Ideology wants to convince you that its truth is absolute. A novel shows you that everything is relative
milan kundera
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After the first episode of my September readings, here is #2!
To already bend the rules: I am not going to talk about a book in particular, but about an author: Kundera. And, Iâm not going to focus solely on September, but on my summerâs readings as a whole.
// Little disclaimer // I had to translate some of the quotes myself (my book is in French and I couldn’t find all I wanted online). Sorry in advance for the lack of literary style
How you wrote it doesnât matter. Whether it was in a haste or slowly, on you knee or on a table: you only wrote what was in your heart
the joke
MILAN KUNDERA
A little bibliography
why / how
Let me explain: I bought, by chance, on one of his novels back in July (The joke). I read it, re-read it, and re-re-read it over and over again for a month. It wasnât that I particularly liked the book to be honest, but since I was backpacking, I couldnât change the lecture I brought with me in the first place.
Once I finished my trip aka the book for good, I got curious. After all, of Kunderaâs work, I only knew the classics (The unbearable lightness of being, Immortality, and his essay The Art of the Novel). Its kitschy dark universe fascinated me (how could one mix so easily tragedy and lightness?), but it didnât seem to appear as sharp in The Joke. It is only later in my researches that I learned The Joke was actually the first book he published.
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This particular discovery got me even more intrigued. As some love to watch a directorâs filmography to see how he affined his signature style over the years, I love reading an authorâs bibliography. I had already done it years ago for Camus, Chateaubriand and Roland Barthes â three of my favorite authors â and really wanted to discover more about Kundera.
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BUT having binge-read Kundera is no reason to drown you under a plethora of reviews. This is why I chose to focus on three books in particular that representâ in my opinion â his work of art.
Accepting life as it is is accepting the unpredictable
the farewell waltz

Some of Kundera’s novels
1 - The joke
SUM-UP
I couldnât pass on the book which started it all â both my madness and Kunderaâs career. The Joke is the first novel published by the author in 1967. It tells the intriguing multi-layered story of Ludvik, a young man whose life unexpectedly changed after⌠a joke. We discover through three other characterâs voices Ludvikâs past and future plans, as his universe â filled with communism.
MY OPINION
Even after two months and several re-readings, I canât really figure out what the novel is about: vengeance or love?
I rarely get the opportunity to read an authorâs first piece of work, and I was surprised to see that every element we âidentifyâ as Kunderaâs were already in germ in The Joke. Namely: the polyphony, the light humor contrasting with a somewhat dark situation and characters whose lives are in doom.
I bought a postcard and (to hurt, shock, and confuse her) wrote: Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.â
Ludvik
2 - The farewell waltz
SUM-UP
A little â tragic â vaudeville built like a classic play. Time, place and action are united, as prescripted. In 24 hours, eight characters concentrated in a little spa town experiment accidents, treason, love, among other things.
MY OPINION
Having just finished The Joke, I was excepting a similar story; or at least, a similar tone. No need to say I was surprised by the story. Its shorter format condenses everything, which somehow ends up in strongly highlighting lifeâs irony. The authorâs light dark humor even adds up to the situationâs gloominess and left me a bit shaken.
What happens to people whose alarm clock daily gives them a small electric shock? Each day they become more used to violence and less used to pleasure
3 - Testaments betrayed
SUM-UP
This last one is an essay divided in nine parts. The main topic Kundera explores in his Testaments betrayed is the art of the novel (which he wrote about in a previous essay).
Through different pieces, we manage to have a glimpse at Kundera’s book philosophy.
MY OPINION
The essay provides a great source to understand further Kundera. However, I did have a hard time reading it / concentrate thoroughly.
I do recommend the book however, just not in any reading conditions. For instance, don’t mistake it for “train-book”. Find a quiet place, and be ready to focus.
The novel is a game with invented characters. You see the world through their eyes, and thus you see it from various angles. The more differentiated the characters, the more the author and the reader have to step outside themselves and try to understand
Milan kundera
OVERALL
A little word to go
As I mentioned, Kunderaâs perfect blend between tragedy and apparent lightheartedness creates a darkish, gloomy universe I love.
The polyphony is, to me, one of the core elements that adds to the creation of this particular atmosphere. Charactersâ stories resonate with each other, intertwine, part ways, and dive us -readers- into an exhilarating / tragically ironic whirlwind.
Depending on the lectures, I wouldnât qualify Kundera as a âpage-turner authorâ â pretty much for the same reasons Dostoevskyâs Brothers Karamazov isnât.Â
Some more next month. Until then: good reading!
OTHER BOOKS AND ARTICLES
- Immortality
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- An interview on literature with Kundera â the nystimes
QUOTES
Not only was I unencumbered with inner sorrows; I was blessed with a considerable sense of fun. And even so I canât say I wore the joyous physiognomy of the times: my sense of fun was too frivolous. No, the joy in vogue was devoid of irony and practical jokes; it was, as I have said, of a highly serious variety, the self-proclaimed historical optimism of the victorious class, a solemn and ascetic joyâin short, Joy with a capital J.
Ludvik
I began to keep tabs on my smiles, and soon I felt a tiny crack opening up between the person Iâd been and the person I should be (according to the spirit of the times) and tried to be.
But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces.
Ludvik
I always have had crazy thoughts. I was born like this. But, unlike others, I realize my crazy thoughts. Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than realizing crazy thoughts. I wish my life was a string of crazy ideas
I [ also ] have to ask myself what sort of world I’d be sending my child into. School soon takes him away to stuff his head with the falsehoods I’ve fought in vain against all my life. Should I see my son become a conformist fool? Or should I instill my own ideas into him and see him suffer because he’ll be dragged into the same conflicts I was?
jakub
Having a child is like telling the world: I was born, had a taste of what life is and realized it was good to the point of being worth repeating
What about you? What are you reading those days?
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