This pamphlet, Un Occidente Prigioniero
by Milan Kundera released last year by Gallimard and translated in italian by Giorgio Pinotti for Adelphi is a book that everyone should read for trying to understand what it is going on in Europe in this moment.
These two speeches by Kundera, the first one in 1967 at the IV Congress of the Union of Writers in Prague, and the second in 1983, are illuminating on Europe, and what Europe became with the time.
In the first speech, Kundera focuses his attention on his State, Czechoslovakia.
What is it important for a little nation and what can be considered a success? For sure to try to maintain intellectual fertility, culture, traditions and also the language spoken in the country. Sure: the Czesch one is not a strong language, spoken by million of people: this one represented for the little nation a big risk.
It would have been better to join enthusiastically german language as Kafka, did: but... A little State must also preserve itself in every possible way, I would add, and culture, its language, a solid literature are signals that the State, also if little is alive, produces a lot and feels an independance of thinking and being that will be simply...Sublime.
More subjected to external geo-political aggressions, confirms Kundera, if a strong nation has a defined destiny, a little country will experience external aggressions with, continuously, new political systems and various different governments: Czechoslovakia, during the past XX century has experienced on his land nazism, Stalinism, Socialism, passing through a lot of regimes and of course, different shades of freedoms or repressions.
Why culture in this case is so important? Because culture justifies and preserves the national identity of a country and its folk. A man living in the present, ignoring the past and the continuity of history can transform the country where he lives in, in a land without history, beauty, echoes, memories, adds in fact Milan.
Sure, internationally after the past World War II, the research of integration meant also the use of strong languages like english so that communication became more simplified. And here Kundera reports the worry of a friend of Finnish origins who thought at the danger of this changement:
the world as a land more poor in terms of languages less known, less spoken, practiced and...less developed
There is nothing to do: Czechoslovakia's cultural ferment has been remarkable: Czech literature is not aristocratic, but plebeian, tells us Kundera being in this way strong and weak at the same time.
The repression of free speech in the XX century is a real cross for the society, admits Kundera.
What a history Czechoslovakia experienced! Fascism, Stalinism, plus a socialist society, although Kundera cannot see Nazism and Communism at the same level. Communism has been the heir of a big humanist movement and although the fury of Stalinism meant a lot to that, Communism preserved ideas, slogans, words, and originary dreams. This humanist movement with the time became the opposite, transforming love for humanity in cruelty and this one, yes, has been a great pity.
In the second speech, that created a lot of cultural ferment for the words used by this amazing thinker, Kundera focuses the attention on three central States: his Czechoslovakia, Polland and Hungary, nations that have always felt a strong connection with western Europe, because part of it: but...
They haven't been recognized as part of Europe in particular after the latest World War Conflict because lived, and seen with eyes projected to a predjudice: these countries were part of the Eastern block of Europe, the Communist one.
People and thinkers of these countries, also, noticed something else, with great sadness: that Europe anyway snobbed them; they weren't consider relevant in the European world.
There is more. In 1956 when Russia invaded Hungary, the editor of a press agency, wrote before to being killed: "We will die for Hungary and Europe."
Why did he write this phrase? Russia wanted to dominate Hungary. It wouldn't never wanted to attack another country, no. But Hungary recognized itself as a part of Europe: it was part of that Western Europe that adored and was under attack: the editor wanted that Unghary would have stayed...Hungary and an European country as well.
In Europe we have always known two different kinds of Europe: the western one, the Eastern One and in the middle, the Central One represented by Polland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The main differences between Western and Eastern part of Europe? Religion: the western one is catholic, the eastern one embraced the ortodox christianity. A different way of thinking, there is the certainty that Europe in its differentiations remains an only unity.
After the latest world war conflict, abruptly the history of these three countries was inglobated with Russia and with countries more close to Russia like Bulgaria.
If Bulgaria hasn't lived the passage to Russia like a shock because close to Russia for religion,for these three countries, that had projected their existence to the Western part of Europe wasn't simple at all.
That's why there were several invasions of Russia, in Hungary and later in Czecholovakia lived with big traumas. I want to remember Jan Palach, dead in Prague in 1969 for an ideal of freedom from a regime that they didn't want. He has been the first of five human torches; he burned himself for protest. It wasn't just a story of a regime that people didn't want but of a cultural change that these three countries didn't want at all, because simply they felt that they were part, for historical and religion history, to our western part of Europe.
