Milan Kundera died: he let Chinese readers know the "lightness of life", and after many years of running with the Nobel Prize, he still missed the Nobel Prize
On the afternoon of the 12th, according to the news of the Russian News Agency and TASS News quoted by the global network, Milan Kundera, a well-known European writer, passed away at the age of 94.
Milan Kundera is a world-renowned novelist, literary critic and one of the most widely read writers in the world. Born in the Czech Republic in 1929, he moved to France in 1975 and regained his Czech citizenship in December 2019 with works such as "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", "Joke", "Living Elsewhere", "Farewell Waltz", "Laughing and Forgoting", "Slow" and so on.
▲ Milan Kundera
According to Red Star News, Milan Kundera won the Medici Literary Prize in 1973, the Jerusalem Literary Prize in 1985, the Académie française Literary Prize in 2001, and the Kafka International Literary Prize in 2020. However, as a world-renowned literary figure, although Milan Kundera has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature many times, he is also the "running king" of the Nobel Prize, and he still has no chance for this world literature prize in his life.
"The Unbearable Lightness of Life" has been adapted into an award-winning film
Among Milan Kundera's works, "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" is the most familiar to Chinese readers. First published in 1984, the novel describes the love life between Thomas and Teresa and Salina. The novel begins with a discussion of "eternal reincarnation" and takes the reader into thinking about a series of issues, such as light and heavy, spirit and flesh.
In this novel, Milan Kundera introduces the novel to a philosophical level through the different experiences of several characters, through their choice of life, thinking about multiple categories such as return, kitsch, forgetting, time, contingency and inevitability, and the author's concern for the fate and value of life is the theme of the book.
The film "Prague Love" released in 1988, directed and written by the famous American filmmaker Philip Kaufman, adapted from "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", Milan Kundera also participated in the screenwriting work.
The film has a strong cast of actors, playing Thomas is the first British actor in Oscar history to win three Best Actor awards, Daniel Day Lewis, playing Theresa is French actress Juliette Binoche, and Sabina is played by Swedish actress Lena Orin.
▲ The Chinese edition of "The Unbearable Lightness of Life".
The film was one of the top ten American films of 1988, nominated for the 1989 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Golden Globe Award for Best Feature Film and Best Supporting Actress (Lena Orin), and won the British Film and Television Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the American Film Critics Association Award for Best Director and Best Picture.
"Prague Love" is only the title given by the film when it was introduced to Hong Kong and Taiwan in China, in fact, the title of this film comes from Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Life".
Many Chinese writers spoke highly of Milan Kundera
According to Shangguan News reports, if you want to select "contemporary foreign writers with the greatest influence on contemporary Chinese writers", there are two names that have to be mentioned: one is García Márquez, and the other is Milan Kundera, who has been highly praised by many well-known Chinese writers.
Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan said of Milan Kundera: "The irony in the novel is a bit like black humor, but not quite, forming a unique taste. ”
Wang Anyi said: "No writer has done the same care for individual feelings as Kundera, which will make people feel warm, which is also one of Kundera's literary values." ”
While reading Kundera's Ignorance, Bi Feiyu said that he "saw an old man who understood the world, and when he heard the god of fate knocking on his door, he opened his door, full of helplessness and grief." ”
Wang Dongliang, translator of In Search of Milan Kundera, said: "Reading Kundera is enjoyable and intellectual, and it usually opens the reader's eyes, peeling away the truth of certain things that we are accustomed to ignoring and the inner connections between them; Reading Kundera is also embarrassing, he always relentlessly sees through the essence of life, the essence of human nature, so that the reader has to face his own existence, there is no way to escape. ”
▲ "Prague Love" movie poster.
Xu Jun, a French translator, writer and critic of "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", said: "For Kundera, fiction is to expand the possibility of human existence, and in "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", I think the most important one is that Kundera reveals the inevitable circumstances arising from opposing dualities. We need to get out of the opposing duality, to find, to open up the possibility of everyone's survival. So is love, so is life, and so is relationships with others. ”
Milan Kundera Classic Quotes
Man has an innate and unquenchable desire to judge before understanding.
- "The Art of Fiction"
Surrendering oneself to the eyes of others is the source of unease and doubt.
- "Living Elsewhere"
From now on, I began to choose my life carefully, and I no longer easily allowed myself to get lost in all kinds of temptations. I have heard the call from afar in my heart, and I no longer need to look back to care about the right and wrong and the discussion behind me. I have no time to think about the past, I want to move forward.
- "The Unbearable Lightness of Life"
Aware of their weakness, but instead of fighting, they beat themselves up. Once a person is intoxicated by his own weakness, he will remain weak, and will fall in the street under the eyes of everyone, fall to the ground, and fall lower than the ground.
- "The Unbearable Lightness of Life"
Life is an eternal and heavy effort, trying to keep oneself in oneself, trying not to lose one's way, trying to be firm in place.
- "The Betrayed Will"
"So where are we going?" "Go ahead." "Which is the front?" "I reveal to you a big secret, this is the oldest joke of mankind. Wherever you go, you go forward. ”
- "Jacques and His Master"
Two people who are close to each other always need to transcend some kind of dissimilarity, and the moment of hugging is intoxicating because it can only be a moment.
- "Living Elsewhere"
The so-called beauty is the moment of twinkle of stars, when two different eras suddenly meet across the distance of time. Beauty is the abolition of chronicles, a confrontation against time.
- "Laughing and Forgot"
What life cannot bear is not existence, but existence as self. There is no happiness in life, life. Life is the self with pain in this earthly world. Yet existence, existence is happiness.
- "Immortal"
Life is always one moment, and the other is not universal. Before that particular moment comes, death is so far away from us that we don't think it is true. It is nowhere to be found, nowhere to be found. This is the first, happiest part of life.
- "Immortal"
If every second of our lives were repeated countless times, we would be like Jesus crucified and crucified for eternity. This prospect is terrifying. In the world of eternal calamity, the unbearable burden of responsibility weighs down on our every action, which is why Nietzsche said that the eternal calamity return concept is the heaviest burden.
- "The Unbearable Lightness of Life"
Upstream news is synthesized from CCTV news, Shangguan news, cover news, Red Star News, Global Network, etc. Image source/network
Editor: Xu Yuanzhe
Responsible editor: Li Yang Guan Yi
Reviewed: Feng Fei