Summaries of secondary literature pieces on Milan Kundera


By Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (These summaries or quotations were mostly written in hospital towards the end of October 2023, beginning of November)
Draft version: version 2 (29th March 2026, 6, 11-13, 18 added, v1 28 March)


1. Robert C. Porter. 1975. Freedom is my love. The works of Milan Kundera. Index on Censorship 4: 41-46. Available at:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064227508532475
Introduces a classification of three post-1968 Czech writers with Kundera as a third kind: publishing abroad with the hope of publishing in his homeland. Summarizes a system of relations in the short stories, specified by Milan Blahynka: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Provides a history of the English publication of The Joke at odds with Kundera’s history, it seems: amicable meeting and correction. Life is Elsewhere described as structurally simpler and Jaromil as a parody of a poet and revolutionary. Porter declares that there is nothing new in Czech literature in saying man is a parody.


2. Douglas Lauen. 1988. Oedipus Fallen: Irony in the Fiction of Milan Kundera. Student thesis, Oberlin College. Available at:
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1593&context=honors
“The ironic tone which pervades all of Kundera's novels is not an authorial indulgence devoid of interpretive import, but a central vehicle of Kundera's perspective, one which has its roots in the ironies of Czech history and Kundera's role in it.” p.7.  “In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, irony mediates between the evils of the past and the pain of remembering.” And “Only one character recurs in BL&F, which tempts readers to call this a book of stories rather than a novel.” The one character recurrence argument: if only one character recurs, then it is a book of stories; only one character recurs; therefore… A lot of engagement with Roger Kimball. Oedipal interpretation of Tomas from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, focusing on turning into a rabbit.


3. Mark Harper. 1990. The role of the narrator in the novels of Milan Kundera. MA thesis for Texas Tech University. Available at:
https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/items/6d8f5d25-4b60-478c-9568-ba39bf327369
Focusing on chapter five, David Lodge finds The Book of Laughter and Forgetting fragmentary, but the chapter argues that it is a novel by Kundera’s definition. In a Philip Roth interview, Kundera tells us, “A novel is a long piece of synthetic prose based on play with invented characters. These are the only limits.” The chapter argues that unity of themes (e.g. laughter and forgetting) and structural control (variations) produces the unity of a novel.


4. Brian Ward. 2002. A Big Piece of Nonsense for His Own Pleasure: The Identity of Milan Kundera. Limina 8: 144-155. Available at:
https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.304997438961794
Presents how Kundera books in English used to provide a reasonably accurate biography on the back cover but now are reduced to hardly anything. p. 145. Considers two hypotheses: biography is irrelevant and Kundera does not want to elaborate on ambiguous feelings towards his homeland. Charges Kundera with manipulative and distorting representations of personal history in his novels and removing geography even. Ends by saying that Kundera has been writing the work his wife warns against: A Big Piece of Nonsense for His Own Pleasure.


5. Yvon Grenier. 2006. Milan Kundera on Politics and the Novel. History of Intellectual Culture 6 (1): 1-18. Available at:
https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/hic/article/view/68921
Kundera’s essays and other reflections amount to the perspective of an artist on politics. Grenier somewhat challenges the conclusion “that for Kundera, political agents of all stripes manipulate an ignorant and sentimental crowd”: “Things are not that simple. It takes a great deal of energy and intelligence — that is, not merely emotional reflexes — to concoct and reproduce political ideologies.” p. 10. Challenges Eagleton, but not convincingly, p. 15. Also “Perhaps Kundera is simply reverberating the anti‐liberal or even anti‐modern dispositions of the French intelligentsia.” p. 16.


