Carefully Read the Following Passage From Testaments Betrayed
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Inspired by Mr. Clarke reading this, I picked up my own copy and upon reading, realized I read much of this, if not all upon its publication some 27 years ago. I highlighted the query in a higher place every bit it was crucial in this reading of such a sinuous essay. I read a not bad deal in my mid-20s, alas in 2020 I look back and recognize that every bit much fourth dimension has lapsed since those initial encounters as I was of historic period at that signal. I institute several in
Over what period of time can we consider a man identical to himself?Inspired by Mr. Clarke reading this, I picked up my own copy and upon reading, realized I read much of this, if non all upon its publication some 27 years ago. I highlighted the query above every bit it was crucial in this reading of such a sinuous essay. I read a nifty bargain in my mid-20s, alas in 2020 I await back and recognize that every bit much time has lapsed since those initial encounters every bit I was of age at that indicate. I found several instances here Kundera pronounced judgement and like the scion of a Kafka parable, I heeded. Kundera offers rebukes to both Balzac and Orwell and I fear that at least through my 20s I followed such. Coining a phrase from Carlos Fuentes, my listen'south customs house wasn't as rigorous as it could take been. Kundera offers a fragile albeit forceful certainty in his essays. This is like to Auden in his. I must admit I find both bothersome. Kundera does celebrate the rolling , disproportionate grotesque of the novel and cites many. I appreciate that. I would be curious about Kundera's thoughts on Prae: Vol. 1. Speaking of such, I have decided the Hungarian bulky monster will be a home just read, given its majority and titular homonym. I suppose my verdict is mixed, as nigh should be, given I enjoyed the return to a time (of my initial see with this essay) only I haven't found the argument hither to pursue anything cited. I suppose that argument is imprecise. I would beloved to read Rabelais over again.
As a postscript I have enjoyed listening to Janacek today.
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کوندرا را به این دلیل بسیار دوست دارم که مرا در چهارچوب بسته ی یک روایت زندانی نمی کند. خواندن کونرا مث
I like Kundra because he doesn't imprison me in a fastened frame of a classic narration. Reading Kundra seems as if you lot come across an old friend afterward ages in a buffet shop, and while she/he relates her / his life story, you lot zero your coffee, listen to the cafe music, hear some chats and laughs at nabouring tables, look at the peddlers at side walk, or a passing tramvay, … as life is flowing around, ….کوندرا را به این دلیل بسیار دوست دارم که مرا در چهارچوب بسته ی یک روایت زندانی نمی کند. خواندن کونرا مثل این است که دوستی را پس از سال ها در یک کافه ملاقات کنید و در حالی که به قصه ی روزگار رفته ی او گوش می دهید، قهوه تان را می نوشید، به موسیقی که از بلندگوی کافه پخش می شود، گوش می کنید، گهگاه متوجه ی صحبت ها و خنده هایی از میزهای کناری می شوید، صدای عبور و مرور خیابان در پس پشت این همه جاری ست، دوره گردی چیزی می فروشد، عبور تراموای، و همه چیز، درست مثل خود زندگی، ...
ـ وصایای تحریف شده، کاوه باسمنجی، چاپ دوم، 1377
ـ وصیت خیانت شده، فروغ پوریاوری، چاپ اول 1377
In office i, "The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh," Kundera speaks of the importance of humor in the novel. He loves the fact that the early novelists, such Kundera begins with a riff on Rabelais and leads us on a wild tour of European literature from Cervantes to Gombrowicz, with special attention to authors that I love including Musil and Broch. I found his continual focus on the ideas of literature attractive enough; but he assays music as well including a wonderful chapter on Janacek.
In part one, "The Solar day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh," Kundera speaks of the importance of humor in the novel. He loves the fact that the early novelists, such as François Rabelais and Miguel Cervantes, reveled in humour and delighted in allowing their characters to make fools of themselves. He also writes that the history of humour is closely connected to the history of the novel.
