Milan Kundera’s Last Joke
Milan Kundera, the giant of Czech and French literature, died in Paris at the age of 94 on July 11. Perhaps more than those in other fields of work, writers are judged by the weight of their legacy. He’s definitely got one and it’s something to behold in every sense of the word: The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Joke, to name a few among others. Not just because writing is a calling, however pretentious it might sound and not just a job: in those precious exceptions, it’s more than that indeed. Though Warhol used to go to work in a suit, saying what he did at The Factory was just a job. Creating intriguing beauty and isn’t a job. It’s a responsibility requiring every ounce of commitment you can spare. Kundera could and he certainly did.
His own biography is almost like a litmus for the sweeping changes the former Eastern Bloc experienced during the 20th century, especially in the heyday of Communism which tried to sweep every spark of freedom under its heavy rug. That’s how the author himself underwent a major ideological shift between two extremes: from being a Communist all the way to a dissident in Paris. He admitted that from an early age he was equally fascinated by Cubism and Communism. I can comprehend it because at 18, your spectacles tend to be rosy, like mine were. Any alternative to the prevalent sociopolitical narrative looks attractive until you get behind the scenes and see less attractive details hiding between the lines.
We’ve all been there: literary rebellion like a rite of passage before you find your true footing and either fully commit to it or procede to something less intellectually demanding. He spread his wings into music and film as well, having learned to play the piano from his father and studied film in Prague. However, the veneer of glory they were promised started wearing off slowly as the system was showing its true, dark colors. What’s more, he was expelled from his studies along with Jan Trefulka, a fellow writer, due to allegations of political activism. This was a practice so ubiqutous in the system that it was hardly a surprise if you’d find yourself as their target.
But he wasn’t easily intimidated and managed to get back into the Party’s good book again, being admitted to rejoin in 1956. Like a Hollywood marriage, that love didn’t last too long, and he found himself on the wrong side of the fence again in 1970. It took some time to let go of ideals betrayed by the system he used to support.
It led to a conflict with the reformist Vaclav Havel whose ideas he criticized in spite of being involved in the Prague Spring himself. In 1975 Kundera found himself in exile in France, where he taught at the university of Rennes. There was already a large community of dissidents from the Eastern Bloc, far away from the claws of Communism that preyed on their work and livelihood at home.
His experience with the Communist Party provided the inspiration for the The Joke, published in 1967. It was banned by Soviets in Czechoslovakia in the following year. This was my first experience with Kundera’s work that encapsulates everything that made him so great: a mixture of humor, sadness and the absurd. Clumsiness can make us laughable in our most vulnerable moments, as we get to see here. In a memorable scene from the book, the journalist Helena, after a romantic disappointment, decides to take her own life with a handful of analgetics, which turn out to be laxatives, leaving her overdosed on embarassment.
It’s an example of the aftertaste his writing leaves in your head long after reading: there’s no such thing as small gestures since Kundera elevates even the smallest details on high pedestals for the sake of it. In the world his characters inhabit, no one is on the fringe because there isn’t one in the true sense of the word. The Joke consists of the accounts of the four main characters, in seven parts: Ludvik, Jaroslav, Helena and Kostka. It’s a technique I’ve grown to love ever since Harald Zwart’s 2001 movie One Night at Mc Cool’s. Liv Tyler plays a young woman with three men wrapped around her little finger as each one tells us his own version of the story.
Of course, these aren’t necessarily mirror images of each other because Zwart’s movie snowballs from noir into a screwball comedy territory. In Kundera’s case, the closest he ever gets to screwball is the failed suicide attempt. On the other hand, Michael Douglas in that remarkably obnoxious wig is a hired gun so Helena might have been spared the shame if she hired him to do away with her. After all, they’re both fictional characters. Also, the movie was a box office bomb that left most critics rather unimpressed. That’s not the case with Kundera, and if we take a look at his bibliography we see why: full of classics that are as relevant today as they were before. It’s unfortunate people have to die for you to pick up their books again.
The Joke is obviously rooted in his own biography and the journey of the original is quite symbolic in terms of what authors had to deal with due to his troubles with censorship which had delayed the publication date. He’s one of many who were subject to pressure of this kind in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain. When he fled the country, his citizenship was revoked, only to be reinstated in 2019. His disappointment was such that he insisted on having his work contextualised within French literature instead of his country of origin. This is one of the great privileges of literature: when it’s truly great, it doesn’t require a passport. And it belongs to all of us, instead to a labeled library shelf.
Over time, the praise of his work materialised in awards like the Prix Medicis for his book Life is Elsewhere in 1973. As every dissident is aware of, life is indeed elsewhere, as a consequence of conscience that refuses to be silenced. It’s a precarious situation full of risk and uncertainty. Yet he wasn’t immune to controversy. Famously, his support for Roman Polanski raised some important eyebrows.
That’s not the end of the story though, another scandal erupted when he was accused of denouncing Miroslav Dvoráček, an alleged anti-communist spy to the Czechoslovak secret police. The ensuing rough and tumble in the media however never quite clearly proved any direct involvement on his side. Four Nobel prize laureates signed a petition of support to help clear Kundera’s name of this stain. A clean slate requires more work than creating a masterpiece like The Joke.
That’s why now we should focus on his literary legacy which provides inspiration for readers and future writers alike. When being becomes too much of a burden, try to bear it with that unbearable lightness so brilliantly translated into words by the man who embodied it to the bone. A lighthouse that keeps shining over the murky ideological waters constantly threatening our sanity and reason. Well, here’s to sanity. And Milan. He finally pulled his last joke.
