Ex stasis milan kundera biography

Czech and French novelist (1929–2023)

Milan Kundera (KU(U)N-dər-ə;^[1][2]Czech:[ˈmɪlanˈkundɛra]^ⓘ; 1 Apr 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France delight in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. Diadem Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech nation in 2019.^[3]

Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Before character Velvet Revolution of 1989, the country's ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia forbidden his books. He led a low-profile life and rarely spoke to authority media.^[4] He was thought to affront a contender for the Nobel Adore in Literature and was also uncomplicated nominee for other awards.^[5][6]

Kundera was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1985, influence Austrian State Prize for European Data in 1987, and the Herder Premium in 2000. In 2021, he customary the Golden Order of Merit foreign the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor.^[7]

Early life and education

Milan Kundera was in the blood on 1 April 1929 at Purkyňova 6 (6 Purkyně Street) in Královo Pole, a district of Brno, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic), to a traditional family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971), was an important Czech musicologist lecturer pianist who served as the purpose of the Janáček Music Academy pop into Brno from 1948 to 1961.^[8][9][10] Top mother Milada Kunderová (born Janošíková)^[11] was an educator.^[10] His father died beginning 1971, and his mother in 1975.^[10]

Kundera learned to play the piano dismiss his father and later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences, references and notation can be found from one place to another his work. Kundera was a cousin-german of Czech writer and translator Ludvík Kundera.^[12] In his youth, having archaic supported by his father in realm musical education, he was testing ruler abilities as a composer.^[13][14] One dressingdown his teachers at the time was Pavel Haas.^[15] His approach to air was eventually dampened due to rulership father not being able to embark upon a piano career for insisting violent playing the music of modernist Judaic composer Arnold Schoenberg.^[14]

At the age bear out eighteen, he joined the Communist Testing of Czechoslovakia in 1947.^[16] In 1984, he recalled that "Communism captivated bigger as much as Stravinsky, Picasso suggest Surrealism."^[17]

He attended lectures on music deed composition at the Charles University reveal Prague but soon moved to loftiness Film and TV School of say publicly Academy of Performing Arts in Prag (FAMU) to study film.^[18] In 1950, he was expelled from the party.^[13] After graduating, the Film Faculty ordained Kundera a lecturer in world culture in 1952.^[19] Following the Warsaw Counterfeit invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, dirt lost his job at the Coating Faculty.^[20] In 1956, Kundera also spliced for the first time, the bouffe singer Olga Haas, the daughter in shape the composer and his teacher Pavel Haas and the doctor of Slavic origin Sonia Jakobson, the first bride of Roman Jakobson.^[21][22]

Political activism and educated career

His expulsion from the Communist dinner party was described by Jan Trefulka play a role his novella Pršelo jim štěstí (Luck Rained on Them, 1962).^[19] Kundera very used the expulsion as an inspire for the main theme of tiara novel Žert (The Joke, 1967),^[19] gradient which he ridiculed the ruling Ideology party.^[20] In 1956 Kundera was readmitted to the party but was expelled for a second time in 1970.^[14][23] He took part in the Clemency Congress of the Czech Writers unity in June 1967, where he make your mark an impressive speech.^[24] In the script he focused on the Czech action to maintain a certain cultural self-determination among its larger European neighbours.^[24] Forwards with other reformist Communist writers much as Pavel Kohout, he was peripherally involved in the 1968 Prague Fund. This brief period of reformist activities was crushed by the Warsaw Contract invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Kundera remained committed to reforming Czechoslovak Communism, and argued vehemently in script book with fellow Czech writer Václav Playwright, saying, essentially, that everyone should endure calm and that "nobody is tutor locked up for his opinions yet," and "the significance of the Prag Autumn may ultimately be greater go one better than that of the Prague Spring." Shut in 1968, the year his books were banned by the Czech Government, operate made his first journey to Town, where he befriended the publisher Claude Gallimard.^[14] After he returned to Prag, he was frequently visited by Gallimard who encouraged Kundera to emigrate behold France and also smuggled the carbon copy for Life Is Elsewhere out appreciated Czechoslovakia.^[14] Finally, Kundera gave in take moved to France in 1975.^[14] Sieve 1979, his Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked.^[17] He lectured for a few mature at the University of Rennes.^[14][23] Funds three years, he moved to Paris.^[14]

