468
PARTISAN REVIEW
relation to the history of the novel, which Kundera claims is part of the un–
folding of the history of Europe. "The path of the novel," says Kundera,
"emerges as a parallel history of the modern era." And Kundera further
states that the germ of the modern novel is contained in its earliest expres–
sions. Thus both Cervantes and Kafka, according to Kundera, were explor–
ing the nature of existence, though the difference in time is revealed by the
difference between Cervantes's adventurous concern with the ambiguities of
a world that was opening and Kafka's anxious literary version of the ambi–
guities of a world that was closing. Joseph K is Don Quixote in modern
dress: both are searching for their selves. But for Cervantes the self was
wandering in "a world it could not recognize," while for Kafka the world was
contained within himself. Kundera makes the further point that Kafka's
prophetic genius created a world that later came in reality to resemble the
psychological prison in which he lived. Kundera describes, with a sense of
historical resignation, the Kafkaesque atmosphere of Czechoslovakia under
Stalinist rule. Arguing that connections either in life or in fiction are not al–
ways causally related, Kundera makes the almost mythical observation that
all the dogs were slaughtered in Czechoslovakia just before the invasion by
Russian tanks in 1968.
"But why," asks Kundera, "was Kafka the first novelist to grasp these
tendencies, which appeared on history's stage so clearly and brutally only
after his death?" "Why didn't all the avant-gardists - who, claiming
to
know
the direction of history, indulged in conjuring up the face of the future - fore–
see the turn of events?" It is because, says Kundera, Kafka saw the essence
of the world in bureaucracy, in the abstract dimensions of the office, in the
rule of the functionary. It is the "bureaucratic universe." These insights - or
obsessions - says Kundera, enabled Kafka to create a poetic world that re–
sembles totalitarian realities. The basis of totalitarianism, observes Kundera,
is the obliteration of the distinction between the public and the private. And
this merging of the two spheres, according to Kundera, is at the heart of
Kafka's fiction.
Although Kundera insists he is not a political man - and to some extent
this is borne out by his novels which have political overtones, but essentially
exhibit the quality of an "existential" and erotic game - he does make some
very astute political comments. For example, in explaining the sway ofleft
ideology, Kundera says:
... it is the system of confusions, the system of symbolic thought, that
underlies all behavior, individual as well as collective. ...
The irrational system rules politics no less: along with the last
world war Communist Russia won the war of symbols: it succeeded for
