Scan barcode
glyzerine's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
orlanecsnt's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
thewhiteraven's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.75
Kundera delivers so much wisdom about the novel as an art form. I would recommend it with the caveat that Kundera references his own novels a lot, so it'd be helpful to read some of those first/also.
steveatwaywords's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Kundera's collection of essays and talks looks at the novel form as both a constructed object and as a threatened artifact in our cultural history. In both goals he is hugely insightful and panoramic in his views, though somewhat locked into the mid-20th century.
To begin there, Kundera demonstrates his deep scholarship into the history of the culture-building power of the novel across most of the book, though he seems to suggest that it has (in the hands of writers like Kafka and Broch, and perhaps himself) reached its pinnacle. Now it is a threatened art form which alone demonstrates the capacity of human thought. The novel as all art has always changed, but for Kundera, it must cease to do so at this point. In this sense, he remains the "grumpy old man" I have sensed in my other reviews of his non-fiction work. More importantly for many readers, Kundera is as likely to make a dramatic pronouncement about his subjects with no support or elaboration whatsoever, so unless we are readers of some academic breadth in his field, we are unlikely to follow how he assembles his points.
That said, I still found the book a wonderful and refreshing read. To demonstrate the fullness of the art form, Kundera examines several works at some length and with an eye that is too rare for critical theory: instead of merely naming themes, he examines their nuance at length and how they emerge from tone and structure, and then he goes further to place them in the larger social milieu to test their veracity. His lengthy look at Broch's The Sleepwalkers, a novel few have perhaps read, nevertheless reveals a structural pattern that opens up humanity's necessity to examine its moments of crisis. In other words, Kundera shows us how the artistic bones of fiction, when thoughtfully rendered, themselves support the finest ideas.
This discussion of structure in writing as necessity for its art powers the discussions on the craft of authors. So many writers talk about the worklife of composition (their daily schedules, their workloads, their idea creation) or--if we are lucky--the style points of writing (King's On Writing prominent here). Few look to structure, or if they do--from Aristotle to Wharton to Campbell--they do so from a readerly perspective of classification. Kundera is the first writer I have found who looks deeply at the "artistic act," the conception of form upon which the other elements are built.
And this approach alone sets the novel as art apart from the novel as entertainment or distraction. So many writers are content to "tell a good yarn" and can conceive of nothing beyond the plot but a topical theme. Kundera is an academic, an elitist, a scholar somewhat trapped in 20th century Europe, but he is still right.
To begin there, Kundera demonstrates his deep scholarship into the history of the culture-building power of the novel across most of the book, though he seems to suggest that it has (in the hands of writers like Kafka and Broch, and perhaps himself) reached its pinnacle. Now it is a threatened art form which alone demonstrates the capacity of human thought. The novel as all art has always changed, but for Kundera, it must cease to do so at this point. In this sense, he remains the "grumpy old man" I have sensed in my other reviews of his non-fiction work. More importantly for many readers, Kundera is as likely to make a dramatic pronouncement about his subjects with no support or elaboration whatsoever, so unless we are readers of some academic breadth in his field, we are unlikely to follow how he assembles his points.
That said, I still found the book a wonderful and refreshing read. To demonstrate the fullness of the art form, Kundera examines several works at some length and with an eye that is too rare for critical theory: instead of merely naming themes, he examines their nuance at length and how they emerge from tone and structure, and then he goes further to place them in the larger social milieu to test their veracity. His lengthy look at Broch's The Sleepwalkers, a novel few have perhaps read, nevertheless reveals a structural pattern that opens up humanity's necessity to examine its moments of crisis. In other words, Kundera shows us how the artistic bones of fiction, when thoughtfully rendered, themselves support the finest ideas.
This discussion of structure in writing as necessity for its art powers the discussions on the craft of authors. So many writers talk about the worklife of composition (their daily schedules, their workloads, their idea creation) or--if we are lucky--the style points of writing (King's On Writing prominent here). Few look to structure, or if they do--from Aristotle to Wharton to Campbell--they do so from a readerly perspective of classification. Kundera is the first writer I have found who looks deeply at the "artistic act," the conception of form upon which the other elements are built.