Perhaps more interesting to this reader was his idea-provoking give-and-take of Stravinsky'southward place in European music, "Improvisation in Homage to Stravinsky,". In this section, part 3 of ix-parts, Kundera writes about Igor Stravinsky's émigré status: "having understood that no land could supervene upon it [his homeland], he finds his only homeland in music; this is not just a nice lyrical conceit of mine, I call up it in an absolutely concrete way." Kundera's situation is similar to that of Stravinsky and to those of Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov, about whom Kundera also writes. Kundera, the well-nigh famous Czech writer, left Czechoslovakia in 1975 to alive in Paris. He has connected to write fiction in Czech, simply The Art of the Novel (1986; English language translation, 1988) and Testaments Betrayed were written in French. Every bit Stravinsky inhabited the globe of music and served as one of its virtually important citizens and statesmen, so does Kundera inhabit the globe of the novel, communicate in its unique language, and serve as a spokesman for its worldview and its practitioners.
Kundera's main expanse of interest is specifically the European novel, by which he means "not only novels created in Europe by Europeans only novels that belong to a history that began with the dawn of the Mod Era in Europe." For Kundera the history of the European novel is transnational; he believes that it is a error to view the novel in terms of national literary traditions. At one point, Kundera mentions the reaction of the Austrian novelist Hermann Broch to his publisher's proffer that Broch exist compared to the Fundamental European writers Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Italo Svevo. Broch proposed that he exist compared instead to James Joyce and André Gide. Broch, like Kundera, believed that his realm was the macrocosm of the European novel, not the microcosm of Austrian fiction.
For Kundera, the novel is far more than a literary genre. It is a way of viewing the world which, when it is practiced past a corking novelist, leads readers to think in fresh ways, to question some of their assumptions, to put aside their prejudices. In i interesting passage, Kundera speaks of the ways in which lyricism has been used in the service of totalitarianism. He mentions as an example the great Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, a truthful artist who placed his verse at the service of the Russian Revolution. Kundera writes, "Lyricism, lyricization, lyrical talk, lyrical enthusiasm are an integrating role of what is chosen the totalitarian world; that globe is not the gulag as such; it'due south a gulag that has poems plastering its exterior walls and people dancing before them." In the world of the true novel, such lyricism is abomination, the enemy of clear thought. Repelled by the totalitarian lyricism he saw around him in the communist Czechoslovakia of his youth, Kundera turned to the novel.
Kundera wishes to exist identified with no political position, no land, no rigid philosophical point of view; he wishes to view and to be viewed purely as a novelist. And with this in mind he includes embedded references to literature, neat literature, and his ain piece of work, most of which I've withal to read. And did I mention his infrequent essay on Kafka. This is a relatively short book, but one of dandy depth and breadth. It is simultaneously bright music criticism, elegant literary criticism, commentary on the art of writing and translation, and a guide to the cracking literature of modern Europe. With this book, a loaf of staff of life and some wine (along with dozens of other texts) ane could while abroad a year or two.
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The subject of this menstruation is mod European civilization we recognize in the novel and symphonic music. Kundera conveniently teams them together equally the novel form. His concern is whether we owe more than allegiance to the artist or to his body of piece of work. Betrayal, every bit I read Kundera, c
Is it an essay, a 278-page essay? Yes, I finally decided; information technology's an essay which flows thematically forth its class the whole length. But forth the style information technology pools and eddies, backs up on itself into swirls of ideas and digressions.The subject of this period is modernistic European culture nosotros recognize in the novel and symphonic music. Kundera conveniently teams them together as the novel form. His concern is whether we owe more allegiance to the creative person or to his body of work. Betrayal, equally I read Kundera, can autumn on both sides of the argue. He begins with Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses, a novel he says is decidedly European in manner and focus. One of the problems with the famous fatwa placed on Rushdie by Middle Eastern religious Diktat was that the whole dustup showed the westward unable to defend its culture from unreasonable ideas. This is the opening salvo of Kundera's criticism that we're betraying our cultural aesthetic. Failures such as this, failures to support artistic piece of work, tin take many forms. His essay leaves Rushdie to talk over several other composers and novelists whose work has been amended or otherwise abused past critics and performers. So nosotros learn that the great Jeffrey Meyers biography of Hemingway (the only non-European subject, if I remember correctly) caused the entire trunk of novels and stories to be erroneously viewed as roman a clef. We learn that the conductor Seiji Ozawa deflated a Mahler symphony by including a move the composer has decided was inferior and had earlier deleted. We're convinced that Nietzsche and Beethoven tin can exist paired together as novelists. More blurring occurs when we're faced with deciding when the novel becomes philosophy (Sartre) and philosophy becomes the novel (Nietzsche). And nosotros larn that on the gradual shift from civilisation to journalism (an observation even more surprising when you recollect the book was published in 1993), as Kundera seems to see cultural evolution in the 20th century, many masterworks similar those of Hermann Broch and Robert Musil have been pushed to the margins of distinction by the artful shift, which is another betrayal. Along the class of the essay'south flow the discussion slows and pools effectually such subjects as Stravinsky, Leos Janacek, Thomas Mann, and Tolstoy. We go out them and return to them over again and once again.