6. David Mosley. 2009. Kundera, Janacek, and the Poetics of Divestment. Words and Music Studies 12. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/369776/Kundera_Janacek_and_the_Poetics_of_Divestment
Features some interesting quotations from Kundera on the influence of music on his novel writing. "Kundera concedes that verbal narratives cannot achieve the simultaneity of voices according to which musical polyphony is defined, i.e. he recognizes what Calvin Brown characterized as the “insuperable barrier” in literature’s effort to become musical." "Kundera identifies his prose style with the musical style of Leoš Janáček. In the Moravian composer’s music the author finds “the will to divest” manifested in “the total absence of mere technique” and “musical automatism” (Art of the Novel, 73) resulting in musical compositions marked by “harsh juxtapositions instead of transitions, repetition [of thematic material] instead of variation” ( The Art of the Novel, 72); the absence of “contrapuntal filler”; and the rejection of routine instrumentation” (Testaments Betrayed, 183). In other words, Janáček cashes out of the late 19th century market of instrumental composition." There is reference to Jastrow's duck-rabbit and Wittgenstein, and how this applies to musical perception.


7. Miriam Margala. 2010. The Unbearable Torment of Translation: Milan Kundera, Impersonation, and The Joke. TranscUlturAl, vol.1,3 (2010), 30-42. Available at:
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/tc/index.php/TC/article/view/10051
Focuses on The Joke. Kundera with each new definitive version revises his texts in ways that he regards unacceptable for translators. p.37. Margala declares this is not a novel observation though. Reasserted more or less on p.41. “Whether we like it or not, when Kundera translates his own works he is, by his own admission, rewriting them as well.” Also “Kundera does all he believes he can do to make it easy for his works to live  as translations without being misinterpreted. This exemplifies his distrust towards those who translate, publish or write critically about his work.” Ends with the thought that Kundera is as much just provoking as thought-provoking.


8. Petr A. Bilek. 2010. A journey of a name from the realm of reference to the realm of meaning: the reception of MIlan Kundera within the Czech cultural context. In P.A. Bilek and V. Papoušek (eds.), Models of Representations in Czech Literary History. Boulder: East European Monographs. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/64769942/A_JOURNEY_OF_A_NAME_FROM_THE_REALM_OF_REFERENCE_TO_THE_REALM_OF_MEANING_THE_RECEPTION_OF_MILAN_KUNDERA_WITHIN_THE_CZECH_CULTURAL_CONTEXT
Begins with analytic philosophy of the name, and says the issue of what does the name “Milan Kundera” refer to is unavoidable in the secondary literature. Kundera in the 1950s has a standard image and then is a progressive. He is searching for new topics and forms. In the 1960s, his biographical information presents him as always debuting in a new form. In the late 1960s, prose fiction became his stable form. Using a descriptive theory of names, in the 1970s in his homeland his name apparently meant the same as various others, including Havel, whom he criticized. In 1984, Kundera became a nucleus for Czech dissident criticism. Much discussion of Milan Jungmann on Kundera. Describes Kundera’s 1980s and beyond public ego as nothing more than an image. Contemporary Czech reception: either loved as a member of the famous or regarded as a cheap trick author, in line with 1980s criticism.


9. Tim Jones. 2012. Slowness, Identity and Ignorance: Milan Kundera’s French Variations. PhD thesis for the University of East Anglia. Available at:
https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/50555/1/Thesis_Tim_Jones_-_Slowness,_Identity_and_Ignorance_-_Milan_Kundera's_French_Variations.pdf
Thesis argues that The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a novel because of the same themes being analysed again and again, through the form of variations. Jones goes on to argue that the later French novels are exploring themes which have been explored on a number of occasions before, by Kundera, such as slowness and speed in The Joke and The Farewell Waltz. The total body of his texts displays a similar unity to BL&F. Briefly considers why the later novels have been neglected: too recent; because readers are interested in experiences of a totalitarian society?


10. Małgorzata Ciecilzko. 2018. “Being a dancer is not only a passion” - dance forms in the prose works of Milan Kundera. Bohemistyka 2018, no. 2. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/47423756/_Being_a_dancer_is_not_only_a_passion_dance_forms_in_the_prose_works_of_Milan_Kundera
Ciecilzko presents the circle dances (first dimension) from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which are associated with equality and faith and closure. Unlike the open formation of the row, once you leave or are cast out of the circle, you cannot return, analyzes Kundera, who describes his personal experience. Erotic dances (second dimension) are also presented. These serve to slow down the plot and build tension. We are presented with quotations of nurse Alzhbeta’s dancing from the story Symposium, from Laughable Loves, which leads to questions of how she learnt to dance like that: a Viennese striptease apparently. The third dimension from the list is the entangled waltz, but no one dances in the novel The Farewell Waltz or refers to dancing, making the title a problem. The problem is addressed. In Slowness, politicians are compared by an academic to dancers, engaged in a moral judo (fourth dimension) to appear superior.


