Feature:

Dragostea din Tei

Academic:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Analysis of the novel introduction
Kundera and the Czechs
Weight, the Unbearable Lightness
Bibliography

Orishas:

Orishas: Emigrante (album)
Orishas (flash 1)
Orishac (flash 2)
Orishas: Rodlan
Orishas: Ruzzo
Orishas: Yotuel

Seriously funny:

Changes english
Dr. Ruth
No comment
Religion differences
Teenager (noun)
Trainspotting
T'was the night before finals

Seriozitate:

Cantec de jali
Femeia: element chimic
Orarul mundava

The Collection:

Seriozitate
Seriously funny

Kundera and the Czechs

After the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, most Czech literature was banned, and circulated only in manuscript. Open public cultural life was destroyed. Nonetheless, it was then, the 1970's , that Czech literature gained its international reputation. But how long can it survive in the underground?

Political oppression is worse than censorship and the police. Oppression creates a boundary between good and evil, and the writer easily gives in to the temptation of preaching. And this is deadly for literature.
Hermann Broch, an Austrian novelist has said, ''The only morality for a writer is knowledge.'' Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being. To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth; it means to discover a truth.

Culture can survive in very difficult circumstances., however, when oppression is lasting, it may destroy a culture completely. Culture needs a public life, free exchange of ideas through publications, exhibits, debates and open borders. But it's possible that societies experiencing oppression offer more occasions for the writer to discover ''an unknown fragment of existence''.
Kundera says that none of the characters of his novels are self-portraits, or the portrait of a living person. But there are similarities between his life and his novels.
In ''The Farewell Party'', when one of its main characters, Jakob, elects to leave his invaded homeland, he enters the land of exile. This, of course, was the vista that stretched before Kundera when he left Czechoslovakia in 1975.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Kundera lost his position as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague, and his books were banned. Little by little, life was made unbearable for him, and he was hounded out of his native country. Likewise, in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", in Prague, in the spring of 1968, when Alexander Dubcek is trying to make the Czech Communist Government more human, Tomas writes the Edipus Essay to a newspaper to add his voice to a public debate. Thereafter, the Russians invade Prague, Dubcek is replaced, public debate ceases, and Tomas is asked by the authorities to sign a statement retracting the sentiments of his letter. But he knows that once he does, if he ever again speaks out the Government will publish his retraction and his name among his fellow Czechs will be ruined. So he refuses and for his intransigence is then asked to sign a letter avowing his love for the Soviet Union, a possibility so unthinkable that he quits medicine and becomes a window washer. He hopes that now that he is down at the bottom he will no longer matter to the authorities and they will let him alone. What he discovers is that he no longer matters to anyone. No matter how Tomas responds, his life is ruined.

Kundera was part of the Prague Spring of 1968, the promise of Socialism with a human face that was smashed under the treads of Soviet tanks. Kundera says that the danger that threatens us is the totalitarian empire. Mao, Stalin they were not left or right. Totalitarianism is neither left nor right, within it both will perish. He says that because of that, the struggle between left and right seems obsolete and quite provincial. He hates to participate in political life, although politics fascinate him as a show. A tragic, deathly show in the empire to the east; an intellectually sterile but amusing one in the West. When it comes to the misfortune of nations, we must not forget the dimension of time. In a fascist, dictatorial state, everyone knows that it will end one day. Everyone looks to the end of the tunnel. In the empire to the east, the tunnel is without end. Without end, at least, from the point of view of a human life. This is why you can not compare a country like Poland with, say, Chile. The torture, the suffering are the same. But the tunnels are of very different lengths. And this changes everything.
Kundera was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, he felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us. A fraternity was born.

Ever since the age of 46, Kundera has lived in France. When asked if he feels like an emigre, a Frenchman, a Czech, or just a European without specific nationality, he had this to say: When the German intellectuals left their country for America in the 1930's, they were certain they would return one day to Germany. They considered their stay abroad temporary. He, on the other hand, has no hope whatever of returning. His stay in France is final, and, therefore, He does not consider himself an émigré. France is his only real homeland now. For a thousand years, Czechoslovakia was part of the West. Then, all of a sudden, it was part of the empire to the east. He said he would feel a great deal more uprooted in Prague than in Paris. he writes his essays in French, but his novels in Czech, because his life experiences and his imagination are anchored in Bohemia, in Prague. It's what he calls, "the spirit of Prague'': The common man's point of view. History seen from below. A provocative simplicity. A genius for the absurd. Humor with infinite pessimism.

A Czech requests a visa to emigrate. The official asks him,
''Where do you want to go?''
''It doesn't matter,'' the man replies.
He is given a globe. ''Please, choose.''
The man looks at the globe, turns it slowly and says, ''Don't you have another globe?''