Conversation with Milan Kundera on the Art of the Novel Author(S): Linda Asher and Milan Kundera Source: Salmagundi, No

Home , Don Juan, Identity (novel), Laughable Loves, Life is Elsewhere, The Joke (novel)

Conversation with Milan Kundera on the Art of the Novel Author(s): Linda Asher and Milan Kundera Source: Salmagundi, No. 73, Milan Kundera: Fictive Lightness, Fictive Weight (Winter 1987), pp. 119-135 Published by: Skidmore College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40547920 . Accessed: 29/06/2014 11:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Skidmore College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Salmagundi.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Conversationwith Milan Kunderaon theArt of theNovel (Translatedfrom the French original by Linda Asher) ChristianSalmon: I'd liketo devotethis conversation to theesthetic of yournovels. But whereshall we begin?

Milan Kundera:With this assertion: My novelsare notpsychological. More precisely,they lie outsidethe estheticof the novel normally termedpsychological.

C.S.: But aren'tall novelsnecessarily psychological? That is, con- cernedwith the enigma of thepsyche?

M.K.: Let us be moreprecise: All novels,of everyage, are concerned withthe enigma of the self. As soon as youcreate an imaginarybeing, a character,you are automaticallyconfronted by thequestion: What is theself? How can theself be grasped?It is one of thosefundamental questionson whichthe novel,as novel,is based. By the variousre- sponsesto thatquestion, if youwanted, you could distinguish different tendencies,and perhapsdifferent periods, in thehistory of the novel. The psychologicalapproach wasn't even knownto the firstEuropean storytellers.Boccaccio simplytells us about actionsand adventures. Still,behind all thoseamusing tales, we can makeout a certainconvic- tion:it is throughaction that man stepsforth from the repetitiveuni- verseof the everyday where each personresembles every other person; it is throughaction that he distinguisheshimself from others and becomes an individual.Dante said as much: "In any act, the primary intentionof himwho acts is to revealhis own image."At the outset, actionis thusseen as theself-portrait of himwho acts. Fourcenturies afterBoccaccio, Diderotis more skeptical:his Jacquesle Fataliste

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 120 MILAN KUNDERA seduces his friend'sgirl, he gets happilydrunk, his fatherwallops him, a regimentpasses by,out of spite he signs up, in his firstbattle he gets a bullet in the knee, and he limps till the day of his death. He thought he was startingan amorous adventure,and instead he was settingforth towardhis infirmity.He could never recognize himself in his action. Between the act and himself,a fissureopens. Man hopes to reveal his own image throughhis act, but that image bears no resemblance to him. The paradoxical natureof action is one of the novel's greatdiscov- eries. But if the self is not to be grasped throughaction, then where and how are we to grasp it? So, then,the time came when the novel, in its quest forthe self, was forcedto turnaway fromthe visible world of action and examine instead the invisible interiorlife. In the middle of the eighteenthcentury, Richardson discovers the formof the epistolary novel in which the charactersconfess theirthoughts and theirfeelings.

C.5.: The birthof the psychological novel?

M.K.: The termis, of course, inexact and approximate. Let's avoid it and use a paraphrase: Richardson set the novel on its way to the explorationof man's interiorlife. We know his great successors: the Goethe of Werther,Constant, then Stendhal and the other writersof his century.The apogee of that evolution is to be found, it seems to me, in Proust and in Joyce. Joyceanalyzes somethingstill more ungraspable than Proust's "lost time": the presentmoment. There would seem to be nothingmore obvious, more tangibleand palpable, thanthe present moment.And yetit escapes us completely.All the sadness of life lies in thatfact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight,hearing, smell register(knowingly or not) a horde of events, and throughour heads therepasses a parade of sensationsand ideas. Each instantrepre- sents a little universe, irrevocablyforgotten in the next instant.Now, Joyce'sgreat microscope manages to stop, to seize thatfleeting instant and make us see it. But the quest for the self ends, yet again, in a paradox: the more powerfulthe lens of the microscope observing the self, the more the self and its uniqueness escape us; beneath the great Joyceanlens thatbreaks the soul down into atoms, we are all alike. But if the self and its uniqueness cannot be grasped in man's interiorlife, then where and how can we grasp it?

