Maya Jaggi: The struggle of memory against forgetting
Milan Kundera is the latest writer whose alleged or admitted past threatens to cast a pall over his oeuvre – from Christa Wolf, outed in 1993 as a former Stasi informant, to Gunter Grass, revealed in his 2006 memoir as a teenage recruit to the Waffen-SS.
Kundera has broken a habit of media silence to denounce as a "lie" claims that, as a student in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1950, he informed on a western spy who then spent 14 years in a prison and labour camp. He called the allegation "the assassination of an author", perhaps equating it with the persecution of artists, in a line from Céline to Rushdie, that he inveighed against in his book Testaments Betrayed.
While we cannot know the truth of this claim by local historians, we do know that, before Kundera became a satirical scourge of Czech Stalinism, he was, like many of his generation, a supporter of the Communist party. He joined it in 1948, though was disillusioned by a visit to Moscow in 1954. The historian who published in the Czech journal Respekt the purported police report naming him as the informer in this case suggests he may have needed to ingratiate himself with the authorities for his place at the Prague Film Academy. But the act of which he stands accused might also have been consistent with his beliefs at the time.
To suggest, however, as the historian does, that the claim would explain both Kundera's reclusiveness and his resistance to interpretations linking his life and fiction, is misconceived. There is nothing sinister in a novelist insisting on the distinction between his characters and himself, nor – despite my 20 years as a literary interviewer – do I find anything untoward in authors zealously guarding their privacy. If the claim were true, far from invalidating Kundera's fiction, and its anti-Communist thrust, it might affirm the depth and complexity of his disillusionment, even adding a spur of guilt to his anger at the regime.
The alleged victim, Miroslav Dvoracek, is said to be unconcerned with the identity of the informer. Yet there are other possible victims who may reasonably demand the truth – including the woman who was blamed for the betrayal for decades, and others, and their families, arrested for helping the spy. Though the opening of secret files has riven the former eastern bloc since the fall of the Berlin wall, disclosure is a vital part of any process of reconciliation or healing. Fear of eventual disclosure can add a crucial disincentive to siding with oppressors for personal gain, where there is any element of choice.
As Kundera wrote in perhaps his most frequently quoted statement, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." If the claim were true but he denied it, he might justly be blamed less for what he did then, than for what he has failed to disclose now.
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Kundera has broken a habit of media silence to denounce as a "lie" claims that, as a student in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1950, he informed on a western spy who then spent 14 years in a prison and labour camp. He called the allegation "the assassination of an author", perhaps equating it with the persecution of artists, in a line from Céline to Rushdie, that he inveighed against in his book Testaments Betrayed.
While we cannot know the truth of this claim by local historians, we do know that, before Kundera became a satirical scourge of Czech Stalinism, he was, like many of his generation, a supporter of the Communist party. He joined it in 1948, though was disillusioned by a visit to Moscow in 1954. The historian who published in the Czech journal Respekt the purported police report naming him as the informer in this case suggests he may have needed to ingratiate himself with the authorities for his place at the Prague Film Academy. But the act of which he stands accused might also have been consistent with his beliefs at the time.
To suggest, however, as the historian does, that the claim would explain both Kundera's reclusiveness and his resistance to interpretations linking his life and fiction, is misconceived. There is nothing sinister in a novelist insisting on the distinction between his characters and himself, nor – despite my 20 years as a literary interviewer – do I find anything untoward in authors zealously guarding their privacy. If the claim were true, far from invalidating Kundera's fiction, and its anti-Communist thrust, it might affirm the depth and complexity of his disillusionment, even adding a spur of guilt to his anger at the regime.
The alleged victim, Miroslav Dvoracek, is said to be unconcerned with the identity of the informer. Yet there are other possible victims who may reasonably demand the truth – including the woman who was blamed for the betrayal for decades, and others, and their families, arrested for helping the spy. Though the opening of secret files has riven the former eastern bloc since the fall of the Berlin wall, disclosure is a vital part of any process of reconciliation or healing. Fear of eventual disclosure can add a crucial disincentive to siding with oppressors for personal gain, where there is any element of choice.
As Kundera wrote in perhaps his most frequently quoted statement, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." If the claim were true but he denied it, he might justly be blamed less for what he did then, than for what he has failed to disclose now.