And this approach alone sets the novel as art apart from the novel as entertainment or distraction. So many writers are content to "tell a good yarn" and can conceive of nothing beyond the plot but a topical theme. Kundera is an academic, an elitist, a scholar somewhat trapped in 20th century Europe, but he is still right.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
In discussing our cultural malaise, Kundera often examines the works of writers whose characters pass through trauma.noel_rene_cisneros's review against another edition
Un análisis inteligente sobre la novela, su desarrollo y sus posibilidades. Análisis que, a pesar de la inteligencia con la que se realiza, no deja de estar sesgado por la visión de la novela como un género eminentemente europeo y de su propia concepción de la novela -vinculada, por supuesto, con la forma en la que el mismo Kundera escribe sus novelas-.
Destacan las reflexiones en torno a la obra de Kafka, a la que analiza en varios apartados, así como las Aventuras del soldado Svejk. Así mismo la ponderación que Kundera hace de Flaubert, antes que de Proust o Joyce, a quines apenas dedica unas cuantas líneas.
Resalta su postura contra la idea del fin de la novela como género, idea que se ha generalizado por lo menos desde mediados del siglo XX.
Destacan las reflexiones en torno a la obra de Kafka, a la que analiza en varios apartados, así como las Aventuras del soldado Svejk. Así mismo la ponderación que Kundera hace de Flaubert, antes que de Proust o Joyce, a quines apenas dedica unas cuantas líneas.
Resalta su postura contra la idea del fin de la novela como género, idea que se ha generalizado por lo menos desde mediados del siglo XX.
lottie1803's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
Got like 7500+ words in quotes I collected only. Can't share full review because of limits imposed by goodreads. This gonna be too big a long review.
Chapter 1 The Depriciated Legacy of Cervantes
Milan Kundera draws a rough and brief sketch of history of novel. Kundera insists that the novels should do what only novels can do.
Can novels die? It has already happened
"About half a century ago the history of the novel came to a halt in the empire of Russian Communism. That is an event of huge importance, given the greatness of the Russian novel from Gogol to Bely. Thus the death of the novel is not just a fanciful idea. It has already happened. And we now know how the novel dies: it's not that it disappears; it falls away from its history. Its death occurs quietly, unnoticed, and no one is outraged."
But it is not because the novels are useless
"If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but because it exists in a world grown alien to it."
The novels published in Soviet Russia are inconseqential:
"By discovering nothing, they fail to participate in the sequence of discoveries that for me constitutes the history of the novel; they place themselves outside that history, or, if you like: they are novels that come after the history of the novel."
Chapter 2 A Dialogue on the art of novel
Kundera here argues two adjectives - 'Psychological' and 'philosphical' can not be used for his novels. To be honest, as much as I understand his desire to avoid such labels - Nabhokov didn't like them either; Atwood doesn't like being feminist. I think most great authors won't have been fans of these labels. Such labels seem to arise of critics' analysing the books.
Kundera also debunks several misconceptions on the rules-of-thumb regarding how novels should be written - including psychological realism. Kundera appreciates it (it is defining quality of most of what I love in books) in that excessive importance given to it can be really limiting to what novels can do. He is more critical of 'so-called modern novels' of 21 st century and writing novels that are too historical.
"Historiography writes the history of society, not of man. That is why the historical events my novels talk about are often forgotten by historiography. Example: In the years that followed the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the reign of terror against the public was preceded by officially organized massacres of dogs. An episode totally forgotten and without importance for a historian, for a political scientist, but of the utmost anthropological significance! By this one episode alone I suggested the historical climate of The Farewell Party."
Part 3 Notes Inspired by "The Sleepwalkers"
Gonna have to read that book. Most underrated of all great novels of last century according to Kundera.
"All great works (precisely because they are great) contain something unachieved. Broch is an inspiration to us not only because of what he brought off but also because of what he aimed for and missed."
