{"id":12871,"date":"2023-07-12T19:55:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T19:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12871"},"modified":"2023-08-12T19:57:56","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T19:57:56","slug":"milan-kundera-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/07\/12\/milan-kundera-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Milan Kundera Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from Tablet<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Memory of Milan Kundera<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

On the passing of the great Czech writer and dissident<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY MAXIM D. SHRAYER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Milan Kundera in Prague, 1973 \/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the spring of 1993, I was working at the Slavonic Library in Prague with the remains of the rich collections of the former RZIA (Russian Historical Archive Abroad), which the Soviet liberators had pillaged back in 1945. Every day I would take a long lunch break and wander around the old city, stopping now at a wine bar, now at a secondhand bookstore. Once, in the middle of May, I came upon a copy of Milan Kundera\u2019s 1961 poetry collection, Posledn\u00ed m\u00e1j<\/em> (The Last May<\/em>). The title of Kundera\u2019s collection was a doleful homage to the long romantic (and to some, Byronic) poem \u201cM\u00e1j<\/em>\u201d <\/em>by Karel Hynek M\u00e1cha, an icon of Czech national culture then bursting through the Habsburg seams. But Kundera\u2019s title could also be read as a gesture of melancholy\u2014mourning the Prague Spring and the parting with the poet\u2019s homeland\u2014well in advance of 1968 and the Soviet tanks rolling through the streets of the city of Golem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kundera\u2019s collection was inscribed to an unknown Czech lady\u2014almost like a Prague-set novella that Stefan Zweig had forgotten to write. I purchased the volume, and it now occupies a place of honor in my rare books collection alongside the Nabokovs and Bunins and the other spoils of expatriate writing from Eastern and Central Europe. As I think of Milan Kundera\u2019s passing in Paris at the age of 94, I remember my first encounter with his\u00a0work back when I was a 19-year-old Moscow refusenik, and the shock of discovering that such a literary sensibility could actually emerge directly from the Soviet system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at Tablet<\/a> ]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Tablet In Memory of Milan Kundera On the passing of the great Czech writer and dissident BY MAXIM D. SHRAYER In the spring of 1993, I was working at the Slavonic Library in Prague with the remains of the rich collections of the former RZIA (Russian Historical Archive Abroad), which the Soviet liberators had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}