Li Gongming - Secretary of the Week: Kundera who refuses to return and his... Doubt and resistance

Li Gongming

Milan Kundera: A Writer's Life, by Jean-Dominique Brie, translated by Liu Yunhong/ Xu Jun, Nanjing University Press/Yazhong Culture, January 2021 edition, 332 pp., 68.00 yuan

The first book to read in the New Year is Kundera's biography, Milan Kundera: A Writer's Life by French writer Jean-Dominique Brierre (original title Milan Kunders: Une vie d'écrivain, 2019; translated by Liu Yunhong and Xu Jun, Nanjing University Press, January 2021). Having read Kundera's novels for so many years since the eighties, this is the first time I have read his biography. Kundera had always been mindful of stealth, and it was difficult to write his biography. The publication of this translation is also not easy, such as the two times in the middle of the Yishe, as well as the first point of the translator's reply to the editor's letter "Explanation" (see "Editor's Notes", https://book.douban.com/subject/35285924/) and the last sentence "Explanation" in the "Translator's Preface" of the book. The Editor's Note says that these tribulations are like the scars on a veteran's body— a good thing to say — so hopefully ," that "this spark can burn." At the beginning of the new year, it is really encouraging to read editorial notes such as "Scars" and "Spark".

The author, Brie, a journalist by training and has written many biographies of artists, "has a special sensitivity and ability to capture news and materials, and his writership makes him have his own understanding of literature and a unique way of entering the text.". The original notes in the book indicate that the author consulted many documents, especially some of Kundera's interviews, but because the author did not give a special account of the relevant information and research status, I do not know much about his academic preparation for the writing of this biography. Originally, Kundera, as a writer, seemed reluctant to be "studied". A recent and important example is the Milan Kundera Collection, published under his authority in 2011, which excludes his poetic works, works of the times or works that he considers unfinished, including those he published in the magazine Debate in the 1980s; and unlike the usual practice of the "Seven Star Library", there is no inclusion of notes, commentaries and related materials, and only the only briefs on his work written by François Ricard with the author's permission. Ricard's explanation was: "This is indeed the author's version. Not an erudite or research version that seeks to overwhelm the text with a variety of commentaries and annotations, that is to say, not an explanatory version. ...... In Kundera's case, explanatory commentary is purely superfluous, as there is nothing obscure in his text. Kundera's style is clarity itself, without obscure innuendo. In my opinion, annotations tend to quickly degenerate into interpretations. (Postscript, p. 294) In the same year, a research team at the University of Lausanne published an article in the Swiss newspaper Zeitung Zeitung, "Kundera's Version of the "Seven Stars Library", which pointed out and denounced this as "an attempt to manipulate" and that the elimination of all material was merely a means by which the author imposed some image of his work. The article argues that "it is of course his right that the author can aspire to an art that is automatically established, intrinsically unified and freed from any historical situation." But it's worrying that a university professor and a library known for its rigor are pursuing this insight." (295 pages)

It seems to me that Ricard's explanation is problematic, and that there is clearly no need for any explanation in Kundera's text. Kundera himself, in reviewing the intent of The Masters of the Keys, offers the "key" of interpretation in order to eliminate the reader's limited interpretation—a play that is closer to Ionescu's play than to a political one. (p. 65) "Kundera often felt the need to provide a 'usage note' for his works, especially those of the 1960s, because sometimes he himself consciously or unconsciously contributed to misunderstandings because of ambiguity. (p. 66) This shows that the necessary annotations and interpretations are not superfluous. Lausanne's research team saw the problem as an "attempt to manipulate" a bit of a scathing argument. I think that this "Seven Stars Library" edition continues and confirms Kundera's unique style precisely, and the pure textuality of the self-identity image itself is also an important research topic.

For Kundera's works, there are many readers, but there may also be misinterpretations; those who do not like them may be because of prejudice and fear, all because of the positions, tendencies and ideologies in Kundera's works, but also because the atmosphere of his time and personal circumstances can make people have rich associations. I have at hand a kundera research material edited and published in China many years ago, Li Fengliang and Li Yan edited "The Inspiration of Dialogue: A Collection of Milan Kundera Research Materials" (China Friendship Publishing Company, 1999), which includes the discussions of Kundera's works by some scholars and translators in the fields of domestic literature and art and foreign literature, as well as several interviews and commentaries on Kundera by foreign scholars. One of them, a 1986 interview with the Czech journalist Karel Hvízgala, who lives in West Germany, is particularly worth reading, including an interview with Wenceslav Javier on Kundera. This collection can reflect the Kundera fever we once had, and although it looks back today, it is a bit of a passing scene, but this "Milan Kundera: A Writer's Life" at least adds a sense of reality to our review. From a variety of perspectives, although this kundera biography has tried to excavate the life experience of the master, the more distinctive color is a biography of the master's literature and the political changes of the times, which is actually a writer's study that examines and discusses Kundera's literary life in the torrent of the politics of the times and culture.

