Writer Milan Kundera has passed away

The writer has two homelands Milan KunderaWho passed away at the age of 94. The first was there cz, where he was born in 1929: a land that became unlivable for him after the Soviet invasion that crushed in 1968 the generous experiment of “socialism with a human face” attempted by Aleksandr Dubcek. Then she came France, where he moved in 1975 and settled down to adopting the language to write his books, starting in the 1990s. In some ways this dualism also applies to his works, now published in Italy by Adelphi: A polished heir to the great Central European literaturewhich he was able to take up and paraphrase such themes as the feeling of instability and randomness in the human condition, however, Kundera was also The spirit of the Enlightenment writer of the eighteenth century (he was a big fan of Denis Diderot), very skilled at weaving deep philosophical reflections into a story, even if never pretentious, and knew how to create plots capable of hooking the reader to the pages with a narrative talent befitting great French names of the nineteenth century, such as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo.

From this latter point of view, his first novels are undoubtedly more important: the joke (1967), life elsewhere (1969), farewell waltz (1972). Witty works for how to stage The futility of every human project and the divergence of views among individuals Through the well-structured rhythm of events in which the characters are immersed, in a succession of misunderstandings and fading illusions, with various twists and turns. On the other hand, the aspect of reflection clearly prevails in the bestseller of 1984 The unbearable lightness of being, by far Kundera’s most famous book. Here the plot goes smoothly, somewhat linearly, however The author etches on psychological introspectionwith moments of intense pain and frequent diversions in the political, social and philosophical spheres, calling into question Parmenides, Ludwig van Beethoven, Friedrich Nietzsche. An example of the “little dictionary of misunderstood words” is in the middle of the novel.

Kundera was born on April 1, 1929, in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, the capital of the Moravia region. Milan’s father, Ludwik Kundera, was a well-known pianist and director of the local musical academy: there is ample evidence of this in his son’s works, where we sometimes find staffs of sheet music. Young Kundera, a student at the stage when the Communists seized power, had joined the party in 1948, but was expelled in 1950 for some. Criticisms targeting the cultural line of the Stalinist imprint. The document, brought to light in 2008, according to which Kundera reported to the police about the secret presence in the university dormitory of Miroslav Dvorachek, a Czechoslovak army deserter, dating back to the same year, who was thus arrested and sentenced to forced labour. . The writer has always denied that he carried out this conviction, and certainly did not know the victim, but suspicions were not dispelled, even if the incident should have been properly framed in the Cold War climate of suspicion and fear.

In 1956, with the de-Stalinization, Kundera was returned to the ranks of the Communists. He had already started writing poetry, and then moved on to stories. After even working as a labourer, he found a teaching position at the Prague Institute for Higher Film Studies. It was published in 1967 the joke (Mondadori, 1969), which was also a courageous denunciation of the poisons inoculated into society by the oppressive narrow-mindedness of Stalin’s communism. Awarded the Czech Writers’ Union Prize for his novel, which was followed by a collection of short stories silly likes (Mondadori, 1973), Kundera YuOne of the symbols of the Prague Spring and then turned it into a goal of “normalization” after the Soviet invasion in August 1968. He was expelled from the party again in 1970, lost his job, and had his books withdrawn from trade and bookstores. He earned from vivere writing under a pseudonym With the help of less exposed friends, he also compiled horoscopes for a youth magazine. The novel was published in France in 1973 life elsewhere (Mondadori, 1976) Harsher in He laughed at the stupidity of communist totalitarianism Through the tragic and grotesque figure of the protagonist Yarumil, he cemented Kundera’s fame in the West and put him in an even worse light with the authorities of his country, who preferred to get rid of him by allowing him to emigrate. Thus, the writer arrived at the University of Rennes in 1975 and moved to Paris in 1979Always accompanied by his wife, Vera Hrabankova.

In 1976 his book Lee was publishedThe farewell waltz (Pompiani, 1977) A kind of farce with a tragic ending, with few political implications, but Full of questions about the fate of mankindStarting with the burning issue of paternity. Then came 1979 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (bompiani), Hard to digest for the rulers of Prague, who deprived Kundera of Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1981, President François Mitterrand awarded him the French Prize. And later, the Czech-born writer had the rare honor of entering it alive Among the authors of the prestigious Pléiade series.

However, there is no doubt that the common people, especially the Italians, have begun to love Kundera The unbearable lightness of being (Adelphi, 1985), of which he was the main reason The constant aspiration of frustration to free himself from the restrictions that impose his existence on him, but it contained other piercing observations, more topical every day. Criticism of political kitsch as “dictatorship of the heart” is very sharp, the artificial removal of everything that seems unpleasant in real life: the narcissistic self-portraits of some of our leaders are a good example. And the pages on the Left Intellectuals group about the infantile notion of history as a “great march” toward progress and universal brotherhood are incomparable.

As a reticent personality, Kundera was not associated with the Czech opposition abroad“What unites these people is their defeat and the reprimands they direct to each other,” notes the painter Sabina inThe unbearable lightness of being. Nor did the fall of communism bring him closer to his homeland: until now he considered himself French, although in 2009 he accepted honorary citizenship of Brno. He also blamed the WestIn his first publications in French, slowness (Adelphi, 1995) It targeted the frenzy prevailing in capitalist countries. If a head-on collision with Soviet despotism had taught him to distrust utopias, he was well aware of how painful reality is everywhere: “The novel—we read it in Kundera’s most famous book—is not an author’s confession, but an exploration of what human life is like in the trap into which the world has become. “. However, he was repelled by the idea of ​​an intellectual preacher, who set himself up as supreme judge. He preferred to ask questions in a sarcastic way: “My life’s ambition – Kundera admitted – is to unite the seriousness of the questions with the lightness of the form.” Perhaps no one in our time has succeeded so effectively.