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米兰·昆德拉《小说的艺术》81卷
Milan Kundera, The Art of Fiction No. 81
文/克里斯蒂安·萨尔蒙
本次采访是1983年秋访者与米兰昆德拉几次邂逅的结果。我们在他那栋靠近Montparnasse的阁楼公寓会面,并在这里开展工作。昆德拉把这个小房间当工作室,架子上摆满了哲学和音乐理论书籍,还有一台老式打字机和一张桌子,整体看上去更像学生的房间而不是世界知名作家的书房。有一面墙上并排挂着两张照片,一张是他身为油画家的父亲,另一张是他十分敬仰的捷克作曲家莱奥什·雅纳切克(Leos Janacek)。
我们用法语探讨了几次,每次都无拘无束,时间较长。我们用的不是磁带录音机,而是打字机、剪刀和胶水。在丢弃纸团的沙沙声中,经过几次修订,这篇文字慢慢呈现在我们眼前。
这次访谈是在昆德拉新书《不能承受的生命之轻》一出版成为畅销书之后。突然而至的名声让他很不自在,马尔科姆·劳瑞(Malcolm Lowry)曾说过:“成功就像可怕的灾难,比家中着火还惨,名声摧毁灵魂的栖所。”对于这一点,昆德拉必定感同身受。我问他怎么看媒体上某些对他小说的评论,他说:“对我个人的评论太多了。”
绝大多数评论家喜欢研究作家及其个性、政治主张、私人生活,却忽视了对作家作品的研究。昆德拉不希望谈论自己,似乎是对此做出的本能反应。昆德拉告诉《新观察家》:“对必须讨论自身的厌恶将小说天才和抒情天才区分开来。”因此,拒绝讨论自己可以直接把文学作品和文学形式摆在注意力中心,聚焦小说本身。这才是本次讨论写作艺术的目的。
访问人
你说过相比其他现代文学作家,你感觉自己更接近维也纳小说家罗伯特·穆齐尔(Robert Musil)和赫尔曼·布洛赫(Hermann Broch)。布洛赫和你一样认为心理小说时代已经终结,但他相信自己所说的“多元历史”小说活力依旧。
米兰·昆德拉
穆齐尔和布洛赫赋予小说极大的责任。他们把小说当做思考的集大成,人类能够整体质疑世界的最后阵地00。他们确信小说具有超强的集合力(融合力),可以集诗歌,幻想,哲学,格言和散文于一身。布洛赫在信中对这个问题有过深刻的论述,但是在我看来,他的“多元历史”小说这个词选得不恰当,没有很好地诠释其想法。实际上布洛赫的同胞,奥地利散文大师阿德尔伯特·斯蒂夫特 ( Adalbert Stifter )创造了真正意义上的“多元历史”小说——1857年出版的《圣马丁的夏天》。这本小说声名远扬:尼采将其纳入德国文学四大名著。但如今这本书没法读,里面满是地质学、动植物学、手工艺、绘画和建筑等内容。这部包罗万象、令人振奋的百科全书实际上遗漏了人类自己及其处境,准确的原因是它的多元历史。《圣马丁的夏天》完全缺少令其特别的东西,但布洛赫不一样,而且恰恰相反!他着力发现小说本身能发掘的内容。布洛赫喜欢称为“小说知识”的特定对象是存在。在我看来,“多元历史”必须定义为“将每种设置和每种知识形式结合在一起从而揭示存在的方法”。是的,我感觉自己更接近于使用这一种方法。
采访人
你在《新观察家》上发表的一篇长篇散文引发法国人重新发现布洛赫。你对他赞誉很高,同时又加以批判,文章结尾写道:“所有伟大的作品(只因其伟大)在一定程度上都不完整。
昆德拉
布洛赫能够启发我们,不只因为他完成的东西,还有他追求却获得不了的东西。他作品的不完整帮助我们懂得对新艺术形式的需求:(1)彻底剥离无关紧要的内容(这是为了抓住现代社会中存在的复杂性,同时不失结构的清晰明确);(2)“小说对位“(把哲学,叙事和梦融合进一支音乐);(3)专具小说散文(换句话说,不主张传递一些明确无疑的启示,保持猜想性,游戏性和讽刺性)
