Word: kundera
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...Milan Kundera has not lived in what is now the Czech Republic for more than three decades, and some of his best works are still awaiting publication in his native country. But he is still regarded as one of the country's greatest writers and, more importantly, a leading voice of the generation that turned away from Communism to embrace the heady liberalismof the Prague Spring before it was crushed by Soviet tanks. So the recent allegation that, as a student under Communist rule, he informed local police on a young man is being greeted with dismay, and a little...
Czechs are not so much shocked that Kundera, 79, now living in Paris, may have snitched on a suspected class enemy while a staunch Communist. Such things were not uncommon at the time. What most find surprising, however, is that the secret was kept for so long. At the same time, his supporters stress that any such incident should not detract from his work as an artist and could even explain the nature of his genius: his moral detachment and near-obsession with the themes of denunciation and betrayal. "I have always known [Kundera] was a Communist...
Jiri Zak, who translated some of Kundera's French writings into Czech, told the Czech news agency CTK that the reports were "a nasty and incomprehensible surprise" - not least because the accused spy was nearly sentenced to death - but that it would not alter his views of the writer's work. "Everything that the writer lives through can somehow reflect in his work," wrote Czech novelist and playwright Ivan Klima, a contemporary of Kundera's in a Czech newspaper. "Perhaps only a subconscious need to come to terms with [an experience] can ignite the creation of great work. That...
...first chapter of his most celebrated work, Czech novelist Milan Kundera illustrates Nietzsche’s idea of “eternal return:” “There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre that occurs once in history, and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.” When it comes to the tumultuous financial markets of the past year, countless editorialists, economists, and even some public officials have likened the current crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Savings and Loans debacle of the late 1980s. And who better...
...divergence. Yale students want you to know that they enjoy Beethoven. Harvard students want you to know that they enjoy Snow Patrol. Yale students sure love their long important novels by Dostoevsky, Nabokov, or Tolkien. Harvard students sure love their interesting modern novels by people with names like Milan Kundera and Jhumpa Lahiri. Yalies enjoy history and philosophy and put Tolkien books and movies on their profiles. Harvardians enjoy Dancing, Art, and Oscar-winning movies about race. Yale students want to impress you with what they’re doing. Harvard students want to impress you with how cool they...