11. Dhee Sankar. 2018. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Narration in Milan Kundera’s The 
Unbearable Lightness of Being. Bhatter College Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies 8(1).
https://www.academia.edu/37461775/The_Ethics_and_Aesthetics_of_Narration_in_Milan_Kunderas_The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being
The paper raises the question of whether Kundera avoids a solipsistic conception of the novel. Sankar quotes how Kundera regards characters as experimental selves yet denies the novel is solipsistic. Refers to Habermas, the theme of the polyphonic novel, and the theme of reduced privacy. Ends with an interesting quotation from Joseph Mai: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being opens a perspective in which human life is "reduced" to the meat that is absent in the Cartesian tradition."
 
12. Gülçehre Kurt. 2019. A Rebel to Totalitarianism: Post-Communist Lives in Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Appears to be a student paper for a course. Characterizes Kundera's novel as postmodern. "Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being plainly utilizes intertextual material from the works of Nietzsche, Parmenides, Beethoven, Tolstoy, Kafka, Freud, Hitler and a lot of others  which emphasizes that the text is a fusion merging philosophy, art, history, psychology, and dream." Quotes Roland Barthes: "plurality of discourses. Roland Barthes states that " The text is a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original blend and clash." Says "Unlike realist fiction which follows a mere chronological order of events to create an illusion to  gain the reader's confidence and to bring the coherence, postmodernism plays with time and order to 
admit the fictitious status of the written word." ("Are there not realistic fictions which the narrative is not strictly chronological," you ask?)


13. Matija Ivačić. 2021. On Milan Kundera – In a Problematic Manner. “Umjetnost riječi” LXV :3–4. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/165265176/On_Milan_Kundera_In_a_Problematic_Manner
This is a review of Jan Novák, Kundera: Český život a doba. Praha: Argo & Paseka, 2020. Ivačić says that the biography is marred by Novák's negative attitude to Kundera. It ignores the French phase of Kundera's work. Also "Novák largely relies on documents from the National Security archives, where publicly accessible Milan Kundera’s file is stored, bringing to light even the details from Kundera’s intimate life, which undeniably exceeds the bounds of common decency (i.e., his love, or more precisely, sex life), which could be characterised as vulgar voyeurism." And "Furthermore, in psychological and sexual profiling of Kundera, Novák largely relies on testimonies of Prague sexologist and once a close friend of Kundera’s, Ivo Ponděliček, and unquestioningly accepts them as competent." He was interviewed at 90, which is 50 years or more since events recounted. Another criticism is "Novák’s considerations and interpretations of Kundera’s prose works almost unambiguously take mimesis as a starting interpretation frame, regardless of the fact that in many cases he expresses aversion towards the mimetic view on literature, typical of Marxist criticism. Novák justifies his analytical approach, based on the conviction that literature reflects outside, historical reality, and thus also the personality and life of the author as a historic person".  Novák is a screenwriter, it seems.


14. Fábio S. Magnani. 2021. Milan Kundera’s Motorcycles. In Um Motoqueiro Existencialista. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/59334449/MILAN_KUNDERAS_MOTORCYCLES
Presents how the motorcycle figures in different fictions by the author. Also the bicycle is covered. “The Farewell Waltz (1972) features a beautiful nurse who is romantically divided between a famous trumpeter who drives a white limousine and a humble machinist who rides a motorcycle. The motorcycle is used only to represent the different social positions of both rivals.” In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,  the bicycle is referred to as a source of subversion and also physical pleasure, prior to sexual intercourse. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the motorcycle encircling Soviet tanks is a symbol of political provocation. This scene involves Tereza but Sabina finds the motorcycle part of the world’s ugliness. However, the motorcycle is also her means of escape. The fullest treatment of the motorcycle is in Slowness, where its speed is used as a means of forgetting.


