Testaments betrayed by Milan Kundera

Résumé du document

« We don't give a damn about testaments» declares Milan Kundera in Testaments betrayed. Why Max Brod has not respected Kafka's testament? Why has Vogel accepted that people make alterations to his friend Janacek's work? Kundera highlights the growing disrespect to the wishes of the authors. The main reason is a serious incomprehension between modern art and its lovers and critics. This essay was originally published in French in 1993 under the title Les testaments trahis. Indeed, Milan Kundera, born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, lives in France since 1975. He is mostly known for his ironical opposition to the communist Czech government in the fifties and sixties. His novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1986) is also well-known.

From his first works, he has always favoured humour, dealing comically with serious topics. As Jean Rubès says in Dictionnaire des auteurs européens, although he has experienced two significant political systems (the totalitarian regime and the liberal society), Kundera is mostly interested on the one hand by the human being when he writes novels and on the other hand by the destiny of European culture when he writes essays.
In Testaments betrayed Kundera develops in nine parts a study of European art situation, place and destiny. He focuses mostly on the incomprehension (or false comprehension) which badly affects European art. How can works be admired without being understood? What are the consequences for art and more generally for Europe?

Extraits

[...] Kafka's testament has aroused a lot of questions. Kafka asked Max Brod to destroy his work. Of course, Brod did not obey to this request. He cleared himself saying that Kafka's wishes were not serious, since Kafka knew Brod's admiration for his work. Yet, Kundera demonstrates that Kafka wanted only his private texts and his unfinished novels to be destroyed. When Brod published Kafka's letters, he acted against Kafka's discreet nature. Moreover, the publication of his letters allowed a biographical study of Kafka. [...]

[...] Several readings are necessary to understand all the irony inside a novel. Indeed, irony sets up a complex relation between all the information given in the novel. The reader has to understand each information as an opposition to the others. He must not to consider them individually. Tolstoy defined life as an “itinerary”, a “winding path”. The successive phases of life are different but also in opposition, and this leads to an ironical connection. Irony also presupposes that every part in a human being life is equal. [...]

[...] This text is composed by a dialogue which gives the possibility to imagine countless stories. Hemingway does not give any information about the characters and their situation. This short story is then “totally abstract” but also “totally concrete”, since Hemingway tried to represent the “visual and acoustic surface” of the dialogue. He described a real dialogue, with hesitations, repetitions and elements which are incomprehensible for external observers. Jeffrey Meyers, an American literature professor, has analysed Hemingway's short story and transformed it into a morality lesson. [...]

[...] This sentence is a long metaphor. Kundera describes this metaphor as “existential” or “phenomenological”. The aim of this sentence is to explain the meaning of the actions and situations of the characters. Analysing the different translations in French of this sentence, Kundera explains how much this metaphor has been transformed. Indeed, translators stood in the way of Kafka's aesthetic intention. They did not understand it and preferred follow the “common style of correct French”. They have extended the vocabulary, eliminating key words and the “melodic beauty” created by repetitions. [...]

[...] Men have to move forward in fog. If they turn over to judge their past, they are not in fog anymore, but they do not move forward either. Kundera bases the last part, You're not in your own house, my dear fellow on Kafka's famous testament. is it possible to like someone and in the same time to misunderstand him that Vogel, a passionate supporter of Janacek, approved the “retouches” made to Janacek's work. Yet his music was in consequence more conventional and in opposition to the Janacek's “aesthetic revolt”. [...]