2023-07-12 14:39:06
“He felt that he was old and that he had no desire for anything other than a little peace and tranquility,” perhaps this phrase, on the lips of one of his characters, embodied the last rites of the life of the most famous writer produced by the Czech Republic in its modern history.
Milan Kundera passed away, leaving behind him the glory of an “unbearable lightness”, without touching the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he lost in the opinion of many, but without underestimating him, as one of the most famous novelists the world has known during the past century.
Yesterday, Tuesday, Kundera was absent on a quiet summer evening before extinguishing the candle of his ninety-fifth birthday, preferring to spend the last days of his life in Paris, in which he lived for more than five decades without returning to Prague, and enjoying the freedom of its “spring”, whose events he immortalized in his most beautiful novels. Absolutely an “unbearable lightness being”.
Before that, the author of the novel “The Joke”, in which he scathingly criticized the repression and totalitarianism of the communist regime imposed by the Soviet Union on its people following World War II, was born in Brno, Czech Republic.
Kundera lived five decades in Paris and spent his last days there
In 1975, he decided to travel to France following he was persecuted because of his criticism of the Soviet invasion of what was known as the Republic of Czechoslovakia, which large segments of its people revolted in what was known as the “Prague Spring” uprising in 1968, which called for democratic reforms.
According to Archyde.com, Kundera rarely accepted media interviews, emphasizing that novelists should only speak through their work.
It seems that there was a “tough love” relationship that remained between the veteran novelist and his homeland until the last moments of his life, as he preferred to continue in his voluntary exile without deciding to return.
Kundera’s first “joke” novel was published in 1967, in which he criticized the ruling Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, although he was still a member of it at the time.
However, the Czech Prime Minister, Peter Viala, mourned him, saying that “Milan Kundera was a writer who touched entire generations of readers on all continents, and won international fame … He left a distinctive prose style, not just prominent novels.”
Kundera won awards for his style of portraying the topics he deals with in his novels and the way he drew characters that varied between the mundane reality of daily life and the world of lofty ideas.
“The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting”
His most famous work, “An Unbearable Lightness of Being,” released in 1984, revolved around the events of the “Prague Spring” and what happened following it, before turning 4 years later into an epic movie starring the creative star, Daniel Day-Lewis, and directed by Philip Kaufman.
Speaking in 1980 to The New York Times, Kundera lamented that “the novel has no place” in the world, saying, “The totalitarian world…whether founded on Marx or Islam or something else, is a world of answers, not questions.”
He continued, “It seems to me that people all over the world at present prefer to judge rather than understand, and to ask answers than to ask questions, so that the voice of the novel is hard to hear compared to the roaring din of the folly of human certainty.”
In his farewell, the British novelist, Salman Rushdie, told the newspaper:GuardianLondon: “Like all great writers, Milan Kundera left indelible marks on readers’ imaginations.”
He added, “(Man’s struggle once morest power is the struggle of memory once morest oblivion).. Since I read this sentence in his book (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting), it has become entrenched in my conscience, and has illuminated the light (..) so that I understand what is happening in all parts of the world.” .
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