访问人
这三点似乎道出了你的整个艺术纲领。
昆德拉
为了使小说对存在进行多元历史阐释,你需要精通省略技巧和凝练艺术,否则就会陷入连篇累牍的泥潭。穆齐尔的《没有个性的男人》是我最喜欢的两三部小说之一,但不要让我赞赏它没有勾勒出的广度!想想一眼看不尽的巨大城堡,想想九个小时的四重奏,人类是有极限的(人类的比例),不该违背,比如记忆局限。看完一部小说,你应该还记得开头,否则这个小说就失去了形态,“构架的明晰性”就变模糊。
访问人
《笑忘录》有七部分,你如果写作不那么简练,完全可以写成七部不同的长篇小说。
昆德拉
但写成七篇独立小说的话,我就丧失了最重要的东西,不能在一本书里抓住“现代社会中人类存在的复杂性“。简练的艺术绝对是最根本的,要求永远直击事物的中心。在这一点上,我总是想到我推崇备至的捷克作曲家莱奥斯·雅那可切(Leo? Jana?ek)。他是现代音乐领域最伟大的大师。他决心将音乐剥离至最基本的元素,具有革命意义。当然,每一首音乐作曲涉及众多技术:主题呈现,发展,变奏,复调(常常是必然出现的),加入配器,过渡等等。今天人们可以使用电脑作曲,其实电脑一直存在于人的头脑——如果有必要,作曲家无需构想也可以写出奏鸣曲,只需依照作曲规律进行扩展即可。雅那可切的目标是摧毁电脑!突进排列而不用过渡,不断重复而不用变化,总是径直进入事物的中心:唯一透出些许本质的音符才有权存在。小说也很类似:小说里充斥着“技术”和代替作者工作的规则——展示一个人物,描述一个社交环境,把行为放入历史背景中,把无关紧要的片段塞进人物的一生。每次改变场景都要求新的说明、描写和解释。我和雅那可切的目标相像,为了让小说摆脱小说技巧和小说语言的梏桎,实现言简意赅。
访问人
你提到的第二种艺术形式是“小说对位法”。
昆德拉
若将小说视为智慧的集大成,“复调”几乎必然要提出来,并且这个问题还有待解决。拿布洛赫的小说《梦游人》来说,它由五种不同类别的部分组成:(1)以主要人物帕斯诺、艾斯克、于格诺为基础的“小说”叙事;(2)安娜·温德灵的个人故事;(3)对军医院生活的写实;(4)对救世军女孩的叙写(部分以诗歌的形式呈现);(5)讨论价值观堕落的哲学散文(使用学术语言)。每条线都精彩纷呈,然而尽管它们采用并线处理,不断交替(即复调方式),但是五个部分联系不起来,也就是说它们并没有形成真正意义上的复调。
访问人
用复调作比喻应用到文学上,你是否在要求小说做它不可能做到的事情?
昆德拉
小说可以用两种方法融合外部元素。堂吉诃德在旅行过程中遇见了各色人等,这些人给他讲了自己的故事。如此一来,独立的故事就嵌入了小说整体,融入整体框架。这种创作经常出现在十八世纪和十九世纪的小说里。但是布洛赫没有把安娜·温德灵的故事放入艾斯克和于格诺的主线故事,而是同时展开。在他之前,萨特(Sartre)和多斯帕索斯(Dos Passos)也使用这种多线同时展开的技巧,但他们的目的是把不同的小说故事放在一起,也就是说对象为单一元素,并非像布洛赫安排的多样化元素。
此外,他们对这种技巧的使用过于机械,缺乏诗意。我想不出比“复调”和“对位”更好的术语来形容这种创作,而且这种音乐类比很有用。比如,《梦游人》第三部分困扰我的第一件事是五个元素不尽平等。在音乐对位法中,所有声音平等是基本规则。布洛赫作品的第一元素(对艾斯克和于格诺的小说描写)比其它元素占据更多篇幅。更为重要的是,由于它联系着小说前面两部分内容,因此肩负联合的任务,地位特殊。因此它吸引了更多的注意,并有把其它元素变成伴奏的危险。困扰我的第二件事是,尽管在巴赫的一首赋格曲里,失去其中任何一种声音都无法实现应有效果,不过安娜·温德灵的故事或论价值观堕落的散文能够以独立作品形式很好地呈现出来,即便单独列出,丝毫无损其含义和品质。