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 121

Photographof Milan Kundera byAaron Manheimer

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 122 MILAN KUNDERA

C.S.: Can it be grasped?

M.K.: Certainly not. The quest for the self has always ended, and always will end, in a paradoxical dissatisfaction.I don't say defeat. For the novel cannot breach the limitsof its own possibilities,and bringing those limitsto light is already an immense discovery,an immense tri- umph of cognition. Nonetheless, afterhaving reached the depths in- volved in the detailed explorationof the selfs interiorlife, the great novelistsbegan- consciously or unconsciously- to seek a new orientation. We oftenhear of the holy trinityof the modern novel: Proust, Joyce,Kafka. Yet in my own personal historyof the novel, it is Kafka who provided this new orientation:a post-Proustianorientation. His way of conceiving the self is totallyunexpected. What is it thatdefines K. as a unique being? By neitherhis physical appearance (we know nothingabout that),nor his biography(we don't know it), nor his name (he has none), nor his memories, his predilections,his complexes. By his behavior?His field of action is lamentablylimited. By his thoughts? Yes, Kafka unceasinglytraces K.'s reflections,but these are bent exclu- sively on the currentsituation: What should be done thenand there,in the immediate circumstances? Go to the interrogationor dodge it? Obey the summons of the priest or not? All of K.'s interiorlife is absorbed by the situationhe findshimself trapped in, and nothingthat mightrefer beyond that situation(K.'s memories, his metaphysicalre- flections,his notionsabout otherpeople) is revealed to us. For Proust, a man's interioruniverse comprises a miracle, an infinitythat never ceases to amaze us. But that is not Kafka's amazement. He does not ask himself what the internal motivationsare that determine man's behavior. He asks a question thatis radically different:What possibilities remain for man in a world where the externaldeterminants have become so overpoweringthat internal impulses no longer carryweight? Indeed, how could it have changed K.'s destinyand attitudeif he had had, say, homosexual inclinationsor an unhappy love affair behind him? In no way.

C.S. : That's what you say in The Unbearable Lightnessof Being: "The novel is not the author'sconfession; it is an investigationof human life in the trap the world has become." But what does thatmean, trap?

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 123

M.K. : Thatlife is a trap-well, that we've alwaysknown. We are born withouthaving asked to be, locked in a body we neverchose, and destinedto die. On theother hand, the wideness of theworld used to providea constantpossibility of escape. A soldiercould desertfrom thearmy and startanother life in a neighboringcountry. Suddenly, in our century,the world is closingaround us. The decisiveevent in that transformationof the world into a trapwas surelythe 1914 war,called (and forthe firsttime in history)a worldwar. Wrongly"world." It involvedonly Europe, and notall of Europeat that.But theadjective "world" expressesall the moreeloquently the sense of horrorbefore thefact that, henceforward, nothing that occurs on theplanet will be a merelylocal matter,that all catastrophesconcern the entire world, and thatconsequently we are moreand moredetermined by external conditions,by situationsno one can escape, and which,more and more, makeus resembleone another. Butunderstand me: If I locatemy own work outside the so-called psychologicalnovel, that does not mean thatI wish to deprivemy charactersof an interiorlife. It meansonly that there are otherenig- mas,other questions that my novels pursue primarily. Nor does it mean thatI opposethose novels fascinated by psychology. The changein the situationsince Proust, in fact,makes me nostalgic.Along with Proust, an enormousbeauty is movingslowly out of our reach- foreverand irretrievably.Gombrowicz had an idea, as comicalas it is ingenious: The weightof our self,he said, has to do withthe size of thepopula- tionon theplanet. Thus Democritusrepresented a fourhundred mil- lionthof humanity;Brahms a billionth;Gombrowicz himself, a two billionth.According to thatcalculation, the weightof the Proustian infinitude-the weightof a self, of a selfs interiorlife- becomes lighterand lighter. And in thatrace toward lightness, we havecrossed a fatefulboundary.

