94
PARTISAN REVIEW
irrationality" invaded Czechoslovakia in the form of loving soldiers
riding in tanks, he felt an immediate and instinctive need to breathe
the Renaissance spirit of reason. "And it seemed to be concentrated
nowhere as densely as in that feast of intelligence, humor, and fan–
tasy that makes up
Jacques Ie Fataliste."
The philosophy of
Jacques Ie Fataliste
certainly complements
Kundera's perceptions about history, but the feast of intelligence
and fantasy that he sees in it complements his sense of aesthetics too.
Kundera changed Diderot's original title to
Jacques et son Maitre
and
thereby humanized the original theme at the same time he empha–
sized the forms of social and spiritual control in Jacques's life . More
significant, in adapting the novel's polyphonic structure to the stage,
Kundera eliminated its most imposing voice, the narrator's, and his
new title is a means of emphasizing that difference. Jacques's theme,
"Everything that happens to us down here, for good or
ill,
is written
above," takes on a more contemporary note because of the very ab–
sence of the narrative speaker- in this case the author- who must
be there if the play exists but who, paradoxically and unlike Diderot,
does not address his audience. Thus the play reverberates with twen–
tieth century intimations of the absurd and the death of God, and
Kundera conforms to the traditions of those ideals by describing the
set as "for the most part vacant." He also says that while the action
takes place in the eighteenth century, it is an eighteenth century that
we dream of today, and he advises that the historicity of his charac–
ters be "lightly stamped."
In the introduction Kundera provides an outline of the history
ofliterary characters that is the reverse of his ou tline of the history of
Christian sentiment. Relating the development of Western literature
through pairs of famous masters and servants, he provides a key to
his own attitudes:
With an illiterate peasant as his servant, Don Quixote left his
house one day to fight his enemies. One hundred and fifty years
later, Toby Shandy created a large mock battlefield in his garden;
there he abandoned himself to memories of his youth as a soldier,
faithfully assisted by his valet, Trim. Trim limped exactly like
Jacques who, ten years later, entertained his master during their
travels. He was also as talkative and stubborn as, one hundred
and fifty years later, in the Austro-Hungarian army, the assistant
Josef Svejk, who amused and horrified his master, Lieutenant
Lukac. Thirty years afterward, while waiting for Godot, Vladi–
mir and his servant found themselves alone on the empty stage.
The voyage was over.