在我看来,小说对位法的基本要求有:(1)各种元素的平等;(2)整体的不可分割性。记得在完成《笑忘录》第三部分《天使》的那一天,我对自己感到无比骄傲。我确定自己发现了安排叙事新方法的关键,内容主要有:(1)有关两个女学生和她们漂浮00的逸闻;(2)自传性故事;(3)对一本女权主义书籍的批评散文;(4)关于天使和魔鬼的寓言;(5)描写保罗?艾吕雅(Paul Eluard)飞翔在布拉格上空的梦境描写。这些元素不能脱离彼此而存在,互为解说,共同探究一个简单主题,问一个简单问题——“天使是什么?“
第六部分,也称为《天使》,由以下部分组成:(1)对达米娜之死的梦境描写;(2)对我父亲死亡的自传描写;(3)对音乐学的沉思;(4)对正在摧毁布拉格的遗忘之风的反思。我父亲和被孩子们折磨的达米娜有什么联系呢?借用洛特雷阿蒙(Lautreamont)闻名遐迩的想象,它是在某个主题桌子上“缝纫机与雨伞的相会”。小说复调更讲究诗意而非技巧,我在文学之外找不到有这样复调诗意的例子,但阿伦·雷乃(Alain Resnais)的新电影让我倍感吃惊,他对对位法艺术的运用令人钦佩。
访问人
对位法在《笑忘录》中体现得并不明显。
昆德拉
这正是我的用意所在。在这部书中,我想要让梦境、叙事和反思在完全自然、不可分割的流动中结合在一起。但是小说第六部分的复调特征十分突出:斯大林儿子的故事,神学深思,一个亚洲政治事件,弗朗茨死于曼谷以及托马斯在波西米亚下葬,都贯穿着同一个永恒的疑问——“媚俗是什么?”这段复调乐章是支撑小说整体结构的支柱,是小说构架秘密的关键。
访问人
你要求写“专具小说散文”,对《梦游人》中谈论价值观堕落的散文有所保留。
昆德拉
那是一片非常优秀的散文!
访问人
你对它并入小说的方式存有疑问。布洛赫没有舍弃他的学术语言,而是直截了当地表达自己的观点,没有隐藏自己的任何特性——这也是曼(Mann)或穆齐尔会采取的方式。难道这不是布洛赫的真正贡献,他的新挑战吗?
昆德拉
这点没错,他充分意识到自己的勇气,但同时也有风险:他的散文可以当做小说意识形态的关键来解读和理解,充当它的“真相”,这或许会把小说的剩余部分变成单纯的思想图解。但小说各部分的平衡被破坏,散文的真相变得太沉重,小说精妙的结构布局濒临崩塌。一篇无意详述哲学论题的小说(布洛赫厌恶这类型的小说)最后或许正好让人用这种方式解读。应该怎样把一篇散文嵌入小说呢?很重要的是谨记一个基本事实:沉思一进入小说中,其本质就发生改变。在小说之外,一个人处于申明主张的地界:每个人都是哲学家、政治家和看门人,都对自己说的话确有把握。可是,小说不是一个人下断言的地方,而是情节和假设驰骋的地方。小说中的沉思,就其本质而言,是假定的。
访问人
但是小说家为什么想要剥夺自己在小说中公开肯定地表达其哲学的权利呢?
昆德拉
因为他没有哲学!人们经常谈契诃夫、卡夫卡或者穆齐尔的哲学,却仅仅是从他们作品中找条理清晰的哲学!即便他们在笔记本中表述自己的思想,这些思想也只能算是思考练习,把玩悖论或即兴创作,并非申明哲学。写小说的哲学家不过是利用小说的形式来阐述观点的伪小说家而已,伏尔泰和加缪都没有发现“小说独立发掘的内容”。我只知道一个例外,那就是狄德罗的《宿命论者雅克》。这是一个奇迹!这位哲学家跨越小说的界限,变身戏谑的思想者。这部小说中没有一个严肃的句子,都是在游戏,因而在法国被低估了。实际上《宿命论者雅克》包含着法国已经丢失和拒绝重拾的一切。在法国,人们认为思想优于作品,《宿命论者》不能被翻译成思想语言,因此不能在思想的国土得到理解。
访问人
在《玩笑》中,杰洛斯拉夫发展出了一套音乐学理论,其思想的假定特征十分明显。但是《笑忘录》中的音乐学沉思是作者你自己的,那么我怎样理解它们是假设还是断言?
