Milan Kundera - The Curtain

Author: Kundera
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: A new masterpiece from literary giant Kundera after three years, the concluding volume of Kundera's trilogy of literary reflections, a model of systematic exposition of the theory of the novel. Kundera tears away the curtain covering the world and literature, taking us to the lands of the friends, Rabelais, Flaubert, Stendhal, Cervantes, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Robert Musil, and Homer. The continuing mission of salvation in The Art of the Novel and The Unbearable Lightness of Being reaches its peak in The Curtain. The Curtain outlines Kundera's writing plan: to write a theory of the novel art, which is also a theory of life. In The Curtain, Kundera, as a literary figure, buries his soul of a musician deep within his profound knowledge. He strives to discover the mystery of "humanity" in the novel. In Kundera's view, the novelist is not merely someone who pleases the readers; he is more like a distant kind father who is not too serious and no longer takes "people's seriousness seriously," sharing the secrets of life with the readers.
The Curtain was originally written in French. Upon its publication in France, all national newspapers and magazines, such as Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, L'Express, L'Obs, and L'Express magazine, published special reviews. It was also ranked as one of the ten most valuable books of the year by the highly authoritative literary magazine Les Livres de Poche. This Chinese translation is by Dong Qiang, professor of the Department of French at Peking University, who was designated by Kundera as the translator and also his only Chinese student. It is a golden autumn gift presented to Chinese readers who have long been anticipating it.
As the concluding volume of Kundera's trilogy of literary reflections, the essay The Curtain summarizes Kundera's thoughts from the previous two works, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Art of the Novel, and explores the world of the novel art intertwined with history and real-life realities with a freer pen. The Cervantes-style Don Quixote roams the world, tearing away the "curtain" woven by legends and pre-interpretations that hides the essence of reality. Kundera synthesizes his life experiences, mentioning beloved novelists such as Cervantes, Rabelais, Sterne, Flaubert, Musil, Joyce, Kafka, etc., interspersing multiple texts such as The Education of the Heart, The Three Years War, The Idiot, and As I Lay Dying. Divided into seven parts—"The Awareness of Continuity," "World Literature," "The Soul That Enters Things," "What the Novelist Is," "Aesthetics and Existence," "The Torn Curtain," and "Novel, Memory, and Forgetting"—with numerous subheadings, it delves into the concepts of time, banality, comedy, and forgetting. It declares, "Once applied to art, the concept of history has nothing to do with progress; it does not mean perfection, improvement, or enhancement; it is like a journey to explore unknown lands and mark them on a map," and asserts, "The novelist is not a servant of the historian," and "The novelist is not merely someone who thinks only of pleasing the readers," strongly proving the necessity of introducing 'the non-poetic nature of life' into the novel.