Fred Misurella
NOT SILENT, BUT IN EXILE
AND WITH CUNNING
When I look back, I see us always as discontented and protesting,
but also, at the same time, full oj optimism. We were sure that the cul–
tural traditions oj the nation (its skepticism, its realism, its projoundly
rooted doubt) were stronger than that Eastern political system imported
jrom abroad, and that our traditions would sooner or later subjugate that
system to themselves. We were the optimists oj skepticism; we believed in
its subversive jorce and in its victory.
Milan Kundera
In one of his essays, Milan Kundera tells this story about
the end of that optimism: During the third day of the Russian occu–
pation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he was in his car somewhere south
of Prague. The highways, fields, and forests were filled with Russian
footsoldiers. As he approached the town of Budejovice, three R us–
sian soldiers stopped his car and searched it. When they were satis–
fied that he carried nothing seditious or contraband, the officer in
charge asked Kundera in Russian, "What do you think? What are
your sentiments?"
The question was not sinister or ironic, Kundera writes; rather
the officer seemed to reach for some rapprochement. He said, "All
this is a big misunderstanding. But it will work out. You should
know that we love the Czechs. We love you!"
Kundera says, "Understand me. That officer did not disagree
with the invasion. Not at all. They all spoke as he did: their attitude
was founded not on the sadistic pleasure of the rapist, but on another
archetype: the wounded lover. 'Why don't the Czechs (whom we love
so much) want to live with us and in the same way as us? What a
shame that we had to use tanks to teach them about love!'"
A white-haired man whose bright blue eyes reveal a smiling,
somewhat aloof intelligence, Kundera had travelled to the West with
privileged attachments, similar to Nabokov's. Intellectual, private, a
man who would rather talk of aesthetics than politics, he is the son of
Editor's Note: This article was written after interviews and correspondence with
Milan Kundera begun in July of 1982.