昆德拉
这全靠基调来决定。从第一段文字开始,我便想赋予这些沉思游戏性、讽刺、挑衅、实验性或问询的论调。《不能承受的生命之轻》第六部分整体上是一篇讲媚俗的文章,详述了一个主要论点:媚俗是对大粪存在的绝对否定。这个对媚俗的冥思对我至关重要,它基于大量思想、经验、研究甚至激情之上,但基调一点也不严肃,而是具有挑逗性。这篇散文是纯小说冥思,脱离这部小说就难以想象。
访问人
你小说的复调还包含另一个元素——梦境描述,它是《生活在别处》第二部分的全部内容,也是《笑忘录》第六部分的基础,以特蕾莎梦境的形式贯穿《不能承受的生命之轻》。
昆德拉
这些段落也最容易产生误解,因为人们想要从中找出某种标志性的信息。特蕾莎的梦没有什么可破译的,它们是关于死亡的诗歌,其含义在于它们的美,这种美也征服了特蕾莎。顺便说一下,你意识到人们不知道如何解读卡夫卡只是因为他们想要破译他吗?他们没有沉浸在卡夫卡无与伦比的想象里,而是寻找象征,并且想出来的都是些陈词滥调——生命是荒诞的(或者不荒诞),上帝难以触及(或可以触及)等等。如果你不了解想象存于自身的价值,你就对艺术,尤其是现代艺术一无所知。诺瓦利斯(Novalis)明白这一点。他在赞扬梦境时说,它们“保护我们免受生活的单调,让我们感受它们游戏的喜悦,从严肃中解放。”他第一个理解梦想和梦幻般想象在小说中的作用。他计划在《奥佛特丁根》(Heinrich von Ofterdingen)第二卷时,让梦想与现实紧密缠绕,叫人无从分辨。不幸的是,第二卷剩下的全是诺瓦利斯描述其审美意向的注解。一百年后,他的志向由卡夫卡实现。卡夫卡的小说融合了梦想与现实,即它们非梦非现实。最重要的是,卡夫卡带来了美学革命,一个审美奇迹。当然,没有人能复制他的作为,但我、他以及诺瓦利斯都希望把梦和对梦境的想象带进小说。我没有融合梦境和现实,而是采用复调对位法。梦境描述是对位法的元素之一。
访问人
《笑忘录》最后一部分没有采用复调,这或许是本书最有意思的部分。它由十四章构成,描写一个男人(扬)生活中性爱场景。00
昆德拉
我们来说另一个音乐术语,这种描写叫“主题与变奏”。主题是事物一旦跨越便失去本身意义的边界。我们的生活紧邻这个边界展开,而且我们随时会冒险穿越这条界线。第十四章是对处于有意义和无意义边界上同一情境的性欲情色做出的第十四种变体。
访问人
你认为《笑忘录》是一部“变奏形式小说”,那么它还是小说吗?
昆德拉
小说的情节不一致,让它看起来不像小说。人们不能想象一篇没有情节一致性的小说。甚至新小说派的探索也基于情节(非情节00)一致性。斯特恩(Sterne)和狄德罗(Diderot)把一致性搞得极度脆弱来取悦自己。雅克和他的主人在《宿命论者雅克》中篇幅更少,只不过是插入逸闻、故事和思想的滑稽借口而已。然而,这种借口,这种“结构”是让小说更像小说所必须有的。《笑忘录》中没有任何此类借口,而主题一致性和变奏将小说凝聚为整体。它是小说吗?它是小说,是一部透过虚构人物来思考存在的小说。这种形式自由度无限。纵观历史,小说从不知道如何发挥其无尽可能的优势,错失良机。
访问人
但除了《笑忘录》,你的小说也建立在情节一致性上,尽管《不能承受的生命之轻》多元性松散了许多。
昆德拉
没错,但是其它更重要的一致性代替了它们:相同形而上学问题的统一,同样动机和变奏的统一(例如《为了告别的聚会》中父权动机)。可是,我想特别强调的是这部小说根本上讲是基于许多基本词语,好比舍恩伯格(Schoenberg)的音符系列。《笑忘录》的基本词语序列如下:遗忘,笑声,天使,“力脱思特”,边界。在小说的发展过程中,这五个关键词经过分析、研究、定义和再定义,转变为存在的范畴。小说依据这几个类别来叙写犹如一座房子依靠大梁来建设。《不能承受的生命之轻》的大梁为:重,轻,灵魂,身体,大行进曲,大粪,媚俗,激情,眩晕,强壮和软弱。鉴于其范畴特征,这些词不能被同义词取代。这一点总是需要向译者一遍遍地说明,因为他们想要体现“好的风格”,避免重复。