C.S.: "The unbearablelightness" of the self is yourobsession, beginningwith your earliest writings.I'm thinkingof Laughable Loves- forexample, the story "Edward and God." Afterhis firstnight oflove with the young Alice, Edwardis seizedby a bizarrediscomfort, one thatis decisivefor him: he looks at his girland thinks"that her convictionswere in factonly something extraneous to herfate, and her fateonly something extraneous to herbody. He saw heras an acciden- tal conjunctionof a body,thoughts, and a life'scourse; an inorganic

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 124 MILAN KUNDERA conjunction,arbitrary and unstable." And again in anotherstory, "The HitchhikingGame," in the final paragraphs of the tale, the girl is so upset by her uncertainhold on her identitythat she sobs, "I am me, I am me, I am me . . ."

M.K.: In The Unbearable Lightnessof Being, Tereza is looking at herselfin the mirror.She wonderswhat would happen if her nose were to grow a millimeterlonger per day. How long would it take for her face to become unrecognizable?And if her face no longer looked like Tereza, would Tereza still be Tereza? Where does the self begin and end? You see: No wondermentat the immeasurableinfinity of the soul; rather,wonderment at the uncertainnature of the self and of its identity.

C.S.: There is a complete absence of interiormonologue in your novels.

M.K. : Joyceset a microphonewithin Bloom's head. Thanks to the fantasticespionage of interiormonologue, we have learned an enor- mous amountabout what we are. But, myself,I cannot use thatmicro- phone.

C.S.: In Ulysses, interiormonologue pervades the entirenovel; it is the ground of its construction,the dominantprocess. Could we say that, in your work, philosophical meditationplays thatrole?

M.K: I find the word "philosophical" inappropriate.Philosophy develops its thoughtin an abstractrealm, withoutcharacters, without situations.

C.S.: You begin The Unbearable Lightness of Being by reflecting on Nietzsche's eternalreturn. What's thatbut a philosophical idea de- veloped abstractly,without characters, without situations?

M.K. : Not at all! That reflectionintroduces directly, from the very firstline of the novel, the fundamentalsituation of a character- Tomas; it sets out his problem: the lightnessof existencein a world where there is no eternalreturn. You see, we've finallycome back to our question: What lies beyond the so-called psychological novel? Or put another

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 125 way: Whatis the non-psychologicalmeans to apprehendthe self?To apprehendthe self in my novelsmeans to grasp the essence of its existentialproblem. To graspits existential code. As I was writingThe UnbearableLightness of Being, I realizedthat the code of thisor that characteris made up of certainkey words.For Tereza: body,soul, vertigo,weakness, idyll, Paradise. For Tomas: lightness, weight. In the partcalled "WordsMisunderstood," I examine the existential codes of Franzand of Sabinaby analyzing a numberof words:woman, fidelity, betrayal,music, darkness, light, parades, beauty, country, cemetery, strength.Each of these wordshas a differentmeaning in the other person'sexistential code. Certainly,the existentialcode is not exam- ined in abstracto;it revealsitself progressively in the action,in the situations.Take Life Is Elsewhere,the third part: the hero, the bashful Jaromil,is stilla virgin.One day,he is out walkingwith a girlwho suddenlylays her head on his shoulder.He is overcomewith happiness and even physicallyexcited. I pause over thatmini-event and note: "The pinnacleof happiness Jaromil had experiencedup to thispoint in his lifewas havinga girl'shead on his shoulder."And fromthat I tryto graspJaromil 's eroticnature: "A girl'shead meantmore to himthan a girl'sbody." Which does notmean, I makeclear, that he was indiffer- entto thebody, but "he didn'tlong for the nudity of a girlishbody; he longedfor a girlishface illumined by the nudity of her body. He didn't long to possess a girl'sbody; he longedto possess the face of a girl who wouldyield her body to himas proofof herlove." I tryto give a nameto thatattitude. I choose theword "tenderness." And I examine theword: just what is tenderness?I arrive at successiveanswers: "Ten- dernesscomes into being at themoment when life propels a manto the thresholdof adulthood.He anxiouslyrealizes all the advantagesof childhoodwhich he had notappreciated as a child."And then:"Ten- dernessis the fearinstilled by adulthood."And thena furtherdefini- tion:Tenderness is thecreation of "a tinyartificial space in whichit is mutuallyagreed that we wouldtreat others as children."You see, I don't show you whathappens inside Jaromil's head; rather,I show whathappens inside my own. I observemy Jaromil for a long while, and I try,step by step,to get to the heartof his attitude,in orderto understandit, nameit, graspit. In The UnbearableLightness of Being,Tereza lives withTomas, buther love requiresa mobilizationof all her strength,and suddenly she can'tgo on, she wantsto retreat"down below," to whereshe came