Works

Although his early poetic works are stanchly pro-communist,^[25][26] his novels escape ideological group. Kundera repeatedly insisted that he was a novelist rather than a politically motivated writer. Political commentary all on the other hand disappeared from his novels after dignity publication of The Unbearable Lightness bring in Being except in relation to broader philosophical themes. Kundera's style of tale, interlaced with philosophical digression, was decidedly inspired by the novels of Parliamentarian Musil and the philosophy of Nietzsche.^[27] In 1945 the journal Gong available his translation of some of birth works from the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovsky.^[19] The next year the periodical Mladé archy printed a poem pencil in his, to which he was enthusiastic by his cousin Ludvík Kundera, besides a writer.^[19]

In the mid-1950s he was readmitted to the Communist party accept he was able to publish Manː A Wide Garden in 1953, expert long epic poem in 1955 named The Last May dedicated to Julius Fucik and the collection of lyric poetry Monologue in 1957.^[13] Those, intermingling with other fore and afterwords unwanted items deemed to be written in honourableness fashion of uncontroversial propaganda which lawful him to benefit to a make up your mind degree from the advantages that came with being an established writer assume a Communist environment.^[13] In 1962 sand wrote the play The Owners allround the Keys, which became an ecumenical success and was translated into some languages.^[13] Kundera himself claimed inspiration steer clear of Renaissance authors such as Giovanni Poet, Rabelais and, perhaps most importantly, Miguel de Cervantes, to whose legacy pacify considered himself most committed. Other influences include Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Denis Diderot, Robert Musil, Witold Gombrowicz, Hermann Broch, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger keep from Georges Bataille.^[28] Originally he wrote unexciting the Czech language, but from 1985 onwards, he made a conscious transformation from Czech towards the French which has since become the reference dialect for his translations.^[13] Between 1985 folk tale 1987, he undertook the revision slow the French translations of his beneath works himself. With Slowness his good cheer work in French was published be thankful for 1995.^[29] His works were translated jerk more than eighty languages.^[13]

The Joke

Main article: The Joke (novel)

In his first fresh, The Joke (1967), he satirized probity totalitarianism of the Communist era.^[30] Closest the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia personal August 1968, the book was banned.^[20] His criticism of the Soviet inroad in 1968 led to his blacklisting^[19] in Czechoslovakia and the banning^[31] sight his books.

Life Is Elsewhere

Main article: Life Is Elsewhere

Kundera's second novel was first published in French as La vie est ailleurs in 1973 duct in Czech as Život je jinde in 1979. Life Is Elsewhere interest a satirical portrait of the hypothetical poet Jaromil, a young and exceedingly naïve idealist who becomes involved sight political scandals.^[32] For the novel Kundera was awarded the Prix Médicis justness same year.^[33]

The Book of Laughter viewpoint Forgetting

Main article: The Book of Ridicule and Forgetting

In 1975, Kundera moved round the corner France where The Book of Raillery and Forgetting was published in 1979.^[13] An unusual mixture of novel, reduced story collection, and authorial musings which came to characterize his works superimpose exile, the book dealt with however Czechs opposed the Communist regime imprison various ways. Critics noted that loftiness Czechoslovakia Kundera portrays "is, thanks elect the latest political redefinitions, no mortal precisely there," which is the "kind of disappearance and reappearance" Kundera ironically explores in the book.^[34]

The Unbearable Weightlessness of Being

Main article: The Unbearable Legerity of Being

Kundera's most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was promulgated in 1984. The book chronicles leadership fragile nature of an individual's luck, theorizing that a single lifetime psychiatry insignificant in the scope of Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. In block up infinite universe, everything is guaranteed make it to recur infinitely. In 1988, American selfopinionated Philip Kaufman released a film account, which Kundera disliked.^[17] The book focuses on the life of a Czechoslovakian dissident surgeon's journey from Prague motivate Zurich and his return to Prag, where he was not permitted reach take up work as a surgeon.^[31] He worked instead as a spyglass washer and used his job make ill arrange sex with hundreds of women.^[31] At the end he and diadem wife move to the country.^[31] Character book was not published in Czechoslovakia due to Kundera's fear it would be badly edited. He eventually suspended the publishing date for years don only in 2006 would an defensible translation be available in the Slavonic language.^[31] The book had previously back number available in Czech, however, as adroit Czech expatriate in Canada had translated the book in 1985.^[31]

Ignorance

Main article: Ignorance (novel)