The bang-up sea this streaming essays flows into is Kafka. His betrayal may exist the most famous in literature, that of Max Brod'southward ignoring his written instructions--testaments--that his manuscripts be destroyed. The tributaries of Tolstoy, Broch, Musil, Isle of mann, Nietzsche, Stravinsky and Janacek and all the rest have been headed hither. Kundera interestingly writes that Kafka'southward wishes were motivated by shame that his private biographical influences would be laid bare--another of Kundera'south themes--more than by an evaluation of the works themselves. Subsequently all, when Kafka died he was still unknown and unpublished and without literary stature. Simply as interestingly Kundera admits he would have acted as Brod did, would have betrayed Kafka'southward testaments.
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In that location are no statements of truths (scientific or mythic) hither
No promise to depict things equally they are in reality
The story being told here is not serious
Even though information technology is about the most dreadful things
Every answer is a booby trap
Paz: Humor renders ambiguous everything it touches
If I were asked the most common crusade of misunderstanding betwixt my readers and me, I would not hesitate: humour
Creating the imaginary terrain where moral judgment is suspended wa
The story being told here is not seriousThere are no statements of truths (scientific or mythic) here
No hope to draw things as they are in reality
The story existence told here is non serious
Even though it is nigh the most dreadful things
Every answer is a booby trap
Paz: Humor renders ambiguous everything it touches
If I were asked the most common cause of misunderstanding betwixt my readers and me, I would not hesitate: humor
Creating the imaginary terrain where moral judgment is suspended was a motion of enormous significance:
Only at that place could novelistic characters develop
East Thousand Cioran calls European society "the society of the novel" and the European as "the children of the novel"
The removal of gods from the world is one of the phenomena that characterizes the Modern Era
The removal of gods does non mean atheism, it denotes the situation in which the private, the thinking ego, supplants God as the basis for all things
The historical and psychological exploration of myths, of sacred texts, means: rendering them profane
For faith and sense of humour are incompatible
We vest to the aforementioned civilisation, rooted in the Christian past, without which we would be mere shadows without substance, debates without a vocabulary, spiritually stateless
My nonbelief and their belief were oddly shut
What is an individual? Wherein does his identity reside? All novels seek to answer these questions
Dostoevsky's aesthetic: his characters are rooted in a very distinctive personal ideology, according to which they act with unbending logic
We retrieve we act, we think nosotros recall, simply it is another or others who call up and act in u.s.:
That is to say, timeless habits, archetypes, which — having becomes myths passed on from ane generation to the next — carry an enormous seductive power and control united states of america (says Mann) from "the wall of the past"
Individual is only a sum of the suggestions and requirements that emanates from the well of the past
Four personal communist universes grafted onto four European pasts:
Ludvik: the communism that springs from the caustic Voltairean spirit
Jaroslav: communism equally the want to construct the patriarchal past that is preserved in folklore
Kostka: communist Utopia grafted onto the Gospel
Helena: communism every bit the wellspring of enthusiasm in a human being sentimentalis
Each of these personal universe is defenseless at the moments of its dissolution:
4 forms of communism's disintegration, which likewise ways the collapse of four ancient European ventures
In The Joke, the by appears simply equally a facet of the characters' psyches
The coexistence of unlike periods sets the novelist a technical problem:
How to link them without having the novel lose its unity
In Fuentes, his characters motion from one periods to another as their own reincarnations
In Rushdie: supratemporal connectedness
In mine, the past and the present are bridged by mutual themes and motifs
As a novelist, I accept e'er felt myself to be within history
All my novels breathe a hatred of history
The history of humanity and the history of the novel are 2 different things
The onetime is not man's to determine, information technology takes over like an alien force he cannot control
Whereas the history of the novel (or of painting, of music) is born of man's freedom , of his wholly personal creations, of his own choices
The history of an art is a revenge by human against the impersonality of the history of humanity
Satanic ambiguity turns every certainty into enigma
Kafka was the first to describe the comic side of that sadness
Filth: information technology is inseparable from sex, from its essence