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 126 MILAN KUNDERA from.And I ask myself:What goes on withher? And this is theanswer I find:She is overcomeby vertigo.But whatis vertigo?I look fora definitionand I say: "A heady,insuperable longing to fall."But imme- diatelyI correctmyself, I sharpenthe definition:"Vertigo [is] the intoxicationof the weak. Aware of his weakness,a mandecides to give in ratherthan stand up to it. He is drunkwith weakness, wishes to groweven weaker, wishes to falldown in themiddle of the main square in frontof everybody, wishes to be down,lower than down." Vertigo is one ofthe keys to understandingTereza. It's notthe key to understand- ingyou or me. Andyet both of us knowthat sort of vertigo at leastas a possibilityfor us, one of thepossibilities of existence.I had to invent Tereza,an "experimentalego," to understandthat possibility, to under- standvertigo. But it isn'tmerely particular situations that are thusinvestigated; thewhole novel is nothingbut one longinvestigation. Meditative investigation(investigative meditation) is thebasis on whichall mynovels are constructed.Look at LifeIs Elsewhere.The originaltitle of that novelwas TheLyrical Age. I changedit at thelast minuteunder pres- surefrom friends who foundit insipidand forbidding.I was foolishto givein to them.Actually, I think it's a verygood thingto namea novel forits main category. The Joke. The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting. The UnbearableLightness of Being. Even LaughableLoves. Thattitle shouldnot be takenin thesense of "amusinglove stories."The idea of love is alwaysassociated with seriousness. But thecategory laughable loveis thatof love stripped of seriousness. A criticalnotion for modern man. But to returnto Life Is Elsewhere:That novelrests on certain questions:What is the lyricalattitude? How is youtha lyricalage? What is the meaningof the triadlyricism- revolution- youth? And whatis itto be a poet?I rememberhaving begun that novel with, as my workinghypothesis, the definitionI set downin my notebook:"The poet is a youngman whose motherleads himto displayhimself to a worldhe cannotenter." You see, thatdefinition is neithersociological, noresthetic, nor psychological.

C.S.: It's phenomenological.

M.K. : The adjectiveisn't bad, butI forbidmyself to use it. I'm too fearfulof the professors for whom art is onlya derivativeof philosophical and theoreticaltrends. The noveldealt with the unconscious before

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 127

Freud,the class strugglebefore Marx, it practiced phenomenology (the investigationof theessence of humansituations) before the phenome- nologists.What superb"phenomenological descriptions" in Proust, who neverknew a phenomenologist!

C.S.: Let's summarizeso far:There are severalmeans for grasp- ing the self. First,through action. Next, through interior life. As for yourself,you declare: the self is determinedby the essence of itsexis- tentialproblem. This view has a numberof consequencesfor your work.For example,your insistence on understandingthe essence of situationsseems to renderuseless to yourmind all descriptivetech- niques.You say almostnothing about the physical appearance of your characters.And sincethe investigation of psychologicalmotives inter- estsyou less thanthe analysis of situations,you are also veryparsimo- niousabout your characters' past. Doesn't theoverly abstract nature of yournarration risk making your characters less lifelike?