"The unachieved in his work can show us the need for (1) a new art of radical divestment (which can encompass the complexity of existence in the modern world without losing architectonic clarity); (2) a new art of novelistic counterpoint (which can blend philosophy narrative, and dream into one music); (3) a new art of the specifically novelistic essay (which does not claim to bear an apodictic message but remains hypothetical, playful, or ironic)"
Part 4 The Art of Composition
Another interview. First of all, the novel is like music which should have
"Harsh juxtapositions instead of transitions, repetition instead of variation, and always head straight for the heart of things: only the note that says something essential has the right to exist. Roughly the same idea applies to the novel: it too is weighed down by "technique," by the conventions that do the author's work for him: present a character, describe a milieu, bring the action into a historical situation, fill time in the characters' lives with superfluous episodes; each shift of scene calls for new exposition, description, explanation. My own imperative is "Janacekian": to rid the novel of the automatism of novelistic technique, of novelistic verbalism; to make it dense."
If you have read his books, you probably have noticed that his writings do try to cut to the main point. To make your work longer is so 19the century according to Kundera.
And then, here is something I hear a lot myself "Show, not tell". Kundera often speaks himself in his books, Rushdi does it too and I can understand why they should do so - the trouble is showing makes books bigger than they need be and
"Even if I'm the one speaking, my reflections are connected to a character. I want to think his attitudes, his way of seeing things, in his stead and more deeply than he could do it himself."
And last, Kundera would have considered 'Games of thrones' and most of netflix series a farce.
"C.S.: What does the word "farce" mean to you?
M.K.: A form that puts enormous stress on plot, with its whole machinery of unforeseen and exaggerated coincidences."
Part 5 Somewhere Else
"When Kafka read the first chapter of The Trial to his friends, everyone laughed, including the author"
Kundera discusses the meaning of word 'Kafesque'. This is best analysis I have found on Kafka even better than one provided by Camus in 'Myth of Sysphyus'. But then Kundera had the added advantage of having lived in Czech Republic which was highly Kafesque.
One quality of Kafesque is ability of powerful to make the punished feel guilty
"One day, Amalia receives an obscene letter from a Castle official. Outraged, she tears it up. The Castle doesn't even need to criticize Amalia's rash behavior. Fear (the same fear our engineer saw in his secretary's eyes) acts all by itself. With no order, no perceptible sign from the Castle, everyone avoids Amalia's family like the plague.
Amalia's father tries to defend his family. But there is a problem: Not only is the source of the verdict impossible to find, but the verdict itself does not exist! To appeal, to request a pardon, you have to be convicted first! The father begs the Castle to proclaim the crime. So it's not enough to say that the punishment seeks the offense. In this pseudotheological world, the punished beg for recognition of their guilt!."
And the humor:
"The comic is inseparable from the very essence of the Kafkan" .... "But it's small comfort to the engineer to know that his story is comic. He is trapped in the joke of his own life like a fish in a bowl; he doesn't find it funny. Indeed, a joke is a joke only if you're outside the bowl; by contrast, the Kafkan takes us inside, into the guts of a joke, into the horror of the comic."
Which worsens the tragedy:
"the tragic more bearable by lightening the tone; it doesn't accompany the tragic, not at all, it destroys it in the egg and thus deprives the victims of the only consolation they could hope for: the consolation to be found in the (real or supposed) grandeur of tragedy."
There is a loss of solitude and privacy:
"The Land-Surveyor K. is not in the least pursuing people and their warmth, he is not trying to become "a man among men" like Sartre's Orestes; he wants acceptance not from a community but from an institution. To have it, he must pay dearly: he must renounce his solitude. And this is his hell: he is never alone, the two assistants sent by the Castle follow him always. When he first makes love with Frieda, the two men are there, sitting on the cafe counter over the lovers, and from then on they are never absent from their bed. Not the curse of solitude but the violation of solitude is Kafka's obsession!"
USSR was heavily Kafesque in all these ways. But
"Kafka made no prophecies. All he did was see what was "behind." He did not know that his seeing was also a fore-seeing. He did not intend to unmask a social system. He shed light on the mechanisms he knew from private and microsocial human practice, not suspecting that later developments would put those mechanisms into action on the great stage of History."
Chapter 6 Sixty-three words
"I once left a publisher for the sole reason that he tried to change my semicolons to periods."
A dictionary Kundera created to help his translators.