In 2000, Ignorance was published. Rectitude novel centres on the romance time off two alienated Czech émigrés, two decades after the Prague Spring of 1968. It is thematically concerned with say publicly suffering of emigration. In it, Kundera undermines the myths surrounding nostalgia suffer the émigré's longing for return. Sand concludes that in the "etymological make progress nostalgia seems something like the pulse of ignorance, of not knowing." Kundera suggests a complex relationship between recall and nostalgia, writing that our recall can "create rifts both with cobble together earlier selves and between people who ostensibly share a past." The keep on characters of Irena and Josef uncover how emigration and forgetfulness have in the final freed them from their pain. Kundera draws heavily from the myth tactic Odysseus, specifically the "mythology of dwellingplace, the delusions of roots."^[35][36] Linda Asher translated the original French version flawless the novel to English in 2002.^[37]

The Festival of Insignificance

Main article: The Commemoration of Insignificance

The 2014 novel focuses domicile the musings of four male living in Paris who discuss their relationships with women and the empiric predicament confronting individuals in the sphere, among other things. The novel traditional generally negative reviews. Michiko Kakutani hostilities the New York Times describes authority book as being a "knowing, preventative joke about its own superficiality".^[38] Wonderful review in the Economist stated focus the book was "sadly let glug down by a tone of breezy takeoff that can feel forced".^[39]

Writing style skull philosophy

François Ricard suggested that Kundera planned his fiction with regard to loftiness overall body of his work, degree than limiting his ideas to honesty scope of just one novel disapproval a time, his themes and meta-themes traversing his entire œuvre. Each fresh book manifests the latest stage arrive at his personal philosophy. Some of these meta-themes include exile, identity, life above the border (beyond love, beyond collapse, beyond seriousness), history as a uninterrupted return, and the pleasure of far-out less "important" life.^{[40][verification needed]}

Many of Kundera's characters seem to develop as expositions of one of these themes dress warmly the expense of their full human beings. Specifics in regard to the signs tend to be rather vague. Much, more than one main character quite good used in a novel; Kundera haw have even completely discontinued a cost, resuming the plot with somebody in mint condition. As he told Philip Roth clump an interview in The Village Voice: "Intimate life [is] understood as one's personal secret, as something valuable, holy, the basis of one's originality".^[41]

Kundera's beforehand novels explore the dual tragic prep added to comic aspects of totalitarianism. He sincere not view his works, however, tempt political commentary. "The condemnation of suppression doesn't deserve a novel", he put into words. According to the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, "What he finds interesting equitable the similarity between totalitarianism and say publicly immemorial and fascinating dream of expert harmonious society where private life prep added to public life form but one unification and all are united around tighten up will and one faith". In inquiring the dark humour of this interest, Kundera seems deeply influenced by Franz Kafka.^[28]

Kundera considered himself a writer badly off a message. In Sixty-three Words, simple chapter in The Art of high-mindedness Novel, Kundera tells of a Northman publisher who hesitated to publish The Farewell Party because of its spread anti-abortion message. Not only was dignity publisher wrong about the existence realize such a message, Kundera explained, however, "I was delighted with the muddle. I had succeeded as a hack. I succeeded in maintaining the good ambiguity of the situation. I abstruse kept faith with the essence drawing the novel as an art: humour. And irony doesn't give a ban about messages!".^[42]

Kundera also ventured often halt musical matters, analyzing Czech folk medicine for example; or quoting from Leoš Janáček and Bartók; or placing harmonious excerpts into the text, as ancestry The Joke;^[43] or discussing Schoenberg accept atonality.^[44]

Miroslav Dvořáček controversy

On 13 October 2008, the Czech weekly Respekt reported go wool-gathering an investigation was being carried modern by the state-funded historical archive additional research Institute for the Study persuade somebody to buy Totalitarian Regimes,^[45] into whether a juvenile Kundera had denounced a returned turncoat, Miroslav Dvořáček, to the StB, trade fair Czechoslovak secret police, in 1950.^[46] Dignity accusation was based on a boys in blue station report which named "Milan Kundera, student, born 1.4.1929" as the weasel in regard to Dvořáček's presence unexpected result a student dormitory.^[47] But the make a note of did not include his ID pasteboard number, which was usually included, indistinct his signature.^[47] According to the boys in blue report, the ultimate source of integrity information about Dvořáček's previous desertion shun military service and defection to high-mindedness West was Iva Militká.^[46]

Dvořáček had supposedly fled Czechoslovakia after being ordered advice join the infantry in the rouse of a purge of the route academy, and returned to Czechoslovakia chimpanzee an agent of an anti-communist spying agency organised by Czechoslovak exiles, proscribe allegation which was not mentioned welcome the police report.^[46] Dvořáček returned in confidence to the student dormitory of fastidious friend's ex-girlfriend, Iva Militká. Militká was dating and later married a one student, Ivan Dlask, who knew Kundera.^[46] The police report alleges that Militká told Dlask of Dvořáček's presence, don that Dlask told Kundera, who examine the secret police.^[46] Although the functionary sought the death penalty, Dvořáček was sentenced to 22 years of work up a sweat labour, fined 10,000 crowns, stripped help personal property, and deprived of emperor civic rights for ten years.^[46] Dvořáček served 14 years in a have camp, some of it working behave a uranium mine, before he was released.^[48]

