in particular his most recent novel “Ignorance”. Zuzana has been living in Paris for over five years and there she took her doctorate on Kundera at the Sorbonne. Last year she also translated into Czech the first French Romantic poet Alphonse de la Martine, the first Czech translation of his Poetic Meditation. But today we focus on “Ignorance”, Kundera’s study of the nature of exile and return, which was recently translated into English.
Milan Kundera, photo: Gallimard“During the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence, the people of Ithaca retained many recollections of him but never felt nostalgia for him. Whereas Odysseus did suffer nostalgia, and remembered almost nothing.
We can comprehend this curious contradiction if we realize that for memory to function well, it needs constant practice: if recollections are not evoked again and again, in conversations with friends, they go. Émigrés gathered together in compatriot colonies keep retelling to the point of nausea the same stories, which thereby become unforgettable. But people who do not spend time with their compatriots, Iike Irena or Odysseus, are inevitably stricken with amnesia. The stronger their nostalgia, the emptier of recollections it becomes. The more Odysseus languished, the more he forgot. For nostalgia does not heighten memory’s activity, it does not awaken recollec- tions; it suffices unto itself, unto its own feelings, so fully absorbed is it by its suffering and nothing else.”
The theme of Odysseus and exile is very important in Kundera’s “Ignorance”. Can you say some more about this theme of exile?
“In 1975 Kundera moved to France. He emigrated when he was forty-six years old. So this theme of emigration and exile was always very important for him and as a subject for his novels. Kundera was obliged to emigrate because his situation in Czechoslovakia was very difficult. He couldn’t teach at university, for example, he couldn’t publish his books, and in France his first novel “The Joke” had a big success, so he had the possibility to live in France, which was to him the way to liberation and the way to be able to express himself as he wanted.”
So clearly his own experience of exile explains some of the complexity of the way the theme is discussed in the book, and it focuses on the return to Prague of two central characters, Josef, who has emigrated to Denmark and is returning, and Irena, who is coming from Paris with her Swedish boyfriend. Here’s a short piece which gives us a taste of the reactions of their friends to them on their return. Irena has treated some of her old friends to a case of very posh French wine – Bordeaux – and they respond by asking for beer; they only turn to the wine afterwards:
“Until that moment they have shown no interest in what she was trying to tell them. What is the meaning of this sudden onslaught? What is it they want to find out, these women who wouldn’t listen to anything before ? She soon sees that their questions are of a particular kind: questions to check whether she knows what they know, whether she remembers what they remember. This has a strange effect on her, one that will stay with her:
Earlier, by their total uninterest in her experience abroad, they amputated twenty years from her life. Now, with this interrogation, they are try- ing to stitch her old past onto her present life. As if they were anaputating her foreann and attach- ing the hand directly to the elbow; as if they were amputating her calves and joining her feet to her knees.”
Earlier, by their total uninterest in her experience abroad, they amputated twenty years from her life. Now, with this interrogation, they are try- ing to stitch her old past onto her present life. As if they were anaputating her foreann and attach- ing the hand directly to the elbow; as if they were amputating her calves and joining her feet to her knees.”
‘Ignorance’That’s a very striking image to describe her feelings when she discovers that people really aren’t interested in her experiences of exile.
“This is something that is very common for a lot of people who emigrated from Czechoslovakia. It was the same reaction. When you come back after living a long time in another country, you have this feeling that people don’t understand what you did, how you lived. They are not interested so they impose on you how they knew you before you left. So these two people, Irena and Josef, they have this experience, which is existential and not a pleasant experience. They feel more lost than before.”
They come together at the end of the book rather dramatically and sexually. In fact, this is an interesting point in the book, isn’t it, because Irena remembers him very affectionately and sentimentally. She can remember meeting him one night, but he can’t remember her at all. He can’t even remember her name. I think this is another interesting theme of the book – that we don’t share memories, that we remember different things, and this is quite a frightening thing in the book.
“For Josef, Irena just symbolizes some moments of pleasure without a future. But for Irena, to meet Josef – he represents for her the possibility of a nice future and something more. So it’s a little bit cynical on his part.”
One interesting aspect, which we haven’t mentioned yet, is the fact that the book is written in French and has not been translated yet into Czech. I think this says something about Kundera’s ambivalent relationship with the Czech Republic.
“The novel was first published in Spain, in Catalan and Spanish. Kundera didn’t even want to publish it in France. In Paris it was published one or two years later, if I remember well. So I think it shows the ambivalence of the relationship between Kundera and French critics, because the two books that he wrote before, “Slowness” and “Identity”, are very different from what the public was used to, the style is more existentialist, less funny, there is less humour – that typical Czech humour – for which Kundera was so much appreciated. So I think he decided not to publish it in French, and we don’t have this book in the Czech language. And I think that is a little bit the same, because readers of Kundera prefer his first books. They don’t like his recent books so much, which they find very French and different from the Czech mentality. It’s true that he has changed his style and I think that he changed in his mentality too by living in France for a long time.”