15. Maria Popova. 2021. The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Mystery to Ourselves: Milan Kundera on Writing and the Key to Great Storytelling. The Marginalian.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/08/12/milan-kundera-art-of-the-novel-storytelling
She suggests the most terrifying feature of consciousness is: "we can construct models of the real world built upon theories of exquisite internal consistency; that those theories can have zero external validity when tested against reality; and that we rarely get to test them, or wish to test them. Just ask Ptolemy." If clinical it's delusion, if creative art, says Popova. She quotes Kundera's The Art of the Novel on Tolstoy's drafts of Anna Karenina: "The final version of the novel is very different, but I do not believe that Tolstoy had revised his moral ideas in the meantime; I would say, rather, that in the course of writing, he was listening to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction. He was listening to what I would like to call the wisdom of the novel."  This wisdom, elaborates Kundera, is the wisdom of uncertainty. She links this to Wisława Szymborska and Richard Feynman. Clarifies Kundera thus: "Great storytelling, then, deals in the illumination of complexity." Says Kundera echoes Adrienne Rich's claim that literary imagination are arts of the possible when he asserts, "A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities." Further connections to James Baldwin, Iris Murdoch, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Ursula Le Guin, Anthon Chekhov, and Jerome Bruner.


16. Maria Popova. 2023. Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means. The Marginalian. Available at:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/10/09/milan-kundera-animal-rights/
Seems mainly composed of quotations. Dostoevsky: "Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals." A Walt Whitman poem. Presents Kundera as challenging Descartes' belief that non-human animals are non-conscious automatons, quoting: “The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse… What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.” Also quotes: "The right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars…" Popova asserts: At the heart of this murderous self-importance is our troubled relationship to power — the power within and between selves, its confused uses and abuses, its role as a mirror for our emotional incompleteness. And then quotes: "“We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotion — love, antipathy, charity, or malice — and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals…Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals." Ends with connections to Samuel Butler, Henry Betson, and St Montgomery - Kepler references earlier.


17. Maria Popova. 2023. Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives. The Marginalian Available at:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/09/11/milan-kundera-coincidenes/
Popova begins with two extreme rival conceptions of reality, one according to which everything is determined by the initial state of the universe - it and the causal laws determined the next state, which determined the next state, and so on, including all you do - and another in which "every event is the product of randomness and probability fluctuations." Our experience of serendipity, of fortunate coincidences, hovers between these two conceptions. Popova takes Kundera to be exploring the significance of this in his The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "Tomas appears in the hotel restaurant at the same time the radio is playing Beethoven. We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences. If the seat Tomas occupied had been occupied instead by the local butcher, Tereza never would have noticed the radio was playing Beethoven." Our lives are deprived of an aesthetic dimension, says Kundera, if we ignore these coincidences meaningful for us. She is also critical: " But his very metaphor undermines the case for pure chance as the conductor of our lives: Music, after all, is not the product of chance but of the composer’s deliberate choice in sequencing the notes and silences." Connections made to: Wisława Szymborska (love at first sight), Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung (synchronicity), Simone de Beauvoir (closer to the truth), Iris Murdoch (on love and chance), and Borges (on chance and who we are).


18. Khalid Shakir Hussein. A Corpus-based Stylistic Analysis of Body-Soul and Heaviness-Lightness Metaphors in Kundera's Novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
https://www.academia.edu/29784498/A_Corpus_based_Stylistic_Analysis_of_Body_Soul_and_Heaviness_Lightness_Metaphors_in_Kunderas_Novel_The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being
Divides approaches to metaphor into those which regard metaphors as possibly enriching one's conceptual capacities and those which do not accord this role. Detailed theoretical framework and use of WordSmith software. Features this quotation from Kundera: "When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina—what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being." Presents a conventional analysis of the metaphors of heaviness and lightness. A conventional reading says heaviness refers to being low, being slow, being degrading, being unbearable. Lightness refers to being up, being quick, being upgrading, being bearable. (Read by me quickly.)