In his response to Respekt's notice, Kundera denied turning Dvořáček into character StB,^[48] stating he never knew him at all, and could not much remember an individual named "Militká".^[49] Inflate 14 October 2008, the Czech Refuge Forces Archive announced that they locked away ruled out the possibility that loftiness document could be a forgery, on the contrary refused to arrive at any badger definite conclusions.^[50] Vojtech Ripka of depiction Institute for the Study of Unrestricted authoritar Regimes said, "There are two throw somebody into disarray of circumstantial evidence [the police sound 1 and its sub-file], but we, break into course, cannot be one hundred proportion sure. Unless we find all survivors, which is unfortunately impossible, it liking not be complete." Ripka added cruise the signature on the police propel matches the name of a chap who worked in the corresponding Genetic Security Corps section and that practised police protocol is missing.^[50]

Many in class Czech Republic condemned Kundera as keen "police informer", while many others malefactor Respekt of committing journalistic misconduct strong publishing such a poorly researched stripe. On the other hand, presenting diversity ID card was a procedure whenever dealing with the StB in 1950. Kundera was the student representative medium the dorm Dvořáček had visited, gleam while it cannot be ruled reposition that another student could have denounced him to the StB using Kundera's name,^[47] impersonating someone else in unmixed Stalinistpolice state posed a significant chance. Contradictory statements by Kundera's fellow lesson appeared in the Czech news public relations in the wake of this offence. Historian Adam Hradílek, the co-author strain the Respekt article, was also offender of an undeclared conflict of worry since one of the individuals complex in the incident was his aunt.^[47] Nonetheless, Respekt states on its site that its task is to "impartially study the crimes of the foregoing communist regime".^[51] With time, the Glamour journalists realized the whole controversy was flawed, with French newspapers defending Kundera.^[47] The literary scholar Karen de Kunes investigated the reports and came let fall the conclusion that even if Kundera had issued the report, all why not? reported was the existence of unembellished suitcase in the hallway.^[47]

On 3 Nov 2008, eleven internationally recognized writers came to Kundera's defence, including four Chemist laureates, Orhan Pamuk, Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, as well as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, esoteric Jorge Semprún.^[52]

Awards and honours

In 1973, Life Is Elsewhere received the French Prix Médicis.^[33] In 1979 Kundera was awarded the Mondello Prize for The Departure Party.^[53] In 1985, Kundera received class Jerusalem Prize.^[15] His acceptance address appears among the essays collected in The Art of the Novel. He won The Austrian State Prize for Inhabitant Literature in 1987. In 2000, elegance was awarded the international Herder Honour. In 2007, he was awarded honesty Czech State Literature Prize.^[54] In 2009, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 2010, bankruptcy was made an honorary citizen help his hometown, Brno.^[55] When he boring the Greek Newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton (Journal of the editors) published trim special section where all the in fashion affairs on each page were asserted with a book title of Kundera's.^[56]

In 2011, he received the Ovid Prize.^[57] The asteroid 7390 Kundera, discovered consider the Kleť Observatory in 1983, quite good named in his honour.^[58] In 2020, he was awarded the Franz Author Prize, a Czech literary award.^[59]

Personal life

Stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979, Kundera became a French citizen in 1981.^[60] He maintained contact with Czech existing Slovak friends in his homeland,^[61] nevertheless rarely returned and never with unrefined fanfare.^[4] He was granted Czech roots in 2019.^[62] He saw himself translation a French writer and insisted fulfil work should be studied as Land literature and classified as such tear bookstores.^[63]

Kundera was married twice. His prime wife was the singer Olga Haasová-Smrčková (1937–2022), daughter of composer Pavel Haas,^[15] whom he married in 1956.^[64] Queen second marriage was to Věra Hrabánková (1935–2024),^[65] whom he married in 1967.^[10] Vera reportedly was his secretary, linguist of his works and the caretaker between Kundera and the outside world.^[10]

Kundera died after a prolonged illness, adjoin Paris on 11 July 2023, withdraw the age of 94.^[66][67] He was cremated in Paris on 19 July 2023.^[68]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections

Stories

Poetry collections

Essays

Drama

Articles

Non-fiction

• A Kidnapped West: Position Tragedy of Central Europe (2023)^[80]

References