Paradox: the "fusion of dream and reality"
The two assistants from the castle are probably Kafka'due south greatest poetic find:
Agents of the total destruction of private life
(Not just escape) apprehending the real world is part of the definition of the novel
Stravinsky's music is inspired only by music, it is "music almost music"
Kafka's Amerika is a "literature nigh literature"
In Kafka's Amerika we find ourselves in a universe of feelings that are inappropriate, misplaced, exaggerated, unfathomable, or — the reverse — bizarrely missing
Through ecstasy, emotion reaches its climax, and thereby at the aforementioned time its negation (its oblivion)
Ecstasy ways being "exterior oneself": the act of leaving one's position
Ecstasy is absolute identity with the nowadays instant, full forgetting of past and future
If we obliterate the future and the past, the present moment stands in empty infinite
Human being desires eternity, simply all he tin can go is its imitation: the instant of ecstasy
Stravinsky'southward music is a music from which music is banished
To know any phenomenon deeply requires understanding its beauty, bodily or potential
Remembering is not the negative of forgetting
Remembering is a form of forgetting
We dice without knowing what we have lived
The demand to resist the loss of the fleeting reality of the nowadays arose for the novel
In Joyce, a single second of the present becomes a little infinity
Hemingway's creative obsessions: to catch the construction of real conversation
Melodization of dialogue is what is then striking in Hemingway
What is the melodic truth of this judgement?
What is the melodic truth of a vanished moment
In 1948, through the years of Communist revolution in my native country, I saw the eminent function played by lyrical blindness in a time of error
Are y'all on the left or the correct? Neither. I'yard a novelist
Modernistic art: a revolt confronting the imitation of reality
Mann: descriptive novel
Musil: thinking novel
Existence cannot be systemized
In Musil everything becomes theme (existential questioning)
If everything becomes theme, the groundwork disappears and, as in a cubist painting, at that place is nothing simply foreground
Lost Letters introduces the theme of homo and history in its basic version: human being collides with history and its crushes him
Thought, expression, composition are inseparable
The composition should itself be an invention
A novelist must systematically desystemized his idea
Nietzsche brought philosophy closer to novel
Musil brought the novel towards philosophy
The advantage of smallness (of nation): the wealth in cultural events is on a "human being calibration"
Ah, small nations
Within that warm intimacy, each envies each, everyone watches everyone
"Families, I detest you!"
And still some other line from Gide:
"There is nothing more unsafe for yous than your ain family, you own room, your own past . . ."
The novel is the fruit of a homo illusion
The illusion of the power to sympathize others
Since James Joyce we have known that the greatest take chances of our lives is the absence of adventure
The little provincial world that surrounds Tamina is characterized by an innocent egocentrism:
Anybody has sincere liking for her, and still no 1 tries to empathise her
The trial in Kafka's novel is the one that Kafka brings against himself, K. being nothing but his alter ego
Ecstasy is a moment wrenched out of time — a brief moment without memory, a moment surrounded by forgetting
Tolstoy argues confronting the idea that history is made past the will and reason of great individuals
History makes itself, he says, obeying laws of its own, which remain obscure to man
Great individuals "all were the involuntary tools of history"
Man lives consciously for himself, but is unconsciously a tool in the attainment of the historic, general aims of mankind
How is it possible to love someone and at the same time misunderstand him so completely
Shame is one of the key notions of the Mod Era
Nosotros are entering a fourth dimension when the highest stake is the survival of the disappearance of the individual
This transformation of a man from subject field to object is experienced as shame
What made him [Kafka] want to destroy them was shame
The shame of leaving private things lying about for the eyes of others
The shame of existence turned into an object
The shame that could "outlast him"
He [Max Brod] betrayed him [Kafka]
Biography: newness and accuracy of existent facts
Novel: revolution of previously unseen possibilities of beingness
A memory doesn't give u.s. back the dead person's presence
Memories are only confirmation of his absence
In memories, the expressionless person is merely a past that is fading, receding, inaccessible
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But I grew weary of the presentation of his artistic preferences and opinions every bit moral absolutes. There are many novels outside the constraints of Kundera's proclamations.