M.K.: Tryasking that same questionof Kafkaor Musil. In fact,it was asked of Musil. Even some highlycultivated minds complained thathe was not a truenovelist. Walter Benjamin admired his intelli- gencebut not his art. EdouardRoditi found his characterslifeless and suggestedhe take Proustas his model: how alive and real Madame Verdurinis, he says,compared with Diotima! Indeed, two centuries of psychologicalrealism have createdsome nearlyinviolable standards: (1) A writermust give the maximumamount of informationabout a character:about his physicalappearance, his wayof speakingand be- having;(2) he mustlet the reader know a character'spast, because that is whereall themotives for his present behavior are located;and (3) the charactermust have complete independence; that is to say,the author withhis own considerationsmust disappear so as not to disturbthe reader,who wantsto give himselfover to illusionand takefiction for reality.Now, Musil brokethat old contractbetween the noveland the reader.And so did otherwriters along withhim. Whatdo we know about the physicalappearance of Esch, Broch's greatestcharacter? Nothing.Except that he has big teeth.What do we knowabout K.'s childhood,or Schweik's?And neitherMusil, norBroch, nor Gombro- wicz wereat all uncomfortableabout being present as mindsin their novels.A characteris nota simulationof a livingbeing. It is an imaginarybeing. An experimentalego. In thatway the novel reconnects with

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 128 MILAN KUNDERA its beginnings. Don Quixote is practicallyunthinkable as a living being. And yet, in our memory,what characteris more alive? Understand me, I don't mean to scorn the reader and his desire, as naive as it is legitimate,to be carried away by the novel's imaginaryworld and to confuse it occasionally with reality.But I don't see thatthe technique of psychological realism is indispensablefor that. I firstread The Cas- tle when I was fourteenyears old. At thatsame period I admiredan ice hockey player who lived near us. I imagined K. as looking like him. I still see him thatway today.What I mean is thatthe reader's imagina- tion automaticallycompletes the writer's. Is Tomas dark or fair? Was his fatherrich or poor? Choose for yourself!

C.S.: But you don't always follow that rule: in The Unbearable Lightnessof Being, Tomas has virtuallyno past, but Tereza is presented not merelywith her own childhood but her mother'sas well!

M.K.: In the novel, you will find this sentence: "Her entire life was merelya continuationof her mother's,much as the course of a ball on the billiard table is merely the continuationof the player's arm movement."If I talk about the mother,then, it's not in order to set down data on Tereza, but because the motheris her main theme, because Tereza is the "continuationof her mother" and suffersfrom it. We also know that she has small breasts with areolae that are "very large, very dark circles around her nipples," as if they were "painted by a primitivistof pornographyfor the poor"; thatinformation is abso- lutelynecessary because her body is anotherof Tereza's main themes. By contrast,where Tomas, her husband, is concerned, I tell nothing about his childhood, nothingabout his father,his mother,his family. And his body, as well as his face, remain completelyunknown to us because the essence of his existential problem is rooted in other themes. That lack of informationdoes not make him the less "living." Because makinga character"alive" means gettingto the bottomof his existentialproblem. Which, in turn,means: gettingto the bottomof the situations,the motifs,even the words that shape him. Nothingmore.

C.S.: Your conception of the novel, then, could be defined as a poetic meditationon existence. Yet your novels have not always been understoodin that way. They contain many political events that have provoked sociological, historical, or ideological interpretations.How

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 129 do you reconcile your interestin social historywith your conviction thata novel examines primarilythe enigma of existence?

