Considered one of the great international novelists of the moment, the Czechoslovakian Milan Kundera is in Barcelona to present the Spanish translation of his work ‘The Book of Laughter and Oblivion’ (Seix Barral), which has been a resounding bestseller in France and , something strange for a European writer and even more so if he is from the East, in the very United States.
Born in 1929, Kundera joined the Czech Communist Party at the end of World War II and was expelled in 1948. Professor of cinematography, after the Russian invasion of 1968 he lost his position, his works disappeared from the libraries of his country and his name of the literary manuals. Exiled in France since 1975, in 1979 he was stripped of his Czechoslovak nationality as a result of the publication of ‘The Book of Laughter and Oblivion’.
Milan Kundera has arrived in the city with the flu and, to top it off, on the way between the restaurant and the hotel the afternoon downpour caught him. He is a big man six foot three, with an unmistakable Slavic air and a certain resemblance to Pope Wojtyla, although, unlike him, Kundera has long since stopped having any beliefs, as he vehemently assures.
He has arrived with the flu and, as he repeats several times during the conversation, he is a bit confused. But it is not true, Mr. Kundera is admirably clear.
-From your books it can be deduced that you do not consider yourself part of the tradition of the Eastern countries, but of the specifically European one.
-Indeed. In this regard there is a great misunderstanding: Europe today is divided between East and West by a political border, which does not correspond to the cultural tradition that divides Roman Christianity and Orthodox Christianity. The so-called communist countries, such as Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, have the same ancient culture as you or the French,
-The strong erotic component of your books also opposes another commonplace: the one that attributes a great puritanism to life in communist countries.
– To this I can answer two things. First, that Czechoslovakia has been a communist for thirty years, which means nothing compared to an ancient tradition. Second: eroticism is perhaps more important today in totalitarian countries. Since one cannot fully realize himself in public life, he assumes his freedom in private life, and mostly in the erotic realm. Leaving Prague I abandoned a paradise, where epicureanism and erotic freedom were much greater than, for example, in Paris, where people aspire more to make a career than to make love.
-However, the erotic scenes you describe have a lot to do with the ridiculous, the grotesque…
-I think that ridiculousness is an existential category. And if Flaubert introduced banality into literature, and Proust and Tolstoy introduced memory, it seems to me that ridicule can also be introduced. What is being ridiculous? The comic makes you laugh; ridicule has something else, a point of humiliation, which deserves to be studied. It seems to me that eroticism protects itself against ridicule: the great taboos go against it and not in favor of morality. Nothing more eroticizing than a nudist beach. Then it is easy to deduce that the taboo of the nude is an instrument with which eroticism itself safeguards its existence.
-You were a member of the Communist Party and, later, you participated in the Prague Spring. Six years after leaving your country, do you still consider yourself a socialist?
-You see… For a long time, I don’t believe in anything. I am a man without beliefs.
Let’s change the verb. What do you think of socialism?
-I think that the modern world is very difficult. Bureaucratization and technical progress have confronted man with an unpleasant situation: the world is beginning to slip away from him. Socialism is an attempt to dominate the modern world, and such a will cannot be condemned. But, at the same time, I think it has not achieved its purpose. In my view, one must be extraordinarily modest with judgments, both positive and negative. For this reason, and given this complexity of the society in which we live, I think that harboring any type of belief is a form of naivety, of cowardice.
-On a more concrete level: what do you think of the Polish situation? (In current focus at the time of the interview; in 1980 the Solidarno?? union had been founded in Gdansk, and in response, in 1981 the government had declared Martial Law, followed by a strong repression)
-Eeeuuuh… Could you be more precise?
-Do you think that the situation in Poland, and in comparison to what happened in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, demonstrates the impossibility of a totalitarian regime with a communist sign evolving towards democratic forms?
-I believe that from the end of the Second World War and during the last forty years, the true drama of Europe takes place in Central Europe. That is where the fate of the continent is decided. And there also lies the importance of asking questions, of not believing in words. Words such as socialism, totalitarianism, socialism with a human face, etc., are used without knowing what they are for or what they hide. What the Central European countries are proposing is that, for the first time in its history, Europe has been invaded and colonized by a power with another cultural tradition, with another civilization. Hence the real problem is getting rid of Russian colonialism. The question of the regime is secondary, because it is a maintained, imposed regime. In this sense, the situation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, is essentially identical. They are countries that fight for their sovereignty in a desperate fight, because they are facing a great power.
-The writer’s memory, translated into books, is, as can be deduced from his writings, one of the phases of this struggle.
-Memory is the same as ridicule: a complicated existential category. Try to write about a love that lived ten years ago, and you will see how little you remember… Verifying that invites reflection… Memory is the sum of everything that is remembered, of everything that has been lived… But it is a difficult subject… Better to leave it .
-Only until next time, Mr. Kundera.
Interview published in ‘El Correo Catalán’ on March 24, 1982