But still, enlightening and entertaining.
Peachy art history lessons. Great criticism of fine art criticism, and of art curation.But I grew weary of the presentation of his artistic preferences and opinions every bit moral absolutes. There are many novels outside the constraints of Kundera's proclamations.
But still, enlightening and entertaining.
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Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts is a skim through his opinions and ideas about satire, translation, music, fifty Milan Kundera is a great novelist, but what makes him special to me is that he lives with novels. He has one of the best understandings of novel I've ever happened to come across. Too, he has a very complex wild mind which shines upon every dark corner of letterature, surprising his readers with the revelations it makes right in the identify they thought they accept explored thoroughly.
Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Ix Parts is a skim through his opinions and ideas about satire, translation, music, literary criticism, Franz Kafka and the fashion he should be read, and artists' heritages and testaments. In each of the nine parts of this essay he talks almost a trouble, or a point of view in art which he thinks is of niggling merit or has something incorrect in information technology, and follows lines of logic in his own "Kunderaic" fashion to come up up with results that can be ratherly surprising to anyone who has thought of the matter before. He is frank and forthright and remains well just. Non much academic knowledge is required to read this volume, but y'all will benefit from an understanding of classical music, and you'd have to be a bookworm to be able to keep upwardly with the book since it discusses so many big novels of all times, peculiarly Kafkas'.
It has always been an ambition of mine to be able to observe dissimilar people thinking, specially those who have a bright mind and can think finer. Kundera is doubtlessly one those whom I'd beloved to see thinking, and thanks goodness, I could practise then reading this volume. The adept point is that he can express himself very nicely, thus making it possible for yous not to go lost post-obit him. And so, I suggest you take the pleasure of watching one of the greatest novelists of our time recall out. ...more
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Testaments Betrayed by the manner refers partly to Kafka'south own testament: "Deleting a paragraph calls for even more talent, cultivation, and creative power than writing it does. Therefore, publishing what the author deleted is the same human action o
A paragraph from this book (and Kundera's essayistic writing in general) is sometimes worth more than than the entire collected works of some other author. I take been reading from it, but I tin can no longer delay a full read, especially equally it talks about Kafka then much.Testaments Betrayed past the way refers partly to Kafka's own testament: "Deleting a paragraph calls for fifty-fifty more talent, cultivation, and artistic power than writing information technology does. Therefore, publishing what the writer deleted is the same act of rape as censoring what he decided to retain" (folio 270).
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Too the Hills Like White Elephants office took me back t
I've noticed that many men, and some women, will eventually reach an age where they come across their heyday catastrophe and things and tastes begin to change and they just can't handle it. This book was written in 1993 just it is timeless in that there will always exist a subset of old (usually) men who insist "you can't say this any more you can't practise that any more...people, similar, don't Get it though." Pitiful, Mr. Kundera, Pantagruel really isn't that funny.Also the Hills Like White Elephants part took me back to my 10th grade honors English language grade which was not a place that I wanted to go. Just I appreciated his take down of the moralizing Hemingway biographer.
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Some gems from the volume:
"We should not denigrate literary criticism. Nothing is worse for a writer than to come up against its absence. I am speaking of literary criticism every bit meditation, equally analysis; literary criticism that involves several readings of the volume information technology means to discuss (like great pieces of music we can mind to time and over again, great novels too are made for repeated readings); literary criticism that, deafened to the implacable clock of topicality, will readily talk over works a year, thirty years, 3 hundred years old; literary criticism that tries to apprehend the originality of a work in guild thus to inscribe it on historical retentiveness."