M.K.: Heidegger characterizes existence by an extremelywell- knownformulation: in-der-Welt-sein, being-in-theworld. Man does not relate to the world as subject to object, as eye to painting;not even as actor to stage set. Man and the world are bound like the snail to its shell: the world is part of man, it is his dimension, and, as the world changes, existence (in-der-Welt-sein)changes as well. Since Balzac, the world of our being has a historicalnature and characters'lives unfoldin a realm of time markedby dates. The novel can never rid itselfof that legacy from Balzac. Even Gombrowicz, who inventsfantastical, im- probable stories, who violates all the rules of verisimilitude,cannot escape it. His novels take place in a time that has a date and is thoroughly historical. But two thingsshould not be confused: there is on the one hand the novel thatexamines the historicaldimension of human existence,and on the otherthe novel thatis the illustrationof a historical situation,the descriptionof a society at a given moment,a novel- ized historiography.You're familiar with all those novels about the French Revolution, about Marie Antoinette,or about the year 1914, about collectivizationin the USSR (for or against it), or about the year 1984; all those are popularizationsthat translate non-novelistic knowl- edge into the language of the novel. Well, I'll never tire of repeating with Broch: the novel's single raison d'être is to say what only the novel can say.

C.S.: But what specifically can the novel say about history?Or, what is your way of treatinghistory?

M.K.: Here are some of my own principles. First: All historical circumstancesI treatwith the greatesteconomy. I behave towardhis- torylike the set designer who constructsan abstractset out of the few items indispensableto the action. Second principle: Of the historical circumstances, I keep only those that create a revelatoryexistential situation for my characters. Example: In The Joke, Ludvik sees all his friendsand colleagues raise theirhands to vote, with complete ease, his exclusion fromthe univer- sityand thus to topple his life. He is certainthat they would, if neces- sary,have voted withthe same ease to hang him. Whence his definition

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 130 MILAN KUNDERA of man: a being capable in any situationof consigninghis neighborto death. Ludvik's fundamentalanthropological experience thus has historical roots, but the descriptionof the historyitself (the role of the Party,the political bases of terror,the organization of social institu- tions, etc.) does not interestme and you will not find it in the novel. Third principle: Historiographywrites the historyof society,not of man. That is why the historicalevents my novels talk about are often ignoredby historiography.Example: In the years thatfollowed the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the reignof terroragainst the public was preceded by officiallyorganized massacres of dogs. An episode totallyforgotten and withoutimportance for a historian,for a political scientist,but of the utmost anthropologicalsignificance! By this one episode alone I suggestedthe historicalclimate of The Farewell Party. Another example: At the crucial point of Life Is Elsewheref history intervenes,in the formof an inelegantand shabbypair of undershorts; there were no others to be had at the time; faced with the loveliest erotic occasion of his life, Jaromil,for fear of looking ridiculous in his shorts,dares not undress and takes flightinstead. Inelegance! Another historicalcircumstance forgotten and yet how importantfor the person obliged to live under a Communistregime. But it is the fourthprinciple that goes furthest:Not only must historicalcircumstance create a new existentialsituation for a character in a novel, but historyitself must be understoodand analyzed as an existentialsituation. Example: In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Alexander Dubcek- after being arrested by the Russian Army, kid- napped, jailed, threatened,forced to negotiatewith Brezhnev- returns to Prague. He speaks over the radio, but he cannot speak, he loses his breath,in mid-sentencehe makes long, awfulpauses. What thishistori- cal episode reveals forme (an episode, by the way, completelyforgot- ten because, two hours later,the radio technicianswere made to cut the painful pauses out of his speech) is weakness. Weakness as a very general category of existence: "Any man confrontedwith superior strengthis weak, even if he has an athleticbody like Dubcek's." Tereza cannot bear the spectacle of that weakness, which repelis and humili- ates her, and she prefersto emigrate. But faced with Tomas's infideli- ties, she is like Dubcek faced with Brezhnev: disabled and weak. And you know already what vertigois: intoxicationwith one's own weakness, the insuperable desire to fall. Tereza abruptlyunderstands that "she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the coun-

