The Nobel Prize is a form of harassment towards him, the work of the legendary Milan Kundera. Kundera | Kundera | Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera once wrote, "This is a world that is popular to leave, but we are not good at bidding farewell." However, we did not expect that this time the person we wanted to bid farewell to became him. According to foreign media reports, the famous European writer Milan Kundera passed away at the age of 94.
Milan Kundera was born on April 1, 1929 in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. In the early 1950s, he made his debut in the literary world as a poet and published poetry collections such as "Man, a Wide Garden", "Monologue", and "The Last May". In 1963, he made a significant decision to officially abandon poetry creation.
Four years later, his first novel "Jokes" was officially published in Czech Republic, and his unprecedented success convinced Kundera that he had found the right direction, thus embarking on the path of novel creation.
But the good times didn't last long. In 1968, after the Soviet Union invaded the Czech Republic, "Jokes" was banned. Until 1975, before leaving the Czech Republic for France, Kundera created works such as "Laughing Love", "Farewell Waltz", and "Living Elsewhere" under difficult conditions.
After the publication of the novel "Laughter and Forget" in 1979, Kundera was stripped of Czechoslovakian citizenship. Two years later, he acquired French citizenship. Since the late 1980s, Kundera has been increasingly creating in French. In 2019, Kundera regained Czech citizenship.
On the Contemporary Chinese Literary Circle
One of the most influential foreign writers
In the 1980s, Milan Kundera's works were translated and introduced to China, especially his classic masterpiece "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", which influenced generation after generation of young Chinese people and has since had a huge circulation.
In that era, phrases such as "living elsewhere", "unbearable lightness of life", and "vulgar" became popular phrases, and "unbearable lightness of * *" even became a sentence structure widely used.
This writer, who is deeply loved by Chinese readers, is also full of curiosity about China. He once said in a negotiation, "If there is another place in the world that interests me, it is China."
Kundera is one of the most influential foreign writers in contemporary Chinese literature. In the eyes of Eastern European literary researchers and translators Jing Kaixuan, Kundera's influence focused on ideology. "He urged Chinese writers to shift their focus from focusing on the group to focusing on the individual, and avoid creating empty and grand narratives." "He inspired the Chinese literary world: truly first-class writers should first and foremost be thinkers."
Kundera's writing excels at transforming the heaviness of life into the lightness of words. Someone once said that from academicians in their 80s to children in their 10s, one can find life experiences and meanings in Kundera's works.
"A master forgotten by the Nobel Prize in Literature"
Milan Kundera's literary achievements are remarkable, having won numerous international literary awards and been nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times. However, he said that the annual Nobel Prize in Literature craze in October is a form of harassment for him.
Kundera doesn't care at all about the values bestowed upon him by the outside world. He stays away from the media all year round, refuses to appear in public, and only chooses to speak through his works.
He once mercilessly stated, "The spirit of the media and the spirit of culture are contradictory, at least to the culture recognized in modern Europe: culture is based on the individual, and the media leads to singularity; culture illuminates the complexity of things, and the media simplifies things; culture is just a long-term torture, and the media quickly answers everything; culture is the guardian of memory, and the media is the pursuer of current news."
Kundera once self deprecatingly said, "I came to this world on April Fool's Day with metaphysical significance." In fact, his works are adept at using irony and a humorous tone to depict the human situation.
In The Betrayed Will, he once said that the internal space of the novel is a field where moral judgment and value judgment are both suspended. The spirit of humor is a great invention provided by novels for modern humanity.
Kundera seems to always express his attitude of looking at life with a smile, but after reading his words and laughing, people will feel deep sadness. The novel is humorous and witty, but in fact, it hides irony. Although it jokes about this elusive world, it also cares about the individual's survival status.
Some comments suggest that Kundera's works may appear light on the surface, but in reality, they are heavy; On the surface, it is casual, but in reality, it is exquisite; On the surface, it appears simple, but in reality, it is profound and witty, full of life wisdom.
He wrote in "Laughter and Forgetfulness": "The struggle between man and power is the struggle between memory and forgetting." Milan Kundera overcame forgetting with his philosophical works and will forever remain in the reader's memory.
