Milan Kundera and Me

The Prague Spring was in many ways an attempt by middle-aged men to explain away their enthusiastic support, as young communist intellectuals, for the terror regime at the beginning of the 1950s. Many thanks to Derek Sayer, Gérard-Daniel Cohen, Ruth Zylberman, Jan Čulík, and Eloïse Adde for their critical remarks on this text. Their constructive objections show that this debate will be worth pursuing in the future. With the reactions to Milan Kundera’s death in France and in the Czech Republic, I am experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance. Usually, French intellectuals pontificate on Central European literature and politics without understanding anything about Central Europe in general and about the Czech Republic in particular. This time, it is almost the opposite: not only have the French their own understanding and interpretation of Kundera’s life and death, but they are fully legitimate in it, as legitimate as the Czechs. Both parties are in any case quite unaware of the underlying issues and subtext on the other side. It is almost as if some French liked Kundera for the wrong reasons, and some Czechs disliked him for the wrong reasons, too. The first misunderstanding: what it means to be French

Napíšte Váš príspevok a nezabudnite zadať text z obrázku. Je to ochrana pred spamom. Upozornenie: Nevhodné, vulgárne a netoleratné príspevky budú vymazané!
Názov:
Meno:
Príspevok:
Kód z obrázku:
Pridať príspevok