Czech Center New York presents an evening dedicated to the brilliant Czech and French novelist Milan Kundera. The program will feature a screening of a documentary by Miloslav Šmídmajer, "Milan Kundera: From the Joke to Insignificance", followed by a discussion with Prof. Michelle Woods moderated by Prof. Cynthia Allen.
Documentary screening - 6 pm
Registration here.
"Milan Kundera: From the Joke to Insignificance"
The only documentary about Milan Kundera's legacy.
Czech Republic, 2021, 95 min. Directed by Miloslav Šmídmajer. Starring: Yasmina Reza, Jean Claude Carriere, Antoinne Gallimard, Guy Scarpetta, Milan Uhde
Why were Milan Kundera's books so successful all over the world? Why did he move to France and started writing in French? What is behind the fact that Kundera banned his French books from being translated to Czech? Why does he avoid publicity? This documentary analyzes all aspects that influenced Kundera during the creation of his books, including his life in Brno, the time when he studied and then taught on FAMU in Prague, the era of "normalization" when he was prohibited from publishing despite the huge success abroad.
In mid 70s, Kundera accepted an invitation from Rennes University to be a guest professor for a year. In 1979, Czech government took away Kundera's citizenship. Kundera commented this: "At the time, everything was ruled by the russians and it was the russians who decided that I am no longer a Czech". French president Mitterand gave Kundera a French citizenship. Kundera published his best-known novel "The Unbearable Lighteness of Being" as a French writer. The book was adapted into a film - but after the film's release, Kundera never allowed another film adaptation of any of his books.
The discussion with Prof. Cynthia Allen a Prof. Michelle Woods will start at 7:45 pm.
Registration here.
Idyll and Irony: Milan Kundera’s Legacy
Milan Kundera argued not only for the novel as a vital literary genre but also as a way of looking at the world. The novel, for him, allowed an ironic distance from which to evaluate human life: we understand, sometimes empathize, with the illusions and beliefs of his characters but at the same time see right through these illusions (and in doing so, see right through ourselves). His often multi-voiced and multi-perspective novels allowed an ironic vision that Kundera associated with maturity and experiential existential knowledge. He spoke from his own experience of disillusion with his immature and ardent communist youth; a time of pieties and illusions of absolute belief, of ideological and existential certainties, and the totalitarian world these attitudes wrought. And yet, the novels suggest we need our small and grand illusions, our brief idylls, to get through life. The way we create these idylls and hopes is through language and, especially after Kundera’s exile in 1975 and his own entrance into another language – French – the novels use and explore language as incantatory, seductive, and sly: a vehicle that allows us to make and create meaning in our lives while at the same time constantly slipping the bonds of certainty and meaning.
Cynthia Allen is an NYU Professor of Digital Art and New Media and a member of the Artistic Board of Directors of ARTivive, one of the largest, most renowned augmented reality companies in the world.
Dr. Michelle Woods is a full Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz. She is the author of Kafka Translated: How Translators Have Shaped Our Reading of Kafka (2014), Censoring Translation: Censorship, Theatre and the Politics of Translation (2012), and Translating Milan Kundera (2006). She is the editor of a book of essays on literature and translation, Authorizing Translation (2017), and co-editor of Teaching Literature in Translation (2023). She is writing a non-academic book about the female translators of Anna Karenina: Reading Anna. She is co-editor of the book series for Bloomsbury: Literatures, Cultures, Translation. Her translations have appeared in Granta and Words Without Borders, and she loves to teach as much dark and funny Central European literature as she can.
