Kundera article in New Yorker

[Valentino, Russell]

Great topic.

I found Kundera's objection to being grouped with the Russians by the "eminent Slavist" who meant him no harm rather inconsistent, if not contradictory. That is world literature too. It's just not the one he wants to be primarily associated with, which is obviously centered farther west. I read the objection more as authorial image control, or an attempt at it, under a pretext of something else.

The other, and more seriously troubling aspect of the piece is the utter absence of anything about translation, which is the only way that works get into the "larger context" he wants us all to think about. Leaving translation out of the discussion merely perpetuates the "English-was-good-enough-for-Jesus" assumptions characteristic of most readings and discussions of translated works. Why Kundera of all people should fail to even mention it is puzzling at the very least.

Overall, the piece could have been much more challenging than it was.

(The review of Tom Stoppard's trilogy of plays about Russian nineteenth-century revolutionary thinkers in the same issue was more interesting.)

Russell Valentino

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list [mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of colkitto
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 8:39 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Kundera article in New Yorker

One comment that could be made on the Milan Kundera article is that the term
"Slavic" should primarily be thought of as purely linguistic, like "Celtic",
"Germanic", or even "Indo-European", referring to a group of fairly
disparate cultures that happen to speak historically related languages.

To take an extreme example of a similar phenomenon, the fact that American 
English and Farsi are
both Indo-European has not been cited as a factor suggesting that the US
might aspire to closer relations with Iran in the Middle East.

This approach should go some way to answering Kundera's concerns about being 
grouped with classical Russian writer, as a "Slavic
author."

Imagine grouping him with, e.g., Hafiz, or, at the opposite end, Dafydd ap 
Gwilym, as an "Indo-European author."

Meanwhile, for Canadians, there is a specially interesting passage:

"Given that the French are unused to distinguishing between nation and
state, I often hear Kafka described as a Czech writer.  Of course that is
nonsense."

Recently there has been some discussion in Canada as to the exact meaning of
the term "nation", and whether there can be nations within nations, etc.,
mainly centred (of course) on the position of Quebec.  Many  pundits have
tied themselves in knots over whether Quebec can be a nation within the
Canadian nation (or state) or not.  They should read Kundera's article.

Meanwhile Witold Manczak has an article in Bulletin de la Soiciete
Polonaise de la Linguistique (LVIII, 2002) titled Naród a jezyk, panstwo i 
religia,
which deals with some of the same issues, citing changing views of the 
status of Copernicus as an example.

Robert Orr

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