Milan Kundera

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Milan Kundera 1980

Milan Kundera ( pronunciation : [ ˈmɪˌlan ˈkunˌdɛra ], born April 1, 1929 in Brno , Czechoslovakia ) is a Czech-French writer and university professor. He became known through the prose work The Book of ridiculous love (1969). His most commercially successful book is The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). Kundera has been writing in French since 1993.

During his academic career, he mainly worked at the elite university École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris .

life and work

Czechoslovakia

Milan Kundera was born in 1929 in a middle-class environment in the Moravian city ​​of Brno in the young Czechoslovakia . His father Ludvík Kundera , one of Leoš Janáček's students , was a pianist, musicologist and later rector of the Brno University of Music (1948 to 1961). His cousin was the Czech poet and writer Ludvík Kundera .

Milan Kundera learned to play the piano at an early age. Music runs through his entire work as a motif and structural element. In 1945, while still a high school student, he translated a poem by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky , which was published in the magazine Gong . Probably under the influence of his cousin, he wrote his first own lyrical works; one of them was published in 1946 in the magazine Mladé archy .

After the end of the Second World War , Kundera was initially a worker and jazz musician. In 1948 he graduated from high school, joined the communist party like many of his contemporaries and began to study music and literature at Charles University in Prague . After two trimesters he moved to the film academy, where he majored in directing and screenwriting. Around 1950 he and another author, Jan Trefulka , were expelled from the same for "machinations against the party" and Kundera had to interrupt his studies for two years. In 1967 Kundera was re-accepted into the party, and in 1970 he was finally excluded.

After completing his studies, Kundera worked as a lecturer in world literature at the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague . In his 1953 debut volume of poetry, Der Mensch: Ein Weit Garten ( Člověk zahrada širá ), he critically examines the doctrine of socialist realism , which is also official in Czechoslovakia - but from a convinced communist basic perspective. The poem Last May ( Poslední máj ), which Kundera wrote in 1955, is a consistently system-compliant homage to the Czech anti-fascist and freedom fighter Julius Fučík . Another basic motif of Kundera is also present in this work: the culture of the Moravian people is used as a symbol for national values ​​and patriotism.

In the volume of poetry Monologe from 1957 Kundera moves away from politics and places an emphasis on interpersonal relationships. The volume reads like a collection full of intellectually inspired love poems.

Like many other artists, Kundera was still fairly adapted in the 1950s and early 1960s; today he claims the right not to have works from this period translated or published.

He has published widely acclaimed essays on avant-garde poetry for various literary magazines, including Literární noviny and Listy . It was not until the fourth Czech writers' congress in 1967 that Kundera, like most of the others of his generation, represented a turning point in Czech cultural life and a milestone in the development of the Prague Spring . Kundera also became one of the “figureheads” of this movement rebelled against the political system and demanded artistic freedom.

The joke and the first of a series ofstories publishedlater in the book of ridiculous love ( Směšné lásky , written from 1958, published 1963, 1965 and 1968) express Kundera's growing criticism of the conditions in communist Czechoslovakia. Here, as in many of his subsequent works, he describes the conflict between the individual and his private wishes and hopes on the one hand and a regime that, in a totalitarian way, had set itself the goal of combating precisely that individuality. Last but not least, these novels are in this respect also an examination of Kundera's own biography; The joke, for example, is obviously inspired by Kundera's expulsion from the communist party. The book of ridiculous love was later described by Kundera as his first "adult" work. By telling of interpersonal relationships in the seven short stories, he simultaneously exposes concepts such as truth and lies, credibility and deception.

The invasion of Soviet troops and the end of the Prague Spring also ended the period of freedom of the press and freedom of culture in Czechoslovakia. The Stalinism returned in pure form. Kundera's teaching at the film school was discontinued, his books removed from libraries and no longer published. In Life is elsewhere ( Život je jinde , 1969/1970) and Farewell Waltz ( Valčík na rozloučenou , 1970/1971) Kundera reckons with his communist past. The book Farewell Waltz , which was initially titled Epilogue , he saw at the time as his last novel. Since he has meanwhile become a persona non grata in Czech cultural life and publication in his homeland was out of the question, both books were written regardless of censorship and politics.

In 1978 Milan Kundera took a lectureship at the elite university Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris on

France

The two works were his last in Czechoslovakia. In 1975 he was appointed lecturer at the University of Rennes and then went to France with his wife Věra Hrabánková. In 1978 he moved to Paris and took a lectureship at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales . The regime, which otherwise kept the borders tight , did not prevent him from doing so.

His novel The Book of Laughing and Forgetting ( Kniha smíchu a zapomnění ), published in 1978 , a renewed critical examination of communism and his own communist past, led to his citizenship being withdrawn from the ČSSR. As a result, Kundera took French citizenship in 1981. He received his citizenship back in November 2019 and has been a Czech citizen since then.

In 1984 the novel came out that made him internationally known: The unbearable lightness of being ( Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí ). This also takes place in communist Czechoslovakia; Central here are philosophical considerations u. a. about love and communism.

The 1990 novel Immortality ( Nesmrtelnost ) has for the first time no Czech characters and locations; For the time being it is regarded as Kundera's most “French” novel. This and the novel Die Langsamkeit ( La lenteur ) that followed in 1995 , Kundera's first in French, consistently contain criticism of Western European civilization at the end of the 20th century and denounce artificiality, technocracy and inhumanity.

Kundera's second novel, written in French, The Identity ( L'Identité , 1995, published 1998), like The Slowness, is a romance novel that highlights the value of love in a hostile and primitive modern world.

The third work in his so-called “French” cycle is the novel Die Unwissenheit ( L'ignorance ), written in 2000 . He tells of the misunderstandings and paradoxes of love and the impossibility of going back to your roots.

Kundera has been a member of the editorial board of the Gallimard publishing house in Paris since 1991 . He lives very secluded with his wife in Paris and reveals little of his private life. Since 1985 he has only given written interviews because he often felt that he was misquoted. He also always has translations of his novels checked and revised. The “French novels” are not available in Czech.

He has been an external honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1986 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2002 .

The résumé on the blurb of his last novels is limited to two sentences: “Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia. He has lived in France since 1975. "

Suspicions

In October 2008, the historian Adam Hradilek from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes submitted documents to the Czech cultural magazine Reflex , which are supposed to prove that the then 20-year-old Kundera in 1950 a 22-year-old anti-communist activist, Miroslav Dvořáček, with the police has indicated. At that time he was sentenced to 22 years in prison, of which he spent fourteen years as a slave laborer in uranium mining.

The reports sparked an extensive debate in the feature sections. Kundera spoke after the allegations of a "suspiciously perfectly prepared assassination attempt" and said: "I am completely taken by surprise by something that I did not expect, of which I did not even know anything yesterday and that did not happen." The fact that the protocol was not signed by him, but only by an officer of the secret police, said Kundera: "I don't know whether someone else was hiding behind my name." Later the literary historian Zdeněk Pešat spoke up and said, that another (Pešat's then colleague Miroslav Dlask) should have betrayed Miroslav Dvořáček to the secret police.

György Dalos promoted a differentiated view of the processes in a post on Friday in 2008 . At the end of October 2009, the Lidové noviny newspaper reported that the authenticity of the police protocol from 1950 published in 2008 had been proven. However, it is still unclear whether Kundera himself filed the complaint. He himself did not submit any further comments. For Andreas Breitenstein , the title of the late novel The Festival of Insignificance is a “defiant, scornful commentary” on this affair. In addition, in 2015 he criticized the belittling of Stalin as a growing "indifference" to Stalinism, which Kundera once dismantled in a joke .

Awards and honors

Fonts (selection)

Novels, short stories

  • The book of ridiculous love ( Směšné lásky , published in three parts in 1963, 1965 and 1968; published as a book in 1970)
  • The joke ( Žert , 1965/67)
  • Life is elsewhere ( Život je jinde , 1969/70)
  • Farewell Waltz ( Valčík na rozloučenou , 1970/71). Gallimard, Paris 1976, La valse aux adieux . Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-38315-9 .
  • The book about laughing and forgetting ( Kniha smíchu a zapomnění , 1978). Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-39037-6 .
  • The unbearable lightness of being ( Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí , 1984)
  • Immortality ( Nesmrtelnost , 1990)
  • Slowness ( La lenteur , 1995)
  • Identity ( L'Identité , 1995, published 1998)
  • Ignorance ( L'ignorance , 2000)
  • The festival of insignificance ( La Fête de l'insignifiance , 2014). Carl Hanser, Munich 2015, ISBN 3-446-24763-7 .

Poems

  • Man: Another Garden ( Člověk zahrada širá , 1953)
  • Monologues ( Monologues , 1957)

theatre

  • Jacques and his master: Homage to Denis Diderot in three acts , German 2003 ( Jakub a jeho pán: Pocta Denisu Diderotovi , 1981)

Essays

  • The art of the novel (original title L'Art du Roman 1986, translated by Brigitte Weidmann) Hanser, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-446-14858-2 ; newly translated by Uli Aumüller 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20926-8 .
  • Legacies Betrayed , 1994 ( Les Testaments trahis , 1993)
  • The Tragedy of Central Europe , 1984 ( Un occident kidnappé ), 1983
  • The curtain German 2005 ( Le rideau , 2005)
  • An encounter (translated by Uli Aumüller), Hanser, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23555-7 (Milan Kundera: The double spirit of 1968 About the two great springs and the Škvoreckýs . NZZ of January 29, 2011 )
  • The Czech lot. The critical mind - Or of peoples large and small in the world. In: Lettre International , LI 80, Spring 2008, pp. 42–44. (first in Literární Listy 7-8 of December 19, 1968)
  • Errors, hopes. About real criticism, radicalism and moral exhibitionism. In: Lettre International , LI 80, spring 2008, pp. 47-49 (first in Host do Domu 15 of September 9, 1969)

Literature (selection)

Film adaptations

Dramatizations

Web links

Commons : Milan Kundera  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kundera - L'intransigeant amoureux de la France , L'Express , viewed June 1, 2011
  2. ↑ January Čulík: Man, a wide garden: Milan Kundera as a young Stalinist. University of Glasgow, 2007, ISSN  1644-4302 - as PDF
  3. ^ Jan Rovenský: Milan Kundera má po 40 letech opět české občanství. In: Novinky.cz. December 3, 2019, accessed December 17, 2019 (Czech).
  4. ↑ Discoverer of the unknown sides of human existence. “Calendar sheet” on the occasion of Kundera's 85th birthday, on Deutschlandradio Kultur on April 1, 2014, accessed April 1, 2014.
  5. ↑ Milan Kundera: Why I don't give interviews . In: The time . No. 45 , November 2, 1990, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 5, 2019] from the French by Susanna Roth).
  6. ↑ Honorary Members: Milan Kundera. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 13, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 13, 2008, p. 3
  8. ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz, Prague: The "Kundera" case: What happened on March 14, 1950? October 15, 2008, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed June 5, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Hans-Jörg Schmidt: Accidental discovery of files - The shameful betrayal of Milan Kundera In: Die Welt , October 13, 2008. Secret police protocol: Dispute over suspected spies against Milan Kundera. on Spiegel Online , October 14, 2008.
  10. ↑ Barbara Bindasová: Kundera - guilty or innocent? Prague Daily Monitor , October 17, 2008.
  11. ↑ K. Brill: Milan Kundera partially exonerated . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2010, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on June 5, 2019]).
  12. ↑ György Dalos: What does revealed mean? In: Friday. October 23, 2010, accessed on June 5, 2019 (republished in Eurozine on October 24, 2008).
  13. ^ Repression or Jealousy: A New Document on the Milan Kundera Spy Case. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 23, 2009. New allegations against Milan Kundera - The suspicion of spies against the writer Milan Kundera (“The unbearable lightness of being”) has been nourished in the Czech Republic. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 22, 2009. Lidové noviny continues to try to denigrate Milan Kundera (in Czech: Lidové noviny se dál snaží špinit Milana Kunderu ), Jan Čulík, October 21, 2009.
  14. ^ Andreas Breitenstein : Book of Rigidity. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from February 22, 2015.
  15. ↑ radio.cz/de: Milan Kundera receives State Prize for Literature
  16. ↑ radio.cz: Milan Kundera receives the 2007 Czech State Prize for Literature
personal data
SURNAME Kundera, Milan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech-French writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno , Czechoslovakia