There hasn't been any kind of russification of the several countries in the russian orbit, no, no, adds, Kundera, but of course the Communism has suffocated in its essence these countries but in particular, underlines Kundera, the same Russia. The biggest problems (when Kundera spoke, Communism was still a reality) was bureocracy the monster more hated, used by Russian for the unification of the Empire.
What was the Comunism for Russians? The negation of history or its coronation? Both, to Kundera, because after all it has been with the Communism that the Russian Empire became so powerful, although religion became prohibited.
Europe is just one, adds Kundera, although the "blocks" are two and Russia is integrant part of Europe. Rilke, enchanted by the distant and profound land proclaimed Russia its spiritual land.
It is true that Russia is also autonomous: Russians won't never feel an European sentiment like other countries do, because, simply, being a large and powerful country, it has always been autonomous, with an originality in the way of living and in the way of thinking that it is different from the rest of Europe: it is its main beauty, because it permits to us the penentration in thoughts and feelings that are not our ones, enriching our panorama of ideas. Russia is an original land close to us.
Gogol, Ukrainian, born at Velyki Sorocynci represents, reports Milan, for a friend of him the Russian culture: a different temporal space, lazy and patient: Russians don't never rush, they filter every word with great wisdom: there is a different kind of smiling, living. It's a different culture. Personally, there are in the pamphlet some impressions of the works of Gogol, I agree with Kundera's friend: I read at first this powerful author when I was 17 developing many nightmares and losing my peace for weeks. I tried again last year thanks to a book by Columbia University Press and nightmares were back. It's....It's that sort of desperation for the human condition that it is so strong in Gogol, so powerful that sometimes scares to death.
Back to the review: Russian culture was felt anyway so distant that these three countries didn't search for it and couldn't accept it.
To these three countries, this cultural and political changes has been a great shock. They "refused" Russia, defending their Occidentality.
There is to add that these three countries, Austria included, with Wien, not in the Sovietic block, created in the past the most fertile and cultural life-style.
Freud, Mahler, Joseph Roth, Julius Zeyer, Franz Kafka, Tibor Dery, Danilo Kis... Oh, the particularity of all these men was that they were all Jewish. In no other part of the world the ebraic genius, writes Kundera has been so splendid, beauty, remarkably important.
Without the Central Europe, Europe couldn't survive, but these little nations have been more victims than winners, and that's why there is a lot of cultural originality in their writings.
Kundera adds also that the power in our modern times is in the hands of very big realities: that's why all the europeans nations can become little worlds and maybe Central Europe has just anticipated something else...
Europe with the time has lost its cultural unity: at the same time also the fertile intellectual activity known in the past slowly slowly disappeared. Culture for Europe was important because permitted a definition, an identity of what Europe was.
Culture at the same time is dying, writes Kundera: its place is taken by market, media, policy. But...Where do we go insists Kundera if there is not anymore a rich cultural production and a strong thinking? Painting as well has lost its importance. Try to ask at someone who is his/her favorite painter, a contemporary one, of course, not a painter of the past. With difficulty a person can tells you who is and why.
Then, one day, Milan reports that a friend of him, because police searched his house, had also taken away his manuscript. He had written that book spending in that pages ten years of his existence: and now... but what to do? In the past it would have been simple: these men of culture would have written at several other european intellectuals creating a big scandal, but now? Where was a person of culture disconnected by a State and not servant of someone?
I hadn't never thought at this consideration but Kundera admitted in this passage that yes, there were still remarkable painters, musicians but they didn't have anymore the important priviledged place of moral authorities. Culture wasn't anymore a supreme value, but just...Something else.
Well, if today it would have been impossible to find someone with that characteristic, if you want to know the entire story of this manuscript, at the end Kundera and his friend thought that maybe they could contact Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre was more than happy to be helpful! For sure today, we were in the 1980s no one would have had an authority in grade to save, firstly, a cultural work and...Culture in general.
Plus: but I guess that the story of Jan Palach is an example, the tumults created in the center of Europe were not supported by magazines, tv, radios but thanks to books, poetry, theater, cinema, literary magazines, comical shows, philosophic discussions. The first ones, medias, were servants of the State, so completely unsupportive.
The first invasion of Russia in Czechoslovakia meant to that people the complete destruction of their culture including their beloved literary journals, so read that once printed, the same day that they appeared were sold out.
What is it now Central Europe? Auschwitz has meant for that countries also the disappearance of Jewish intellectually fertile community.
Ironically, the biggest problem of these countries wasn't and isn't Russia, no, but Europe, a continent that can't feel itself as a value.
Highly recommended book considering what it is going on.
I thank Adelphi for the physical copy of the book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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