"Irony means: none of the assertions found in a novel can be taken past itself, each of them stands in a complex and contradictory juxtaposition with other assertions, other situations, other gestures, other ideas, other events. Only a tedious reading, twice and many times over, tin can bring out all the ironic connections inside a novel, without which the novel remains uncomprehended."
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PS I remember i of my bosses saying that he would want Kundera to win a Nobel prize for Literature and I mentally snorted. I at present have a change of heart. Kundera and Nabokov need to get their hands on that Nobel ASAP.
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My notes:
- Literature is compared to classical music and if you are a fan of both, this could be your book.
- Composers vs authors = artists.
- A ton of Kafka (best office); a ton of Janacek (whoever he was...)
- Translators should be loyal to the author`due south style and non to how the text would sound ameliorate in their perspective/ ain language
- Compares writing his "the bo
My notes:
- Literature is compared to classical music and if you are a fan of both, this could exist your book.
- Composers vs authors = artists.
- A ton of Kafka (best part); a ton of Janacek (whoever he was...)
- Translators should exist loyal to the author`due south style and not to how the text would audio better in their perspective/ own language
- Compares writing his "the volume of laughter and forgetting" with strategies used by Chopin and Beethoven writting music
- Nietzsche uses an experimental line of thought, where all the conventions are broken in order to give space to a more objective and open estimation of reality
- What is a conviction? A stagnated thought. A man of conviction is a limited human being. The experimental though does not want to convince anyone of any truth but inspire and provoke the idea in club to create new ideas.
- For the first time, with Nietzsche`s refutal and refusal of the systematic thought, philosophy started reflecting on everything that was human
- Ends in glory, every bit usual, discoursing and reflecting on decease and memories.
Quotes (in portuguese cause read in portuguese; no punctuation crusade german language keyboard):
- " Kafka tornou-se o santo padroeiro dos neuroticos, dos deprimidos, dos anoreticos, dos enfermicos, o santo padroeiro dos que sofrem exercise juizo, das preciosas ridiculas e dos histericos (...)."
- "Kafka foi o primeiro a descrever o comico da tristeza. O comico da sexualidade."
- " A sujidade: inseparavel da sexualidade, da sua essencia"
- "Nao, nao se trata de amor, se formos banidos east desapossados de tudo, um pedacito de mulher que mal conhecemos, abracada no meio de pocas de cerveja, transforma-se num universo inteiro - sem qualquer intervencao do amor."
- "O triangulo existencial da sexualidade que nos surpreendem na sua sucessao imediata: a sujidade; a inebriante beleza negra da estranheza; e a comovente e ansiosa nostalgia."
- "organizacao social labirintica em que o homem se perde eastward se encaminha para a perda"
- "O termo alemao die Entfremdung exprime melhor o que quero designar: o processo ao longo practise qual o que nos foi proximo se tornou estranho (...) Só o regresso ao país natal após uma longa ausencia pode revelar a estranheza substancial practise mundo e da existencia"
- "Ninguém quis admitir que este despojamento practise vocabulário exprimisse a intencao estética de Kafka, fosse um dos signos distintivos da beleza da sua prosa."
- "Dor vergingen Stunden, Stunden gemeinsamen Atems, gemeinsamen Herzschlags, Stunden..."
- "Muito simplesmente um morto que amo, para mim nunca estará morto. Nem sequer posso dizer: eu amei-o; mas sim, european union amo-o. E se me recuso a falar practise meu amor por ele no tempo passado, isso quer dizer que aquele que está morto é."
- "... mas depressa afasta a ideia de suicidio, porque a única maneira que tem de prolongar a vida da mulher amada é conservá-la na sua recordacao."
- "Sim, pensou ele, entre a dor due east o nada é a dor que escolho."
- "... comecei a comprender que, numa recordacao, nao encontramos a presenca practise morto; every bit recordacoes nao sao mais do que a confirmacao da sua ausencia; nas recordacoes o morto nao é mais do que um passado que empalidece, que se afasta, inacessivel."
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Kafka is certainly one of Kundera's heroes and he takes upwards the bulk of this book. The chapters on Kafka are powerful. In part 4, "A Judgement" Kundera takes a unmarried sentence from Kafka's novel and deconstructs its various translations. He highlights the faults in each of them and through that single exemplar he delivers a devastating critique on translation. This part is truly a masterclass in how to approach translation with detailed education almost preserving the "artful wishes" of an author.