Here’s a short piece about Gustaf. He’s the Swedish businessman boyfriend, who comes with Irena, and he isn’t burdened by this knowledge of Prague, so he approaches it differently:
“Sleepy and unkempt during the Communist period, Prague came awake before his eyes: it filled up with tourists, lit up with new shops and restaurants, dressed up with restored and repainted baroque houses. “Prague is my town!” he would exclaim in English. He was in love with the city: not like a patriot searching every corner of the land for his roots, his memories, the traces of his dead, but like a traveler responding with surprise and amazement, like a child wandering dazzled through an amusement park and reluctant ever to leave it.”
Even though Gustaf might be kept at bay from authentic Prague, he’s the only one who seems to have a future in Prague with his girlfriend’s mother – bizarrely enough – but maybe less so if you look at the way that Kundera deals with women characers. I find this a very difficult aspect of his work, although it isn’t dominant in this book.
“I think it’s very difficult to find a good, interesting woman character in Kundera’s books, and there are more interesting male characters we can find [laughs].
So, if you’re looking for strong, interesting women characters, “Ignorance” isn’t the book for you, but if you’re looking for very sensitive, interesting, memorable reflections on exile and memory. I’ll end with a very short description of Irena’s pleasure in Prague:
“Seen from where she is strolling, Prague is a broad green swathe of peaceable neighborhoods with narrow tree-lined streets. This is the Prague she loves, not the sumptuous one downtown; the Prague boom at the turn of the previous century, the Prague of the Czech lower middle class, the Prague of her childhood, where in wintertime she would ski up and down the hilly little lanes, the Prague where at dusk the encircling forests would steal into town to spread their fragrance.
Dreamily she walks on; for a few seconds she catches a glimpse of Paris, which for the first time she feels has something hostile about it: chilly geometry of the avenues; pridefulness of the Champs-Elysées; stern countenances of the giant stone women representing Equality or Fraternity; and nowhere, nowhere, a single touch of this kindly intimacy, a single whiff of this idyll she inhales here. In fact, throughout all her years as an émigré, this is the picture she has harbored as the emblem of her lost country: little houses in gardens stretching away out of sight over rolling land. She felt happy in Paris, happier than here, but only Prague held her by a secret bond of beauty. She suddenly understands how much she loves this city and how painful her departure from it must have been.”
Dreamily she walks on; for a few seconds she catches a glimpse of Paris, which for the first time she feels has something hostile about it: chilly geometry of the avenues; pridefulness of the Champs-Elysées; stern countenances of the giant stone women representing Equality or Fraternity; and nowhere, nowhere, a single touch of this kindly intimacy, a single whiff of this idyll she inhales here. In fact, throughout all her years as an émigré, this is the picture she has harbored as the emblem of her lost country: little houses in gardens stretching away out of sight over rolling land. She felt happy in Paris, happier than here, but only Prague held her by a secret bond of beauty. She suddenly understands how much she loves this city and how painful her departure from it must have been.”
Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance”, translated from the French by Linda Asher, is published by Faber and Faber.
World-renowned Czech novelist Milan Kundera celebrates 75th birthday
April 1st marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the best known contemporary Czech novelist in the world, Milan Kundera. Rather surprisingly, the author – who has visited the country on only a couple of occasions since the Velvet Revolution – is less popular in the Czech Republic than he is elsewhere. But why isn’t Kundera held in high regard in the country of his birth?
“Milan Kundera is admired in most parts of the Euro-Atlantic world at least as an international author. But he has some problems with his domestic readership and with critics, too.”
Literature professor Tomas Vrba on author Milan Kundera, who is 75 years old today. Perhaps the best known contemporary Czech novelist in the world, Kundera was born in Brno in 1929. His first novel The Joke came out in 1967 and was made into a film the following year. However, following the crushing of the Prague Spring – of which the author was a passionate advocate – Kundera lost his teaching post at the FAMU film school. In 1975 he emigrated to France, where he lives to this day.
Given his international reputation, it is perhaps surprising how little affection the author is held in here in the Czech Republic. Writer Iva Pekarkova.
“Milan Kundera, who I think in fact opened the doors to so many other Czech writers to the English and world readers community, once said some place ‘I don’t feel like a Czech person, I feel like a European’. And this was it – the nation hated him for I don’t know how long, twenty years. It’s still there, it still goes with him wherever he goes.”
There are other reasons why Kundera is not as popular in the Czech Republic as he is elsewhere. One is that – unlike many exiled writers – he did not allow his work to circulate in underground, samizdat form during the Communist era. Tomas Vrba says, however, that the author was acting on artistic principle.