"Obscenity. We can use obscene words in a foreign language, but they are not heard as such. An obscenity pronounced with an accent becomes comical. The difficulty of being obscene with a foreign woman. Obscenity: the root that attaches us most deeply to our homeland."
"Opus. The excellent custom of composers. They give opus numbers only to works they see as "valid." They do not number works written in their immature period, or occasional pieces, or technical exercises."
"Vulgarity: the humiliating submission of the soul to the rule of the down-below. The novel first undertook the immense theme of vulgarity in Joyce's Ulysses."
"Kitsch. Unknown in France, or known only in a very impoverished sense. In the French version of Hermann Broch's celebrated essay, the word "kitsch" is translated as "junk art" (art de pacotille). A misinterpretation, for Broch demonstrates that kitsch is something other than simply a work in poor taste. There is a kitsch attitude. Kitsch behavior. The kitsch-man's (Kitschmensch) need for kitsch: it is the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one's own reflection."
"Misomusist. To be without a feeling for art is no disaster. A person can live in peace without reading Proust or listening to Schubert. But the misomusist does not live in peace. He feels humiliated by the existence of something that is beyond him, and he hates it. There is a popular misomusy just as there is a popular anti-Semitism. The fascist and Communist regimes made use of it when they declared war on modern art. But there is an intellectual, sophisticated misomusy as well: it takes revenge on art by forcing it to a purpose beyond the aesthetic. The doctrine of engage art: art as an instrument of politics."
"The desire to be modern is an archetype, that is, an irrational imperative, anchored deeply within us, a persistent form whose content is changeable and indeterminate: what is modern is what declares itself modern and is accepted as such."
"Nonthought. This cannot be translated by "absence of thought." Absence of thought indicates a nonreality the disappearance of a reality. We cannot say that an absence is aggressive, or that it is spreading. "Nonthought," on the other hand, describes a reality, a force; I can therefore say "pervasive non-thought"; "the nonthought of received ideas"; "the mass media's nonthought"; etc.
"The moment Kafka attracts more attention than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins."
Chapter 7 Jerusalem Address: The Novel and Europe
"But what is that wisdom, what is the novel? There is a fine Jewish proverb: Man thinks, God laughs. Inspired by that adage, I like to imagine that Francois Rabelais heard God's laughter one day, and thus was born the idea of the first great European novel. It pleases me to think that the art of the novel came into the world as the echo of God's laughter."
What is opposite of a novelist? an agelaste:
"Francois Rabelais invented a number of neologisms that have since entered the French and other languages, but one of his words has been forgotten, and this is regrettable. It is the word agelaste; it comes from the Greek and it means a man who does not laugh, who has no sense of humor. Rabelais detested the agelastes. He feared them. He complained that the agelastes treated him so atrociously that he nearly stopped writing forever."
"No peace is possible between the novelist and the agelaste. Never having heard God's laughter, the agelastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin."
and most of self-claimed philosphers I have come across are agelaste.
"The novel's wisdom is different from that of philosophy. The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor. One of Europe's major failures is that it never understood the most European of the arts—the novel; neither its spirit, nor its great knowledge and discoveries, nor the autonomy of its history. The art inspired by God's laughter does not by nature serve ideological certitudes, it contradicts them. Like Penelope, it undoes each night the tapestry that the theologians, philosophers, and learned men have woven the day before."
Another problem a novelist fights is 'received ideas'. Flaubert used to collect such ideas:
"He put them into a celebrated Dictionnaire des idees regues. We can use this title to declare: Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas. Flaubert's discovery is more important for the future of the world than the most startling ideas of Marx or Freud. For we could imagine the world without the class struggle or without psychoanalysis, but not without the irresistible flood of received ideas that—programmed into computers, j propagated by the mass media—threaten soon to become a force that will crush all original and individual thought and thus will smother the very essence of the European culture of the Modern Era."
Kind of reminds me of most Modi-Bhakts who would go repeating whatever the few right wings organisations tell them. And the last enemy of novelist is kitsch
"The word "kitsch" describes the attitude of those who want to please the greatest number, at any cost. To please, one must confirm what everyone wants to hear, put oneself at the service of received ideas. Kitsch is the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling. It moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel. Today, fifty years later, Broch's remark is becoming truer still. Given the imperative necessity to please and thereby to gain the attention of the greatest number, the aesthetic of the mass media is inevitably that of kitsch"
Which is kind of my problem with most YA books.
