In "The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes" by Milan Kundera, the author discusses Edmund Husserl's concerns about the crisis of European humanity during the Modern Era. According to Husserl, the one-sided focus of European sciences, rooted in thinkers like Galileo and Descartes, reduced the world to a technical and mathematical object, neglecting the concrete world of life. This led to what Heidegger termed "the forgetting of being," where man became a mere thing to external forces.
Kundera introduces a nuanced perspective, suggesting that the ambiguity of the Modern Era embodies both decline and progress. He argues that Cervantes, often overlooked by phenomenologists, played a crucial role in shaping European culture. While philosophy and science forgot about human being, the novel, starting with Cervantes and spanning four centuries, delved into existential themes. It explored adventure, the inner workings of emotions, historical rootedness, the everyday, irrationality in human behavior, and the concept of time.
Kundera contends that the novel, driven by the "passion to know," protected man's concrete life against the forgetting of being. He echoes Hermann Broch's assertion that the sole purpose of a novel is to discover hitherto unknown aspects of existence, making knowledge its morality. Kundera emphasizes the supranational context of the European novel, where the sequence of discoveries constitutes its history.
The author describes how the departure of God from the universe left a world of fearsome ambiguity. Don Quixote, facing myriad relative truths, becomes the image and model of the Modern Era. Kundera contrasts Descartes' heroic stance of facing the universe alone with Cervantes' courage to embrace ambiguity, dealing with contradictory truths.
Cervantes' novel is seen as a representation of the world's ambiguity rather than a moral position. Kundera critiques simplistic interpretations that seek clear distinctions between good and evil, arguing that religions and ideologies struggle with the novel's language of relativity. The "either-or" mindset reflects an inability to tolerate the essential relativity of human things and an unwillingness to accept the absence of a Supreme Judge, making the novel's wisdom of uncertainty challenging for some to grasp.
Again, Kundera, the author traces the evolution of the novel as a parallel history of the Modern Era.
Kundera begins by highlighting the early European novels, like Don Quixote, as journeys through an apparently unlimited world, existing in a time without beginning or end. However, he observes a shift in Balzac's era, where the distant horizon disappears behind modern social structures, signaling the advent of History as a powerful force driving societal changes.
The author explores how, in the case of Emma Bovary, the shrinking horizon leads to a focus on dreams and daydreams within the monotony of everyday life. Yet, the dream of the soul's infinity loses its magic when History takes hold of man, offering limited prospects and diminishing the significance of individual uniqueness.
Kundera asserts that the path of the novel serves as a parallel history of the Modern Era. He questions the fate of adventure, the novel's first great theme, suggesting that it may have become a parody. He points to the paradox in "The Good Soldier Schweik," a comic war novel, where war and its horrors have turned into laughing matters.
The author then delves into the paradox of war in the works of Hasek and Kafka. While wars in Homer and Tolstoy had comprehensible meanings, in the Modern Era, force becomes sheer irrationality, stripped of rational arguments. Kundera suggests that this paradox arises as Cartesian rationality corrodes traditional values, leading to a vacuum where pure irrationality takes center stage.
He emphasizes this paradox in Hermann Broch's "The Sleepwalkers," portraying how, as reason achieves a total victory, pure irrationality, driven by force willing only its will, seizes the world stage. Kundera sees this as a terminal paradox of the Modern Era, where reason's triumph leaves room for an unbridled, irrational force.
Kundera notes another terminal paradox: the dream of global unity and everlasting peace in the Modern Era, which has culminated in an indivisible history of the planet but is paradoxically embodied and guaranteed by ambulant and everlasting war, eliminating any escape for anyone.
Kundera, reflects on Husserl's philosophical testament regarding the European crisis. Kundera ties the philosophical shift to historical events, particularly the amputation of Central Europe after World War I when Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague were engulfed by the Russian empire. This catastrophe marked the end of an enfeebled Europe, prompting the emergence of terminal paradoxes in the Modern Era.