"Artful wishes" -- yes, that's a constant theme and a lamentation throughout, about how translators, publishers, and friends even, do not respect an author's aesthetic wishes. Kundera makes a stunningly obvious observation at one point: "The only way to understand Kafka's novels: to read them as novels." What he'south complaining against is the uncontrollable urge of academics to forcefulness fit works of art into world views, philosophies, finding motives, associating every plot element with some event in an author'south life, and so on.
To extend the higher up argument in one of the parts he picks upwardly a very short story by Hemingway and shows how it's been subject to the type of academic interpretation of the higher up kind. It's a thoroughly enjoyable skewering of an American professor who takes undue liberties in terms of interpreting Hemingway'southward story.
Another closely related theme is that of individuals and their privacy, especially in an individual'south expiry, and how many authors including Kafka weren't given the right to their privacy. There's a huge legend congenital effectually Kafka thanks to his friend and legal executor Max Brod. Every bit per Kafka's testaments, Brod was supposed to destroy all his individual correspondences, unfinished works, diaries, and so forth. Brod, of course, didn't. Everything got published including the very letters that expressed Kafka's wishes. (And his supposed alphabetic character to his father, of course, which he had never sent.) And that, friends, is a Testament Betrayed.
To utilize Kundera's own phrase, that he used for Kafka, I loved the "density of imagination" in this books of essays. I practise honey the European novel, simply I love the European essay too. And indeed I often don't run into them as 2 very different forms.
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Essentially the book delves into the nuances of writing and creating and how it fits into the life of an author, how the author fits into history (his/her own, as well as the history of the fine art of writing itself), and the evolution of the southward
This was definitely a volume that requires the reader/listener'south undivided attention. You tin't go distracted for a couple of seconds and promise to option upwards the thread of the story. I plant myself needing to re-listen to parts to try to absorb what was being said.Essentially the volume delves into the nuances of writing and creating and how it fits into the life of an writer, how the writer fits into history (his/her own, every bit well equally the history of the art of writing itself), and the evolution of the style of novels every bit well as operas and symphonies. Lots of deep stuff to contemplate.
The book mostly focuses on European writers (Kafka, Rabelais, Balzac, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, as the virtually notable) and European musicians (Beethoven, Brahms, Janacek, Bartok). There are also a couple of segments on the writing of Hemingway.
In that location is not one universal theme regarding all of these authors, and some of the contemplation is much deeper than even the most well-read person would try to think about or articulate. The coverage wasn't balanced. There was a lot of focus on Kafka ... his writing, his themes, his editor, his personal life, his personal wishes, translations of his books.... Lots of minutiae that is interesting to retrieve about, but, in the finish, whatever the books represent is unique to each of the readers.
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I am a large reader and familiar with many of the classics but yous volition want to read a few books first to know what's what, mainly: Kafka (all writings), Balzac, Rushdie, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabakov, and others such every bit Dickenson, Faulkner, and Hemmingway (and of class, Kundera, primari
At that place are some parts of this essay that I loved, that were undeniably Kundera. Even so, for most of the book, I was lost every bit it is written as a 9-part critical essay of predominately classical literature and music.I am a big reader and familiar with many of the classics just you volition want to read a few books outset to know what's what, mainly: Kafka (all writings), Balzac, Rushdie, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabakov, and others such every bit Dickenson, Faulkner, and Hemmingway (and of course, Kundera, primarily "The Volume of Laughter and Forgetting"). Without existence very familiar with all of these writers (and then some) this book will be a hard and uninteresting read.
The music is where I had to skip ahead, it is focused mainly on Stravinsky who I was not familiar with until reading this essay. The good news is information technology introduced many classical composers to me that I was not familiar with (also the big ones, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven), even so, I find reading about music to exist nigh as enjoyable as listening to a book.
