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Milan Kundera: The Poetics of Human Existence
| Article
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11540 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
7,344 Words |
| Author
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William Klubach
William Klubach is professor of philosophy at the City
University of New York |
In his address at the Jerusalem Book Fair in the spring of 1985, Milan Kundera remarked that "great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors." Each novelist listens to a "suprapersonal wisdom" that becomes his alone. With this wisdom the novelist sets forth upon his ventures of discovery. He is in search of the meaning of human existence. He "teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question," but this teaching bears in it the demons that hover about the question and cement it into answers in and from which it can no longer be freed. Kundera shows us that three of these demons are powers that force us to lose contact with the gist and revolutionary power of the novel. The agelastes, those who do not laugh, threaten the art of the novel because they are not capable of grasping the interplay of truths, their limitations, and their inadequacies. The agelastes shy away from the parables and paradoxical quality of human reality, of its perennial questioning and the persistent refusal of the questioning man to be captured by received ideas" plagues man's need for liberation, for the cultivation of reason, the art of questioning and that "mystical" quality he calls the power of imagery and imagination. The third demon is kitsch, that "translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling." Seeping into daily life, kitsch becomes the determinant of values and styles. Kitsch sets forth the life-style that each must follow. It creates the modes that fix the style of common life. Together with the commonplaces and the lack of humor man's enduring need for individuality, privacy, and a modicum of originality fades into meaningless commonality.
Meaningful political thought
Do we approach Kundera as a teacher, political theorist, man of wise sayings and observations or do we comprehend him, above all else, as the novelist, the creator of human forms and relationships, the man who captures his heroes and reveals to us personalities and characteristics little known to those who embody them? There is little doubt about this affirmation, but the same Kundera actualizes in stories and novels moral, political, and stimulate those who read him. He is the novelist who gives addresses, interviews, who writes essays and expresses political, literary, and moral attitudes. Kundera can be read for many things, but the novel is, above all, his attitudes toward human existence, there is no attempt to reduce his literary artistry to the academic podium. Fortunately, we believe that Kundera, above and beyond most of his contemporaries, has a viable and meaningful political thought that is worthy of being enunciated and carefully
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