The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Insoutenable légèreté de l'être... Milan Kundera
The complete works of famous Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera published in april 2011 in the famous "Pléiade" collection.
Like Andre Gide, Paul Claudel, André Malraux, Henri de Montherlant, or Roger Martin du Gard, the Czech-born writer Milan Kundera, will have his complete works published Pleiades in his lifetime: the prestigious Gallimard collection announces the publication in two volumes. His most falous novels Laughable Loves , The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being , in particular, appear in the first, while the second brings Immortality, Slowness , Identity, Ignorance , but also his play Jacques and his master , and his essays.
After obtaining French nationality in 1981, Milan Kundera has decided to write in the language of Molière for his book Slowness ( La lenteur ) in 1995.
The works joined together in these two volumes, are not complete, because the author of "the joke " does not like the biographies.
Does one owe really turn the page, concerning his youth and his childhood, no any chronological sequence marks on his existence? This poses question to the readers. Is it necessary to disavow his past to exist with oneself ? No mention is made about the women who shared his life.
Or,is it considered that the author is actually still living ? His private life must be preserved.
However, it enables us to read again a work which pushes to the extreme, the interrogations on the life, and the “abysses” dissimulated in it.
In 1968, his first novel “the joke” was published at Gallimard editions at the time when Russian invades Czechoslovakia.
In his novels he tells the cracks of the History, the ideological lies of Communism, the social oppression orchestrated by the merchants of virtue. He feels attacked in what the individual has of more invaluable “his intimacy”. An additional reason to dislike the biographies.
Literature is not only one pleasure for him, it is also a spiritual need.
In his book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1984)-a best-seller-,
Milan probes the hearts, one time the scrambled horizons, he describes the dead ends, the illusions, which become, an act of liberator, strewn with laughter and brittleness.
In these times of crisis, all the characters, become significant emblems .
Important topics such as: the loss of the identity, the tragedy of the lapse of memory, the cynicism of the totalitarian modes, the dictatorship of presenting itself the purifying morality… These are the issues that inform of his literary works.
These two volumes will not be only decoration in the library of our houses, but a source of profound insight and illumination.
mcdehove©frenchwritersworldwide.com
Belgium april 27,2011.