1968 is a very controversial date these days. I start my research about 1968, by looking at 1967 first. Why? Because this congress was almost an exact projection of what happened during the Prague Spring, however, more was said there. The writers there were discussing the big questions, about a whole country and the destiny of a nation. Therefore, the importance of Kundera’s speech is quite significant. Havel, Vaculík, Ivan Klíma all gave politically important speeches. Regarding poetic power, Jan Skácel seemed especially strong. Even though Hrabal was not present, we have to give him some credit as well. Not only the positive, but also the negativeside of 1968 was predicted. Mainly the Communist Party’s attempt to intervene. The Czech Spring of 1968 wasnot a student-movement, but a struggle by middle-aged and mature intellectuals, mostly against what they hadinstigated in their youth. So this was an exceptionally self-critical revolution.
The interview with Marek Bieńczyk covers, in general, the subject of the philosophy of novel by Milan Kundera and the reception of his works nowadays in Poland and abroad. Marek Bieńczyk – the French translator of Milan Kundera’s novels – talks about the history of his first translations and the beginnings of scientific thinking about Kundera. Moreover, he explains the problems connected with Kundera’s authorial and elaborate philosophy of novel: the conception of narrator, hero and composition. Bieńczyk also narrates his own memories with M. Kundera. What is more, he indicates the inspirations he draws in his own work from innovative prose by Czech novelist, who is celebrating his 91st anniversary this year.
Having written The Joke, Kundera changed the modus vivendi of the novel’s narrator who, with time, became a separate protagonist. This is connected with the appearance of the ellipsis as the main plot device, which is not yet present in The Joke. This change in the way of narrating represents another and, perhaps, a deeper dividing line in Kundera’s writing than switching to another language (from Czech to French), the change of the setting (from Czechoslovakia to Western countries) and the change of the political system (from communist to ‘imagological’) as an instrument of oppression.
Is it possible to read Don Quijote de la Mancha as a work representing modernity, and if so, in which sense? So sounds the question that this essay tries to answer. On the one hand, Close has warned about the problems of the romantic reading of Don Quijote, like, for instance, to assert that the book symbolizes Spain or an epoch. But, on the other hand, Cervantesʼ major work is in contact, through Huarte de San Juan, with the problem of truth, developed by renaissance thought in 16. century. That problem of truth, and the origin of knowledge criticism, is interpreted by Kundera as characteristic of modernity, even if different to the tradition founded by Descartes.
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