Chapter 1 The Depriciated Legacy of Cervantes
Milan Kundera draws a rough and brief sketch of history of novel. Kundera insists that the novels should do what only novels can do.
Can novels die? It has already happened
"About half a century ago the history of the novel came to a halt in the empire of Russian Communism. That is an event of huge importance, given the greatness of the Russian novel from Gogol to Bely. Thus the death of the novel is not just a fanciful idea. It has already happened. And we now know how the novel dies: it's not that it disappears; it falls away from its history. Its death occurs quietly, unnoticed, and no one is outraged."
But it is not because the novels are useless
"If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but because it exists in a world grown alien to it."
The novels published in Soviet Russia are inconseqential:
"By discovering nothing, they fail to participate in the sequence of discoveries that for me constitutes the history of the novel; they place themselves outside that history, or, if you like: they are novels that come after the history of the novel."
Chapter 2 A Dialogue on the art of novel
Kundera here argues two adjectives - 'Psychological' and 'philosphical' can not be used for his novels. To be honest, as much as I understand his desire to avoid such labels - Nabhokov didn't like them either; Atwood doesn't like being feminist. I think most great authors won't have been fans of these labels. Such labels seem to arise of critics' analysing the books.
Kundera also debunks several misconceptions on the rules-of-thumb regarding how novels should be written - including psychological realism. Kundera appreciates it (it is defining quality of most of what I love in books) in that excessive importance given to it can be really limiting to what novels can do. He is more critical of 'so-called modern novels' of 21 st century and writing novels that are too historical.
"Historiography writes the history of society, not of man. That is why the historical events my novels talk about are often forgotten by historiography. Example: In the years that followed the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the reign of terror against the public was preceded by officially organized massacres of dogs. An episode totally forgotten and without importance for a historian, for a political scientist, but of the utmost anthropological significance! By this one episode alone I suggested the historical climate of The Farewell Party."
Part 3 Notes Inspired by "The Sleepwalkers"
Gonna have to read that book. Most underrated of all great novels of last century according to Kundera.
"All great works (precisely because they are great) contain something unachieved. Broch is an inspiration to us not only because of what he brought off but also because of what he aimed for and missed."
"The unachieved in his work can show us the need for (1) a new art of radical divestment (which can encompass the complexity of existence in the modern world without losing architectonic clarity); (2) a new art of novelistic counterpoint (which can blend philosophy narrative, and dream into one music); (3) a new art of the specifically novelistic essay (which does not claim to bear an apodictic message but remains hypothetical, playful, or ironic)"
Part 4 The Art of Composition
Another interview. First of all, the novel is like music which should have
"Harsh juxtapositions instead of transitions, repetition instead of variation, and always head straight for the heart of things: only the note that says something essential has the right to exist. Roughly the same idea applies to the novel: it too is weighed down by "technique," by the conventions that do the author's work for him: present a character, describe a milieu, bring the action into a historical situation, fill time in the characters' lives with superfluous episodes; each shift of scene calls for new exposition, description, explanation. My own imperative is "Janacekian": to rid the novel of the automatism of novelistic technique, of novelistic verbalism; to make it dense."
If you have read his books, you probably have noticed that his writings do try to cut to the main point. To make your work longer is so 19the century according to Kundera.
And then, here is something I hear a lot myself "Show, not tell". Kundera often speaks himself in his books, Rushdi does it too and I can understand why they should do so - the trouble is showing makes books bigger than they need be and
"Even if I'm the one speaking, my reflections are connected to a character. I want to think his attitudes, his way of seeing things, in his stead and more deeply than he could do it himself."
And last, Kundera would have considered 'Games of thrones' and most of netflix series a farce.
"C.S.: What does the word "farce" mean to you?
M.K.: A form that puts enormous stress on plot, with its whole machinery of unforeseen and exaggerated coincidences."