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 13 1 tryof the weak, and thatshe had to be faithfulto themprecisely becausethey were weak and gaspedfor breath in themiddle of senten- ces." And,intoxicated with weakness, she leavesTomas and returnsto Prague,back to the "cityof theweak." Here thehistorical situation is nota background,a stageset beforewhich human situations unfold; it is itselfa humansituation, a growingexistential situation. Similarly,the Prague Spring in TheBook ofLaughter and Forget- tingis notdescribed in itspolitico-historico-social aspect but as a fun- damentalexistential situation: man (a generationof men)acts (makesa revolution),but his actionslips out of his control,ceases to obeyhim (therevolution rages, kills, destroys); he thereupondoes his utmostto recaptureand subduethat disobedient act (a new generationstarts an opposition,reformist movement), but in vain. Once out of our hands, theact can neverbe recaptured.

C.S.: Whichrecalls the situationof Jacquesle Fatalistethat you discussedat thebeginning.

M.K.: But thistime, it's a matterof a collective,historical situation.

C.S.: To understandyour novels, is it importantto knowthe historyof Czechoslovakia?

M.K. : No. Whateverneeds to be knownof it thenovel itself tells.

C.S.: Readingnovels doesn't presume an historicalknowledge?

M.K.: We havethe history of Europe. Fromthe year 1000 up to our time,that has been a singlecommon experience. We are partof thatand our everyaction, individual or national,only reveals its crucial significancewhen set in thatcontext. I can understandDon Quix- ote withoutknowing the historyof Spain. I cannotunderstand it without some idea, however general, of Europe's historical experience-of its age of chivalry,for instance, of courtlylove, of the shiftfrom the Middle Ages to theModern Era.

C.S.: In Life Is Elsewhere,each phase of Jaromil'slife is seen againstfragments from the biographies of Rimbaud, Keats, Lermontov,

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 132 MILAN KUNDERA and so on. The May FirstParade in Prague is confoundedwith the May 1968 studentdemonstrations in Paris. Thus you create for your hero a huge scene that encompasses the whole of Europe. Still, your novel takes place in Prague. It ends with the Communistputsch in 1948.

M.K.: For me, it is the novel of the European revolutionas such, in condensed form.

C.S.: European revolution-that putsch? And imported, what's more, fromMoscow?

M.K.: However inauthenticit was, thatputsch was experiencedas a revolution. With all its rhetoric, its illusions, reflexes, actions, crimes, I see it todayas a parody condensationof the European revolu- tionarytradition. As the continuationand grotesque fulfillmentof the era of European revolutions.Just as the hero ofthatbook, Jaromil-the "continuation" of Victor Hugo and Rimbaud- is the grotesque fulfill- ment of European poetry.Jaroslav, in The Joke, continuesthe age-old historyof popular art at a time when that art is vanishing. Doctor Havel, in Laughable Loves, is a Don Juanat a time when Don Juanism is no longer possible. Franz, in The Unbearable Lightnessof Being, is the last melancholyecho of the Grand March of the European left.And Tereza in her obscure village in Bohemia is withdrawingnot only from all the public life of her countrybut also "from the road along which mankind, 'the masterand proprietorof nature,'marches onward." All these characters fulfillnot only their personal histories but also the suprapersonalhistory of the European experience.

C.S. : Which means thatyour novels take place in the last act of the Modern Era, which you call the "period of terminalparadoxes."

M.K.: If you like. But let's avoid any misunderstanding.When I wrote Havel's storyin Laughable Loves, I had no intentionof describ- ing a Don Juan in a time when the adventureof Don Juanismwas ending. I was writinga story I found comical. That's all. All these reflectionson terminalparadoxes, etcetera,did not precede my novels, but proceeded fromthem. It was while I was writingThe Unbearable Lightnessof Being that- inspiredby my characters,all of whom are in some fashion withdrawingfrom the world- I thoughtof the fate of

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheArt of theNovel 133

Descartes' famous formulation:man as "master and proprietorof nature." Having brought off miracles in science and technology,this "master and proprietor"is suddenlyrealizing that he owns nothingand is master neitherof nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of history(it has escaped his grip), nor of himself (he is led by the irrationalforces of his soul). But if God is gone and if man is no longermaster, then who is master?The planet is movingthrough the void, withoutany master.There it is, the unbearable lightnessof being.