Kundera argues that the Central European novelists, including Kafka, Hasek, Musil, and Broch, explored the terminal paradoxes of the era, shifting from grappling with personal struggles to confronting an impersonal, uncontrollable, and incomprehensible force called History. The existential categories in their novels undergo a transformation as adventure loses meaning, the future becomes unpredictable, crime becomes forgettable, and the boundary between public and private blurs.
The author asserts that the periods in the novel's history are long and characterized by the aspects of being on which the novel concentrates. He suggests that the period initiated by Central European novelists seventy years ago, addressing terminal paradoxes, is far from over.
Kundera delves into discussions about the death of the novel, often predicted by avant-garde movements. He argues that if Cervantes is the founder of the Modern Era, the end of the novel's legacy could signify the end of the era itself. He dismisses the notion of the novel's demise as frivolous, drawing on his experiences in a totalitarian world where bans, censorship, and ideological pressure led to the violent death of the novel. Totalitarian Truth, he contends, is incompatible with the relativity and ambiguity inherent in the spirit of the novel.
Kundera highlights the halt in the history of the novel in the empire of Russian Communism, emphasizing the event's significance given the historical importance of the Russian novel. He concludes that the death of the novel is not a fanciful idea; it has already happened quietly and unnoticed, as novels in totalitarian societies fail to contribute to the ongoing history of the genre.
In "The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes", Kundera, the author addresses concerns about the potential end of the novel. He rejects the idea that the novel has exhausted its possibilities, likening it more to a cemetery of missed opportunities. Kundera identifies four appeals that could rejuvenate the novel.
Firstly, he discusses the appeal of play exemplified by Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and Denis Diderot's "Jacques le Fataliste." These works, conceived as grand games, reached unprecedented heights of playfulness and lightness, suggesting unexplored paths for the novel.
Next, Kundera explores the appeal of dream introduced by Franz Kafka. Kafka's fusion of dream and reality, a longstanding ambition of the novel, opened up new possibilities, challenging the seemingly inescapable imperative of verisimilitude.
The third appeal is that of thought, embodied by novelists like Musil and Broch, who brought a sovereign intelligence to the genre. Rather than turning the novel into philosophy, they sought to synthesize rational and irrational elements, illuminating human existence.
Lastly, Kundera delves into the appeal of time, urging the novel to expand beyond individual memory to explore collective time. He mentions a desire to transcend temporal limits, introducing multiple historical periods into the novel.
Kundera rejects the notion that the novel's potential is exhausted and suggests that its disappearance would stem from its alienation in a world that no longer appreciates its essence.
Kundera laments the modern world's process of reduction, where life, love, and history are simplified and social functions overshadow individual existence. Kundera argues that the novel's purpose is to keep "the world of life" illuminated and protect against "the forgetting of being."
He expresses concern that the novel itself is succumbing to the termites of reduction, as mass media increasingly influence culture and reduce works of art's meaning. The media, agents of unifying global history, amplify simplifications and stereotypes, hindering the novel's spirit of complexity.
Kundera observes a common spirit behind diverse media outlets, leading to a reductionist view of life and a contrary spirit to that of the novel. The novel's essence lies in complexity, challenging simplistic answers, but in the contemporary spirit, it's either/or without room for nuance.
The author also addresses the novel's spirit of continuity, emphasizing each work's connection to the past. However, in the current era focused on the expansive present, the novel risks losing its place as a lasting work, becoming just one current event among many.
Despite the challenges, Kundera questions whether the novel will disappear in a world alien to its essence. He believes the novel cannot coexist peacefully with the spirit of the times, as its mission to progress and discover the undiscovered goes against the prevailing worldview.
Kundera contrasts this with the avant-garde's belief in harmony with the future, but he rejects the notion that the future should be the judge of artistic works, asserting that chasing the future is conformism and flattery of the powerful. He questions what he is attached to if not the future, proposing alternatives like God, country, people, or the individual.
In conclusion, Kundera explores the tension between the novel's essence and the reductionist spirit of the modern age, raising doubts about its survival and challenging the conformist pursuit of the future.
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