Part 5 Somewhere Else
"When Kafka read the first chapter of The Trial to his friends, everyone laughed, including the author"
Kundera discusses the meaning of word 'Kafesque'. This is best analysis I have found on Kafka even better than one provided by Camus in 'Myth of Sysphyus'. But then Kundera had the added advantage of having lived in Czech Republic which was highly Kafesque.
One quality of Kafesque is ability of powerful to make the punished feel guilty
"One day, Amalia receives an obscene letter from a Castle official. Outraged, she tears it up. The Castle doesn't even need to criticize Amalia's rash behavior. Fear (the same fear our engineer saw in his secretary's eyes) acts all by itself. With no order, no perceptible sign from the Castle, everyone avoids Amalia's family like the plague.
Amalia's father tries to defend his family. But there is a problem: Not only is the source of the verdict impossible to find, but the verdict itself does not exist! To appeal, to request a pardon, you have to be convicted first! The father begs the Castle to proclaim the crime. So it's not enough to say that the punishment seeks the offense. In this pseudotheological world, the punished beg for recognition of their guilt!."
And the humor:
"The comic is inseparable from the very essence of the Kafkan" .... "But it's small comfort to the engineer to know that his story is comic. He is trapped in the joke of his own life like a fish in a bowl; he doesn't find it funny. Indeed, a joke is a joke only if you're outside the bowl; by contrast, the Kafkan takes us inside, into the guts of a joke, into the horror of the comic."
Which worsens the tragedy:
"the tragic more bearable by lightening the tone; it doesn't accompany the tragic, not at all, it destroys it in the egg and thus deprives the victims of the only consolation they could hope for: the consolation to be found in the (real or supposed) grandeur of tragedy."
There is a loss of solitude and privacy:
"The Land-Surveyor K. is not in the least pursuing people and their warmth, he is not trying to become "a man among men" like Sartre's Orestes; he wants acceptance not from a community but from an institution. To have it, he must pay dearly: he must renounce his solitude. And this is his hell: he is never alone, the two assistants sent by the Castle follow him always. When he first makes love with Frieda, the two men are there, sitting on the cafe counter over the lovers, and from then on they are never absent from their bed. Not the curse of solitude but the violation of solitude is Kafka's obsession!"
USSR was heavily Kafesque in all these ways. But
"Kafka made no prophecies. All he did was see what was "behind." He did not know that his seeing was also a fore-seeing. He did not intend to unmask a social system. He shed light on the mechanisms he knew from private and microsocial human practice, not suspecting that later developments would put those mechanisms into action on the great stage of History."
Chapter 6 Sixty-three words
"I once left a publisher for the sole reason that he tried to change my semicolons to periods."
A dictionary Kundera created to help his translators.
"Obscenity. We can use obscene words in a foreign language, but they are not heard as such. An obscenity pronounced with an accent becomes comical. The difficulty of being obscene with a foreign woman. Obscenity: the root that attaches us most deeply to our homeland."
"Opus. The excellent custom of composers. They give opus numbers only to works they see as "valid." They do not number works written in their immature period, or occasional pieces, or technical exercises."
"Vulgarity: the humiliating submission of the soul to the rule of the down-below. The novel first undertook the immense theme of vulgarity in Joyce's Ulysses."
"Kitsch. Unknown in France, or known only in a very impoverished sense. In the French version of Hermann Broch's celebrated essay, the word "kitsch" is translated as "junk art" (art de pacotille). A misinterpretation, for Broch demonstrates that kitsch is something other than simply a work in poor taste. There is a kitsch attitude. Kitsch behavior. The kitsch-man's (Kitschmensch) need for kitsch: it is the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one's own reflection."
"Misomusist. To be without a feeling for art is no disaster. A person can live in peace without reading Proust or listening to Schubert. But the misomusist does not live in peace. He feels humiliated by the existence of something that is beyond him, and he hates it. There is a popular misomusy just as there is a popular anti-Semitism. The fascist and Communist regimes made use of it when they declared war on modern art. But there is an intellectual, sophisticated misomusy as well: it takes revenge on art by forcing it to a purpose beyond the aesthetic. The doctrine of engage art: art as an instrument of politics."