C.S.: Still, isn't it an egocentricmirage to see the presenttime as the special moment, the most importantmoment of all- that is, the momentof the end? How many times already has Europe believed it was living throughits end, its apocalypse!

M.K. : Among all those terminalparadoxes, thereis also the one of the end itself. When a phenomenonproclaims, far in advance, its im- minentdisappearance, manyof us know and perhaps even regretit. But when the agony draws to a close, we are already looking elsewhere. The death becomes invisible. It's some time now since the river,the nightingale,the paths throughthe fields have disappeared fromman's mind. When nature disappears from the planet tomorrow,who will notice? Where are the successors of Octavio Paz, of René Char? Where are the great poets now? Have they vanished, or is it only that their voices have grown inaudible? In any case, our Europe, formerlyun- thinkablewithout its poets, is immenselychanged. But if man has lost the need forpoetry, will he notice when it disappears? The end is not an apocalyptic explosion. There may be nothingso quiet as the end.

C.S.: Granted. But if one thingis ending, we mightsuppose that somethingelse is beginning.

M.K.: Certainly.

C.S.: But what is it that's beginning?That doesn't show in your novels. Whence the doubt: are you seeing only half of our historical situation?

M.K. : It's possible, but thatisn't so verygrave. Indeed, it's importantto understandwhat a novel is. An historiantells you about events

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 MILAN KUNDERA thathave taken place. By contrast,Raskolnikov's crime never saw the light of day. A novel examines not life but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everythingthat man can become, everythinghe's capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existenceby discoveringthis or thathuman possibility.But again, to exist means: "being-in-the-world." Both the character and his world must be understoodas possibilities. In Kafka, all thatis clear: the Kafkan world is like no knownreality, it is an extreme and unrealizedpossibility of the human world. It's true thatthis possibility shows faintlyfrom behind our own real world and seems to prefigureour future.That's why they speak of Kafka's propheticdi- mension. But even if his novels had nothingprophetic about them,they would not lose theirvalue, because theygrasp one possibilityof existence (a possibilityfor man and forhis world) and therebymake us see what we are, of what we are capable.

C.S. : But yourown novels are located in a world thatis thoroughly real!

M.K: RememberBroch's The Sleepwalkers, a trilogythat encompasses thirtyyears of European history.For Broch, that history is clearly definedas a perpetual disintegrationof values. The characters are locked into this process as in a cage and must finda way of living thatsuits the progressivedisappearance of common values. Broch was, of course, convinced of the correctnessof his historicaljudgment- that is, convinced thatthe possibilityof the world he was describingwas a possibilitycome true. But let's tryto imagine thathe was mistakenand that parallel to this process of disintegrationanother process was at work, a positive developmentthat Broch was unable to see. Would that make any differenceto the value of The Sleepwalkers? No. Because the process of disintegrationof values is an indisputablepossibility of the human world. To understandman flunginto the vortexof thatprocess, to understandhis gestures,his attitudes-that's all thatmatters. Broch discovered an unknownnew territoryof existence. Territoryof existence means possibility of existence. Whether or not that possibility becomes a realityis secondary.

C.S.: The period of terminal paradoxes where your novels are located must be considered, then, not as realitybut as possibility?

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Art of the Novel 135 M.K.: A possibilityfor Europe. A possiblevision of Europe. A possiblesituation for man.

C.S.: But if you are tryingto grasp a possibilityrather than a reality,why take seriously the image you offer of Prague,for example, and of theevents that occurred there?

M.K. : If thewriter considers an historicalsituation as a freshand revealingpossibility of thehuman world, he will wantto describeit as it is. Still,fidelity to historicalreality is a secondarymatter as regards thevalue of the novel. The novelistis neitherhistorian nor prophet: he is an explorerof existence.

This content downloaded from 82.12.176.78 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014 11:19:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions