Milan Kundera: how you say “grudge” in Czech
Milan Kundera in Paris in 1975, shortly after immigrating there
He was born in Czechoslovakia, wrote his greatest books — including The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being – in Czech, and didn’t leave the country until he was 46, but Milan Kundera has once again publicly insisted that he’s French. Or, as an Agence France Presse wire report has put it — with hardly any sign of glee: “Czech-born writer Milan Kundera turned his back on his homeland once again when he failed to show up at a major conference on his work this weekend in his southern home city of Brno.”
AFP’s Sophi Pons reports that “Kundera sent good-humoured thanks for the ‘necrophile party’ in a letter to the organisers of the three-day event, which drew scholars and translators from as far away as Chicago, Paris, Reykjavik, Rome and Warsaw.” However, Kundera insisted in the “thanks” that he ”sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores.”
Why is Kundera so upset at his native land? MobyLives has noted his anger before. Pons offers no theories, although she does mention the only time Kundera has deigned to speak to the Czech press was last year, “when a Czech magazine accused him of being a police informer under communist rule.” Which might explain why he’s not going to the conference now … but what about all that silence from now back to when Kundera first immigrated to France … in 1975?
The world would be a better place if we all stopped acknowledging the existence of this second-rate snitch/ third-rate hack. The only thing more laughable than considering his “work” “literature” is his insistence that it is “French literature” Please. It’s demeaning that truly great artists like Perec and Queneau have to weather this hack’s attempts to yoke himself to their wagon.
The Czechs don’t have a word for ‘grudge’ any more than the Eskimos have a word for ’snow.’
Czecho is a very small, somewhat dick-headed country, too small for someone like Kundera. If he’d stayed he would have had every grubby nomenklaturoid trying to bring him down and they most certainly would have. There, artistic acclaim is reserved for a small coterie and their friends and offspring. Prague has no patience for outsider artists. Nevertheless, I love that country and Prague will ever be my home. Brendan McNally, Dallas,
Author of GERMANIA, a Novel
Kundera FTW.
However “The Joke” and “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” are not his best!