"The desire to be modern is an archetype, that is, an irrational imperative, anchored deeply within us, a persistent form whose content is changeable and indeterminate: what is modern is what declares itself modern and is accepted as such."
"Nonthought. This cannot be translated by "absence of thought." Absence of thought indicates a nonreality the disappearance of a reality. We cannot say that an absence is aggressive, or that it is spreading. "Nonthought," on the other hand, describes a reality, a force; I can therefore say "pervasive non-thought"; "the nonthought of received ideas"; "the mass media's nonthought"; etc.
"The moment Kafka attracts more attention than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins."
Chapter 7 Jerusalem Address: The Novel and Europe
"But what is that wisdom, what is the novel? There is a fine Jewish proverb: Man thinks, God laughs. Inspired by that adage, I like to imagine that Francois Rabelais heard God's laughter one day, and thus was born the idea of the first great European novel. It pleases me to think that the art of the novel came into the world as the echo of God's laughter."
What is opposite of a novelist? an agelaste:
"Francois Rabelais invented a number of neologisms that have since entered the French and other languages, but one of his words has been forgotten, and this is regrettable. It is the word agelaste; it comes from the Greek and it means a man who does not laugh, who has no sense of humor. Rabelais detested the agelastes. He feared them. He complained that the agelastes treated him so atrociously that he nearly stopped writing forever."
"No peace is possible between the novelist and the agelaste. Never having heard God's laughter, the agelastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin."
and most of self-claimed philosphers I have come across are agelaste.
"The novel's wisdom is different from that of philosophy. The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor. One of Europe's major failures is that it never understood the most European of the arts—the novel; neither its spirit, nor its great knowledge and discoveries, nor the autonomy of its history. The art inspired by God's laughter does not by nature serve ideological certitudes, it contradicts them. Like Penelope, it undoes each night the tapestry that the theologians, philosophers, and learned men have woven the day before."
Another problem a novelist fights is 'received ideas'. Flaubert used to collect such ideas:
"He put them into a celebrated Dictionnaire des idees regues. We can use this title to declare: Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas. Flaubert's discovery is more important for the future of the world than the most startling ideas of Marx or Freud. For we could imagine the world without the class struggle or without psychoanalysis, but not without the irresistible flood of received ideas that—programmed into computers, j propagated by the mass media—threaten soon to become a force that will crush all original and individual thought and thus will smother the very essence of the European culture of the Modern Era."
Kind of reminds me of most Modi-Bhakts who would go repeating whatever the few right wings organisations tell them. And the last enemy of novelist is kitsch
"The word "kitsch" describes the attitude of those who want to please the greatest number, at any cost. To please, one must confirm what everyone wants to hear, put oneself at the service of received ideas. Kitsch is the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling. It moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel. Today, fifty years later, Broch's remark is becoming truer still. Given the imperative necessity to please and thereby to gain the attention of the greatest number, the aesthetic of the mass media is inevitably that of kitsch"
Which is kind of my problem with most YA books.
biolexicon's review against another edition
5.0
Part of the way through any book, I usually get a good feeling about how many stars I'm going to give it. I finished this one and thought to myself, "I have *no* idea." Maybe it was a mistake to read this before reading any of Kundera's novels.
The book was dense, but his ideas are intriguing. Provocative, really. I don't use that word very often because most works that are provocative are aiming to be so, which seems dishonest. But this book doesn't fit that, it seems honest.
I've decided to give it 5 stars. There are a number of ideas presented that I disagree with (pages 6, 83, 104, 127, 140 to be exact). I could even be persuaded that he's absolutely full of shit (it's possible to be honest and full of shit both). But the work was provocative, held my attention and made me think. Having done that, I think it's worthy of 5 stars.
The book was dense, but his ideas are intriguing. Provocative, really. I don't use that word very often because most works that are provocative are aiming to be so, which seems dishonest. But this book doesn't fit that, it seems honest.
I've decided to give it 5 stars. There are a number of ideas presented that I disagree with (pages 6, 83, 104, 127, 140 to be exact). I could even be persuaded that he's absolutely full of shit (it's possible to be honest and full of shit both). But the work was provocative, held my attention and made me think. Having done that, I think it's worthy of 5 stars.