访问人
谈到明晰的组织结构,我很惊讶除了一部作品外,你的全部小说都分成了七部分
昆德拉
我写完第一部小说《玩笑》后,没有惊讶它有七部分。随后我写了《生活在别处》,这部小说差不多完成了,有六个部分。我感觉不满意,突然间有了个主意,插入一个发生在英雄死后三年的故事,换句话说,这超出这部小说时间框架之外,如今成为七部分中的第六部分,名叫《中年男人》。这样一来,小说结构一下子完美了。后来,我意识到第六部分奇特地类似《玩笑》的第六部分,同样是介绍框架外的角色,在小说的墙上打开了一扇密窗。《可笑的爱》最初有十个短篇故事,我在编排终稿时删除了其中三个,这本小说集就变得很连贯紧凑,为写《笑忘录》做了铺垫。哈维尔医生这个角色把第四部分和第六部分联系在一起,《笑忘录》的第四部分和第六部分也是由同一人物联系,即达米娜(Tamina)。在写《不能承受的生命之轻》时,我决定打破数字七的魔咒,此后在好长时间里都决定采用六部分的框架,但是总没办法把第一部分塑造成型。最终我明白它其实是由两个部分构成,像连体婴,需要精巧的手术将其分割开。我说这些只想表明我没有对神奇数字的迷信矫作上瘾,也没有执着做出理性判断。相反,我受到来自深处、无意识、不可思议的需求驱使,一种我无法回避的正式原型。我所有的小说都是围绕数字七产生的结构变体。
访问人
你将小说清晰划分为其部分,必定和你想把最多样的元素融合进一个整体的目的有关。你小说每一部分的形式都很特殊,向来自成一个世界。然而,小说采用数字已经分成了几个段落,那为什么这些分出来的段落也必须再分章节呢?
昆德拉
这些章节本身必须创造自己的世界,必须相对独立。这就是我一直要求出版商确保这些数字醒目,章节划分清晰的原因。章节好比乐谱的节拍段!有的节拍段(章节)长,有的就短,也有的不规律。每一部分都该有音乐节拍器:中板,急板,行板等等。《生活在别处》第六部分是行板,平静而忧郁,讲述一个中年男子和一个刚出狱的年轻女孩短暂邂逅。最后一部分是最急板,章节短小,从垂死的杰罗米尔跳到兰波,莱蒙托夫和普希金。我首先以音乐的形式构想《不能承受的生命之轻》。我知道最一部分必须十分轻缓,使用慢板,它集中在发生于一个地点的一段很短暂且平静的时光,曲调安静平缓。我也知道这一部分必须放在最急板之后,即《大行进曲》之后。
访问人
数字七规律有个例外,《为了告别的聚会》有五个部分。
昆德拉
《为了告别的聚会》是基于另一个正式原型:绝对单一,处理一个主题,使用一个拍子讲述,喜剧性强,风格明显,形式取材于滑稽戏。在《可笑的爱》中,《座谈会》(The Symposium)的故事使用了同一种方式,即由五幕剧构成的滑稽剧。
访问人
你怎么理解滑稽剧?
昆德拉
我的意思是强调情节,强调情节表层所有意料之外又可信的巧合。小说中没有什么像情节和滑稽的夸张那样来得可疑、荒谬、老气、陈腐以及无趣00。从福楼拜起,小说家已经尝试摒弃情节诡计,因而小说变得比最枯燥乏味的生活还枯燥乏味。然而,还有另一条路躲避情节上的可疑和俗套,那就是打破可能性的束缚。你可以在不可能的基础上讲述不可能的故事!卡夫卡就是这么构想《美洲》(Amerika)的。在第一章中,卡尔遇见舅舅的方式是通过一系列最不可能发生的巧合。卡夫卡仿效这种情节,穿过滑稽剧的门,走进了其第一个“超现实”宇宙,实现了第一个“梦境与现实的交织”。
访问人
但是你为什么给一部不纯为娱乐的小说选择滑稽剧的形式?