The "Translator's Preface", entitled "The Sober and Unwilling Kundera," deals mainly with two issues: "The Sober, Enlightened Gaze" and "The Impossible Return." Regarding "sobriety" and "enlightenment", Kundera himself summed it up in The Betrayed Testament: "The only thing I deeply desire is a sober, enlightened gaze. Finally, I found him in the art of fiction. So, for me, to be a novelist is not just about practicing a certain 'literary genre': it is also an attitude, a wisdom, a position; a position that excludes any assimilation into a certain politics, a certain religion, a certain ideology, a certain ethics, a certain collective position; a conscious, stubborn, furious differentiation, not as an escape or passivity, but as resistance, rebellion, challenge. This includes Kundera's sober understanding of the relationship between czech political changes and his own literary creation after the end of the eighties, and his vision of the simplistic isolation and removal of past cultural traditions by the market and mass media; at the same time, it also reflects his deep understanding and adherence to the universal meaning of literature and art and the fundamental position of the writer, although he knows that the politicized interpretation of his past works at a sharp political turning point may bring him a broader reputation, but he knows that it is too politicized, An overly ideological interpretation must have deviated from his original intention of writing literature and his identity as a writer. "A sober understanding has strengthened his position and choice: he does not want his work to become a footnote to politics, nor does he want his work to become an appendix to his personal experience." (Translator's preface, iv) On the one hand, "the national misfortune poet is lucky", angry out of the poet; on the other hand, politics comes and goes, and only human works of art live forever. But in the specific interpretation of his works, his wishes and the reading determined by the text are often full of contradictions, and the reading of works that are divorced from the historical soil and the real political atmosphere cannot be carried out at all.

With regard to the "impossible regression", the problem is more complicated. For Kundera, the so-called "return" refers not only to the return to the Czech Republic after being stripped of his citizenship and the restoration of his national identity, but also to re-examine and re-choose his past literary creations, as well as the pursuit of the spiritual bloodline of human beings on a deeper spiritual and cultural level. For a long time his works in Czech were banned in Czechoslovakia for political reasons, but when the Czech Republic entered a new era and political taboos ceased to exist, he was still hesitant to publish in the Czech Republic such works as "Living Elsewhere", "Farewell to the Round Dance", "Laughter and Forgetfulness" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", and especially the republishment of his early poems. Brie believes that the reason why the young Kundera was attracted to poetry was both the factor of czech cultural tradition and the spiritual appeal of Western surrealist poetry, but the most fundamental reason was that the young Kundera had revolutionary ideals and passions. It is not difficult for us to understand that youth is always easily associated with revolution and lyric poetry. I used to read "Song of Youth" and remember a plot about poetry and revolution: Lu Jiachuan, the head of the underground party at Peking University, said to Shelley, "If winter comes, will spring be far away?" The verse ended his square speech, and Lin Daojing repeated the poem with tears in her eyes, which was the moment of her political and poetic enlightenment. Many years later, some readers understand that the poem implies another meaning: if winter comes, it is likely that spring will be farther away. From lyric poetry to anti-lyric poetry, we have the same experience as Kundera, as Briet says in the book, "Kundera became sober, freed from his revolutionary fantasies, and gradually abandoned the lyricism that was closely connected with the previous period, and turned to doubt and skepticism, which in his view was not confused with nihilism: 'Skepticism does not make the world into nothingness, but turns the world into a series of problems.'" Because of this, skepticism is the richest state I've ever experienced. (p. 63) Isn't the change in Shelley's poetic passages about winter and spring the same journey from lyrical poetry associated with fantasy to rich and profound skepticism? Kundera's reluctance to publicly reprint his early poetry in his later years is still the same reason that prompted him to abandon poetry when he was nearly thirty years old. Poetry was abandoned because he "became sober, freed from his revolutionary fantasies, and gradually abandoned the lyricism that was closely connected with the previous period and turned to doubt and skepticism..." (p. 63) Brie further pointed out that Czech artists and writers at that time could only have a single, simplified worldview, but most people knew that reality was diverse, complex, and sometimes contradictory, "in this sense, Kundera chose to turn to fiction in the early 1960s. it is a rebellion against ideological tyranny in Czechoslovak literature". (p. 72) His reluctance to republish the poetry of his early years in his later period should be understood as his reluctance to return to the lyrical self of the revolutionary fantasy, as François Ricard put it, "he no longer liked the man who wrote these verses." He and the poet are no longer the same person." We understand it from our own experience, and although it is sometimes natural to hum the beautiful melodies we were familiar with as children (many of which were originally appropriated from folk songs), we are no longer willing to return to the lyrical self of that era.

