Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kunderais a Czech-born writer who went into exile in France in 1975, and became a naturalised French citizen in 1981. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores"...
NationalityCzechoslovakian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 April 1929
soul body betrayed
and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone. The body that had betrayed her and that she had sent out into the world among other bodies.
essence flames body
For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
passionate body surface
She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.
soul body cages
The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.
beauty body-image goodness
How goodness heightens beauty!
men age body
In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.
body
When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.
life outline quite rehearsal sketch whereas worth
We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.
Broch is an inspiration to us, not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain.
art endless master novel technique trap
In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length.
change
Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations.
almost discreet incapable life speaking states
I am incapable of speaking of myself and of my life and the states of my soul, I am discreet to an almost pathological degree, and there is nothing I can do against that.
accused bed breakfast bring brought careful dangerous unless
O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once youve brought breakfast in bed youll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
jobs men epic
[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.