The novel is famous: Nietzsche considered it to be one of the four greatest works of German literature. However, it seems to me that he obscures his own intentions by using the ill-chosen term “polyhistorical novel.” It was in fact Broch’s compatriot, Adalbert Stifter, a classic of Austrian prose, who created a truly polyhistorical novel in his Der Nachsommer , published in 1857. In his letters, Broch makes some profound observations on this issue. They were convinced that the novel had tremendous synthetic power, that it could be poetry, fantasy, philosophy, aphorism, and essay all rolled into one. They saw it as the supreme intellectual synthesis, the last place where man could still question the world as a whole. Musil and Broch saddled the novel with enormous responsibilities. He believed, instead, in what he called the “polyhistorical” novel. Broch thought-as you do-that the age of the psychological novel had come to an end. You have said that you feel closer to the Viennese novelists Robert Musil and Hermann Broch than to any other authors in modern literature. That is the purpose of this discussion on the art of composition. Refusing to talk about oneself is therefore a way of placing literary works and forms squarely at the center of attention, and of focusing on the novel itself. “Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent,” Kundera told Le Nouvel Observateur.
Kundera’s wish not to talk about himself seems to be an instinctive reaction against the tendency of most critics to study the writer, and the writer’s personality, politics, and private life, instead of the writer’s works. Fame consumes the home of the soul.” Once, when I asked him about some of the comments on his novel that were appearing in the press, he replied, “I’ve had an overdose of myself!” Sudden fame makes him uncomfortable Kundera would surely agree with Malcolm Lowry that “success is like a horrible disaster, worse than a fire in one’s home. This interview was conducted soon after Kundera’s most recent book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, had become an immediate best-seller. Gradually, amid discarded scraps of paper and after several revisions, this text emerged.
#Arthur rimbaud illuminations farce free#
We held several free and lengthy discussions in French instead of a tape recorder, we used a typewriter, scissors, and glue. On one of the walls, two photographs hang side by side: one of his father, a pianist, the other of Leoš Janácek, a Czech composer whom he greatly admires.
#Arthur rimbaud illuminations farce full#
With its shelves full of books on philosophy and musicology, an old-fashioned typewriter and a table, it looks more like a student’s room than like the study of a world-famous author. We worked in the small room that Kundera uses as his office.
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Our meetings took place in his attic apartment near Montparnasse. This interview is a product of several encounters with Milan Kundera in Paris in the fall of 1983.
Interviewed by Christian Salmon Issue 92, Summer 1984
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