In order to avoid overly politicized interpretation and interpretation of Kundera's novels, Briey tries to introduce the reader into kundera's life situation as much as possible, helping the reader to understand his mental journey, the true connection between his creation and life. But it is precisely because of this that the book has a wealth of rich and specific descriptions of Kundera's social life in the historical era, his personal life situation, and his relationship with friends, which has become a necessary and unavoidable politicized interpretation for many readers who were not yet familiar with the czech political situation in the 1950s and 1980s. Obviously, the excessive politicized interpretation of the author's creative psychology and the actual connotation of the work, as well as the deliberate avoidance and concealment of the creative background and the true connection between the basic ideas of the work and the politics of the times, are contrary to the author's true creative intentions. Therefore, in this biography of Kundera, we see that the author often quotes the description of the political situation of the times in Kundera's novels, and naturally associates the author's writing background with the interpretation of the work. Briey clearly reveals the contradiction between Kundera's subjective aspirations and creative practice. The manuscript of his first novel, Joke, was read by a friend before it was published in 1966, and when asked if Kundera was a novel about history, he immediately objected and said, "I don't take the 'picture of the times' to heart." Breeyer says this is because he did not want to be a witness to his time, but he always placed the novel in a certain historical period and in a certain exact place, and his literary choices always depended on a specific historical background. "What else can he do? Kundera's character formation period was spent in a european land that experienced a series of ongoing geopolitical upheavals between 1914 and 1989. (p. 2) This is the historical and political character of Kundera's work that can never be dispelled.

The book's ninth chapter, "The Long Winter," is a great example of Kundera's work in combination with history and literature. On August 20, 1968, Soviet troops landed in Prague in the night, on the morning of August 27 Dubček signed the Moscow Agreement, and returned to Prague in the evening to make a radio speech. Here Brie cuts to Kundera's description of The Unbearable Lightness of Life: Theresa can never forget the pause in his speech, which is heartbreaking. ...... Facing the entire population clinging to the radio, he could not breathe and gasped again and again. In this silence is the terror that has encroached upon the whole country. Brie said that "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" is a great novel about the "Prague Spring". (pp. 127-128) What happened after that was that more and more intellectuals chose to go into exile, but Kundera remained unmoved, with Bree speaking of one reason, which was that the restoration of despotism in the Czech Republic could only be carried out gradually, and kundera was not yet directly threatened. So when the French version of his Joke was launched in France in October of the same year, he was optimistic when questioned by reporters in France, embarrassed and uneasy about aragon's preface to Joke. On December 19, four months after the Soviet invasion, Kundera published an article titled "The Fate of the Czech Republic," condemning Václav Havel while continuing to express optimism, which provoked a fierce polemic in February of the following year. Bree argued that "this controversy shows that after the defeat of the 'Prague Spring', an atmosphere of uncertainty prevailed in Czechoslovakia." Over time, we are bound to see the error of Kundera's judgment and Javier's insight." (p. 136) In early 1970, as Husak's team stepped up "normalization," Kundera's books were also withdrawn from libraries and bookstores, and in 1972 he was fired from the Prague Film and Television Academy, barely surviving. With the help of a friend, he spent several years anonymously hosting an astrology column for a weekly magazine. In a 1979 interview published in Le Monde, Kundera argued that the mass deaths meant not only deliberately purging the opponent, but also eliminating Czech culture by erasing it from memory. (p. 140) This is the most thrilling chapter in the book, and readers who have also survived the "long winter" are best able to interpret the scenes described by Brie.

