"History is not just a parade of false absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a debasement of spirit to the Improbable. "
EMCioran
" History, the nightmare that would wake up. "
James Joyce
"Ultimately, the truth does not matter."
Wallace Stevens
From the first pages of the book of essays by Milan Kundera A meeting , discover the absolute freedom from which the author writes, free of any imposition, faith or ideology, no concessions to anything or anyone, disillusioned about everything except the creators in finding something to share. Kundera is the freedom that is claiming for a long time novelist and writer in general, the freedom that has lived long enough to uncover all the traps he lives. Kundera has had too many brushes with history as to still believe in something outside the individual: first experienced the rude awakening from their lethargy with communism, then the desperation after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which led him into exile and literary language change, from Czech into French, and, after the dazzling success of his novels, his eighties had to endure a slanderous campaign against him, launched from Prague and vociferous press frivolous world. These experiences, which quietly hints at A meeting , make him a free thinker who defends the man and his path to inner independence and enlightenment. Why this title? Because to talk about what interests you intimately, Kundera calls on their pages to the creators who feel closer. So parade through the book writers such as Juan Goytisolo, Celine, Philip Roth, Carlos Fuentes, García Márquez or Curzio Malaparte, or musicians like Stravinsky, Xenakis and Janácek, inescapable reference on all test books Kundera. At these meetings, Kundera addresses the major issues that occupy the end of his life: the identity and exile, falsehood and treachery, memory and forgetting, the living and the dead. Always from the vicissitudes of the individual, only to Kundera has value, lowest man before history and powers, to the limiting collective identities, to the religions and ideologies. Kundera that shortly after his arrival in France, in a meeting mentioned the name of Anatole France and immediately the Romanian writer EMCioran leaned over to whisper: "never uttered here this name out loud if it wants to become the talk of the general fun!" Why? Because in a country that is proud of its revolution, a writer who is worthy of critical analysis contempt.
For Kundera forgetfulness is an evil, but the memory used as a weapon of punishment, which has become legendary transparency required, it is equally damaging, for which is to create a general indiscretion.
In the final pages, the novel examines Kundera Malaparte skin. Its theme is Europe, first submitted by the Nazis, then released, liberated and occupied-US and the USSR. Europe had regarded their culture as a model for the world after his release, he starts to feel small in front of a bright and omnipresent American. In contrast in the perception of Europeans, European and skeptical tired, defeated and blame that was left blinded by the bright white smile virtuoso American interests both of Malaparte as Kundera.
If Kundera opens his book talking about the living, their originality and their pathetic little physical resemblance to portraits of Bacon, A meeting concluded with a reflection on the dead. Compared with the living, the dead have an absolute numerical superiority: "Insurance of their superiority, they mock us, make fun of this little island of time in which we live, in that tiny time of the new Europe which we shown in all its insignificance, all its transience. "
After a meeting I see that Milan Kundera, French or Czech, is one of the best essayists present and that this is his most beautiful book of essays and more lucid, more pampered and personal.
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