“I’d say that from the very beginning he was trying to master the language and writing in such a perfectionist way that he really couldn’t imagine that his texts might be published without his direct supervision. Yes, he gave permission to Josef Skvorecky’s publishing house in Toronto, 68 Publishers, and if I’m not wrong two or three of his novels were published there, but later he expressed his reservations about the editorial work.”
But perhaps what rankles most with the Czech literary establishment is that Milan Kundera has not been accommodating to his current Czech publishers, and also effectively blocks the translation of more recent novels such as Immortality and Ignorance from French, the language he now writes in. Tomas Vrba again.
“Surprisingly enough, the Czech readership is the only readership in the world which is not allowed to read the latest novels and essays. And the situation became even more difficult when he stopped writing in Czech and only writes in French. He once declared that it’s out of the question to ask anybody else to prepare Czech translations.”
Despite world renown Milan Kundera’s relations with native country difficult
Milan KunderaThere is no doubt that – in world terms – the best-known contemporary Czech author is Milan Kundera, with books like The Joke, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality placing him among the most important authors of the late 20th century. In the Czech Republic, however, it is a different story: his earlier books (written in Czech) are often hard or impossible to find while his more recent works (written in French after he moved to France in 1975) have simply never been translated into Kundera’s native Czech. What’s more, the Brno-born author has almost nothing to do with his native country, visiting rarely and even in disguise. To find out why Milan Kundera is not a popular writer here I spoke to Tomas Vrba, who teaches Czech literature at New York University in Prague and began by asking how the author is viewed by the Czech literary establishment.
“Milan Kundera is admired in most parts of the Euro-Atlantic world at least as an international author but he has some problems with his domestic readership and with critics too. Surprisingly enough the Czech readership is the only one readership in the world not allowed to read the latest novels and books of essays Milan Kundera has published. And the situation became even more difficult when he stopped writing in Czech and only writes in French. He once declared that it’s out of the question to ask anybody else to prepare Czech translations. So he is a little bit too jealous perhaps for every word he writes. And he is not on the best terms with local critics and that’s why he is not willing to take the role of the translator himself.”
So he’s essentially blocking the publication of his own works in Czech?
“That’s the problem and even his collected works published by the Brno-based writers’ co-operative, the Atlantis publishing house, have some problems because the author insisted on publishing his work in chronological order. And he revisited most of his older works written in Czech, creating new versions, and he made one exception with Immortality. It was published out of this chronological order, but after that nothing appeared.”
What is the source, would you say, of the conflict between him and the Czech literary establishment?
“I’d say that there are a series of reasons. One, they think that from the beginning of what we call here the samizdat era…Milan Kundera never gave permission for his manuscripts to be circulated in type-written version, unlike other leading Czech authors.”
Do you know why not?
“I’d say that he was from the very beginning trying to master the language and writing in such a perfectionist way that he really couldn’t imagine that his texts might be published without his direct supervision. And that was also the case for his publications in exile. Yes he gave permission to Josef Skvorecky’s 68 Publishers in Toronto, and if I’m not wrong two or three of his novels were published there, but later he expressed his reservations about the editorial work.”
The samizdat era is long over now – why do you think even now he doesn’t want to have any contact with this country, or seems to have such minimal contact with this country?
“There are some theories that maybe a long time ago he had some – it was not conflict actually, it was a vivid debate – with Vaclav Havel and it’s generally known that the two big Czechs never went to normal communication after that. My personal conviction is that at the moment he stopped using the Czech language as his artistic tool and thus decided to be a universal author he forbid himself from trying to renew the ties that he had with his motherland in the past.”
You mentioned the debate between him and Havel – was that debate essentially about different attitudes to history and politics?
“Actually it was a larger, more general framework. It was a debate about the nature of the Czech nation and its role in Europe and in the cultural world. But very soon the debate became much more political and while Kundera was convinced that one day the Prague Spring would be considered as a historical event, as an heroic attempt – however unsuccessful – to form a new society, Vaclav Havel was opposed, saying that the Prague Spring was just an attempt of those who were actually also responsible for the tragic 20 years after the Communist coup in ’48. It was an attempt just to improve a little bit but sufficiently and not to improve substantial things.”
Was it the case that Kundera believed history was something which happened to people and was kind of a big joke, so to speak, and basically people couldn’t act, people couldn’t do anything, people couldn’t really resist, whereas Havel believed the individual must act?
“Yes and you can have a series of good arguments for both parties.”
Do you think Czech readers are missing something in not having the latest Kundera novels in Czech?
“For sure, because whether we like him or not Kundera ranks among the most important authors of the end of the 20th century, not only in Europe but elsewhere also, and he should be read. I try to respect his decision. It’s the author’s right to decide that he will insist on chronological order and he will insist on having the authorised Czech texts of his latest works. But on the other hand when deciding that he had to accept the risk that he would lose his popularity and that is what’s happening. He is not generally perceived as a popular Czech author.”
haha….trai dat tron`….heheh…guess who???:P