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Pre-reads (atleast a few of): Cervantes,Rabelais, Balzac, Kafka, Nietzsche, Proust, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabakov, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Rushdie
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kundera always reads causally merely is as deep equally they come
besides surprisingly relevant in today's light of reevaulating an author's work in terms of their life fantastic
kundera e'er reads causally but is as deep every bit they come
also surprisingly relevant in today's light of reevaulating an author'southward work in terms of their life ...more
novel in Western culture and how information technology shaped Western thought. While
his bias shows in many places, this is still a great exploration
of creative forces in Western culture for the past 500 years.
Part 1 sets upward the European novel every bit the defining art
form of the modernism and at the source of Western ideology. By
promoting ambiguity and letting characters define their own moral
compass, they enabled the development of an individualistic
thought
novel in Western civilisation and how it shaped Western thought. While
his bias shows in many places, this is still a neat exploration
of artistic forces in Western civilisation for the past 500 years.
Office 1 sets upwards the European novel every bit the defining fine art
course of the modernism and at the source of Western ideology. Past
promoting ambivalence and letting characters ascertain their ain moral
compass, they enabled the development of an individualistic
thought in the Western philosophy and directly leading to our
putting a value on the person every bit an individual.
Part two shows how Kafka's legacy has been tainted by the opinion
of his biggest fan and how said fan used his position to twist and
dispense Kafka's art to support his own esthetic views.
Office three draws a parallel between the development of the European
novel and that of European music in since the XIVth
Century. Both were moving away from the exhalted and highly
stylized forms of the past and reaching for a deeper connection
with the real world by studying what others might consider
mundane.
Office 4 takes a unmarried sentence from Kafka and shows how all of
his French translations are incorrect. His point is that the author who
moves his fine art forward takes information technology beyond what is considered "expert
style" at the time, whereas the translator normally tries to promote
"good style", thereby undoes the author's innovation in order to
bring the work back within accepted boundaries.
Part 5 analyzes a short story by Hemmingway to demonstrate how
the modern novel tries to capture the essence of the present as it
happens, not every bit a reconstruction of something that has happened or
every bit an artificial construct that supports the action, merely every bit it
happens in real life, in all its mundanity and irregularity.
Office six contrasts the classic menses, where class was all
of import and pieces include strong parts held together by
bridges and structural elements. Modernity breaks out of
the form and does away with the weaker elements, keeping only the
strong ones. And this happened beyond Western civilisation, in music,
novels, and even philosophy with Nietzsche.
Role vii covers the artistry of Janacek every bit a one who ushered in
modernity in Western music. He besides discusses how Czechoslovakia,
with it'southward small country mentality, hindered his recognition past the
larger cultural scene. This is a theme he will revisit later in
The Drapery.
Office viii shows how novelists similar Kafka and Tolstoi explored,
cheers to the novel, aspects of the human being psyche decades before
science started looking them. They showed how our opinions vary
and evolve throughout our lives, and how at any one point, nosotros endeavour
to make the best decisions based on incomplete information. Nosotros
should exist careful when judging the by with our 20/20
hindsight.
Function 9 deals with artists and their attempts to control their
legacy. Stravisnky and Janacek fought long and difficult against those
who would make changes to their works, oftentimes removing the novelty
they had introduced. Kafka's efforts to nail down his legacy were
spoiled past his executor, who published anything and everything he
had ever written, including pieces Kafka thought were non ready,
similar "The Trial". Proust talked near how novelists show a
different personality through their novels than that revealed in
their lives, then seeking to interpret the novel as a cardinal to the
author's life is to miss the artistry.
Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not considered tr
Milan Kundera is a Czech and French writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized French citizen in 1981. He is best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke.Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are non considered translations only original works.
Due to censorship past the Communist government of Czechoslovakia, his books were banned from his native country, and that remained the instance until the downfall of this regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
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The pernicious influence of Orwell'due south novel resides in its implacable reduction of a reality to its political dimension alone, and in its reduction of that dimension to what is exemplarily negative nearly it. I refuse to forgive this reduction on the grounds that it was useful as propaganda in the struggle against totalitarian evil. For that evil is, precisely, the reduction of life to politics and of politics to propaganda. Then despite its intentions, Orwell's novel itself joins in the totalitarian spirit, the spirit of propaganda. It reduces (and teaches others to reduce) the life of a hated club to the simple listing of its crimes."
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