It is often said that the true value of great works is only realized decades later. that’s what’s going on “A Missed West”article written in 1983 by milan kundera (Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1 April 1929). In it, the author, who has been in exile in France since 1975, warned as a hunch that Russia was intimidating the rest of Europe, particularly Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, which he referred to as the “small nations” of Central Europe.
It’s hard not to see this short—but 42-page—but explanatory article, recently published in Spain after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, almost prophetic. “The tragedy of a kidnapped Western or Central Europe” was published 40 years ago now in “Le Débat”. Publishes in Spanish along with Tusquets. “Literature and small nations”Kundera’s bold speech at the Czechoslovak Writers’ Congress in 1967, just before the Prague Spring.
The connection between the two texts separated by 16 years is obvious. In 1967, the author “Joke” He begins by stating that the Czech nation at that time under the Soviet yoke did not feel its own existence as proof because of its “very happy and uninterrupted” history of “going through the death waiting room”. It is one of those small Central European countries “with no defense other than the strength of their culture, their personality and the inimitable qualities of their contributions”.
In 1983, from his exile in France and those small countries – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania… – still under the Soviet yoke, he is overflowing with this idea. “A Missed West” begins with a powerful image of the Hungarian press agency manager sending a desperate message by telex before the Russian offensive in Budapest in September 1956: “We will die for Hungary and Europe”. For Kundera, this sentence was unthinkable in Moscow or Leningrad, but it could have been in Budapest or Warsaw. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic are nations rooted in Roman Christianity in parts of Europe. For them, Europe is not a geographical concept, but a spiritual concept synonymous with the “West”.
In Western Europe, these nations were then perceived as part of a monolithic Eastern bloc, but Kundera distinguishes between countries affiliated with the ancient Roman and Catholic Church, retaining the Latin alphabet, and other countries “anchored in them.” Byzantium and in the Orthodox Church with its distinctive Cyrillic alphabet”. “Bulgaria has been a part of Eastern civilization since its inception, thanks to its Orthodox religion,” he says.
While denouncing communism that “deprives nations of their essence”, he warns of Russia’s “imperial dreams” and cites as an example Poland, which has been under the yoke of Russia for two centuries, with the exception of a brief interwar period. a processRussification patient as relentless”.
He adds that Central Europe loves diversity, while Russia exhibits a historical monopolizing and centralizing trend that “with terrible determination” turned all the nations of its empire into a single Russian people. It refers to Belarus, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania and of course Ukraine, among other countries. For Kundera, communism is ultimately both a denial of Russian history, because it denies its piety and its culmination: “The culmination of centralizing tendencies and imperial dreams”To underline.
It would be very interesting to interview Milan Kundera right now and have him say something like “I told you so”, but it’s an impossible task. As you know very well in your own country, you decided long ago to retreat and stay away from the media at all costs.
The fact that he has banned any film adaptation of his works also contributes to the fact that his figure is on the verge of oblivion. He was probably not too pleased with the Unbearable Lightness of Being, which he directed in 1987. Philip Kaufmann and in the lead role Daniel Day-Lewis And Juliette Binoche.
The Nobel Prize for Literature resisted him and failed to receive the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 2004, which he co-opted with Paul Auster and which the Italian writer eventually won. Claudio Magris. It would be a well-deserved tribute to this brilliant novelist and intellectual, one of his greatest literary references. cervantes and as a friend of the Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal, who also lives in Paris.