The storm of concern that has elicited beyond his work and ideas in Kundera's public career to date may be called a political event was sparked by an article published in the Czech weekly Respekt in October 2008 by historian Adam Hadilek and journalist Peter Teschernak. The article revealed an archival document from the Czechoslovak Political Police, a transcript of an interrogation dated 14 March 1950, showing that Milan Kundera, then twenty, had denounced Miloslav Dvoražek, a young deserter who had fled the Czechoslovak army to the West, resulting in his twenty-two years in prison. Kundera broke his silence in the face of the allegations, categorically denying the matter, and was backed by Václav Havel and historian Zdnek Pesart, as well as several writers of international repute, who considered it "an organized smear campaign." In the book, Brie does not dare to assert what the truth of the matter is, but only says that it is assumed that Kundera went to the police station that day, not to report a traitor, but to report that a suspicious person had come to the university dormitory—Kundera was the head of the student at the time, and if he did not report it, he would be held accountable. Brieyer thought this version might be credible, but his opponents did not think it would whitewash him, because there had been public opinion that he had tried to conceal his past as an official writer after arriving in the West, and accused him of creating during his stay in France as a form of cultural marketing. In the view of the Czech novelist Ivan Klima, the main reason why some Czech intellectuals opposed Kundera was the super-literary element: many intellectuals who remained at home or went into exile abroad underwent various tests and sacrificed personal freedom and interests, so many felt that Kundera deviated from this struggle. (p. 268) Brie interprets the events in the context of the Czech political climate after the 1990s: with the collapse of the original whistleblowing system, uncertainty about past whistleblowers and the investigation of secret police services has left people in a paranoid delusion; the release of the government's archives is undoubtedly a historical progress, but it cannot prevent individual retaliation. Kundera's enemies used this uncertainty to discredit Kundera. ...... This is a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: they are not content to let the political experience of the writer come to light, but to connect it with ... The most despicable deeds of the times are associated, blaming his integrity and his sense of morality. In the end, it is to question the legitimacy of his work. (pp. 269-270) Sure enough, there was indeed a "reinterpretation" of Kundera's work after the events, such as the discovery that "whistleblowing has always played a very important role in Kundera's work." Eighty-year-old historian Zdnek Pesart says the political ruptures and love struggles of that era sowed the seeds of tragedy among college students, and Briey believes that according to him, the informer is another person. The incident also fully exposed the terrible power of the media: the ambiguous, "possible" statements of certain headlines are more insidious than real confirmations, and the parties can only add fuel to the fire by saying anything. Moreover, if linked to Kundera's constant efforts to keep his private life from being exposed to the public, this episode also illustrates that in the sinister and complex political landscape of the times, the sowing of personal destiny is often inevitable.

Between public opinion and private life, Kundera once quoted Nabokov as saying: "I hate to stick my nose into the precious life of a great writer, and no biographer can lift the veil on my private life." He also quoted Faulkner: "As an individual being, we must have the ambition to be eliminated and eliminated by capitalized history, and never leave any traces, no garbage, except for the books I have printed." (p. 273) Except for printed books and articles, there is no trace left in this world, which is the true wish of many writers. But for Kundera, there was a more conscious academic tradition—derived from the Prague School's view of literature, Czech structuralism, which held that literary texts could only be understood as autonomous symbolic structures according to their proprietary nature, and should not be disturbed by any non-literary reality. Brieyer argues that this academic tradition allows us to understand Kundera's determined will to strive to disappear behind the work. (p. 274) On July 1, 1981, Milan Kundera was granted French citizenship by François Mitterrand, stating that "France has become the motherland of my book." So, in a sense, I followed the path of my book." (Chronology) Taking books as the motherland and the road is also a kind of writer's firm will.

In the "Afterword", Briey writes this passage can be regarded as the best overview of Kundera: "Behind the thinking, although there is a sadness that can be felt, Kundera has always been faithful to himself, and he has tried to make all kinds of judgments, but instead uses his favorite weapon of irony to talk about things." A firm view that transcends darkness and awakening saves him from sorrow, prompting him to write, as if it were an overview of his entire work: 'We have long understood that it is no longer possible to overthrow the world, to reshape it, to prevent it from running forward unfortunately.' There is only one possible resistance: don't take it too seriously. (p. 296) It turns out that for Kundera, the only possible and most effective resistance, whether it is refusal to return or doubt and resistance, is "not to take it too seriously."

Editor-in-Charge: Huang Xiaofeng