昆德拉
但它就是娱乐!我理解不了法国人对娱乐的歧视,他们为什么如此羞于提及“娱乐(divertissement)”?相比无聊乏味,他们更不愿冒娱乐的风险。可他们也冒险迷上媚俗,甜甜的东西00,摆弄装饰,以及玫瑰色的灯光,即便是艾吕雅(Eluard)的诗歌或埃托雷·斯科拉(Ettore Scola)的新电影《舞厅》(Le Bal)也都沐浴在这种灯光中,其副标题可以写成:“法国人的媚俗史”。没错,不是娱乐,媚俗才是真正的审美疾病!伟大的欧洲小说最初都充当消遣品,每一个真正的小说家对此很怀念。实际上,那些伟大消遣品的主题异常严肃,你想想塞万提斯!在《为了告别的聚会》中,问题是人类值得活在地球上吗?难道不该“让地球摆脱人类的魔爪”吗?我一生的雄心就是将最为严肃的问题和最为轻松的形式相结合。这不是纯粹的艺术野心,轻佻的形式结合严肃的对象立马就曝露出戏剧的真相(床上事和我们在历史大舞台的演出)和它们可怕的无意义。我们体验着不能承受的生命之轻。
访问人
所以你也可以把新小说的名字用在《为了告别的聚会》上?
昆德拉
我的每部小说都可以用《不能承受的生命之轻》、《玩笑》或《可笑的爱》来命名,这些标题之间可以互换,反映出那些为数不多的主题。它们吸引着我,定义着我,也不幸地限制着我。除了这些主题,我没有其他东西可说或者可写的。
访问人
你的小说中有两个正式的创作原型:(1)复调,使多样化的元素融入以数字七为基础的构架;(2)滑稽剧,单一同质,有戏剧性,绕开不可能发生的束缚。在这两种原型外还有可能有一个昆德拉吗?
昆德拉
我素来梦想有某种伟大且无法预期的不忠,但我目前还没有能力摆脱这两种原型的重婚状态。
原文地址:theparisreview.org
This interview is a product of several encounters with Milan Kundera in Paris in the fall of 1983. Our meetings took place in his attic apartment near Montparnasse. We worked in the small room that Kundera uses as his office. 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. On one of the walls, two photographs hang side by side: one of his father, a pianist, the other of Leo? Janacek, a Czech composer whom he greatly admires.
We held several free and lengthy discussions in French; instead of a tape recorder, we used a typewriter, scissors, and glue. Gradually, amid discarded scraps of paper and after several revisions, this text emerged.
This interview was conducted soon after Kundera's most recent book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, had become an immediate best-seller. 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. 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!"
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. "Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent," Kundera told Le Nouvel Observateur.
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. That is the purpose of this discussion on the art of composition_._
INTERVIEWER
You have said that you feel closer to the Viennese novelists Robert Musil and Hermann Broch than to any other authors in modern literature. Broch thought--as you do--that the age of the psychological novel had come to an end. He believed, instead, in what he called the "polyhistorical" novel.
MILAN KUNDERA
Musil and Broch saddled the novel with enormous responsibilities. They saw it as the supreme intellectual synthesis, the last place where man could still question the world as a whole. They were convinced that the novel had tremendous synthetic power, that it could be poetry, fantasy, philosophy, aphorism, and essay all rolled into one. In his letters, Broch makes some profound observations on this issue. 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 _[Indian Summer], published in 1857. The novel is famous: Nietzsche considered it to be one of the four greatest works of German literature. Today, it is unreadable. It's packed with information about geology, botany, zoology, the crafts, painting, and architecture; but this gigantic, uplifting encyclopedia virtually leaves out man himself, and his situation. Precisely because it _is polyhistorical, Der Nachsommer totally lacks what makes the novel special. This is not the case with Broch. On the contrary! He strove to discover "that which the novel alone can discover." The specific object of what Broch liked to call "novelistic knowledge" is existence. In my view, the word "polyhistorical" must be defined as "that which brings together every device and every form of knowledge in order to shed light on existence." Yes, I do feel close to such an approach.
INTERVIEWER
A long essay you published in the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur caused the French to rediscover Broch. You speak highly of him, and yet you are also critical. At the end of the essay, you write: "All great works (just because they are great) are partly incomplete."
KUNDERA
Broch is an inspiration to us not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain. The very incompleteness of his work can help us understand the need for new art forms, including: (1) a radical stripping away of unessentials (in order to capture the complexity of existence in the modern world without a loss of architectonic clarity); (2) "novelistic counterpoint" (to unite philosophy, narrative, and dream into a single music); (3) the specifically novelistic essay (in other words, instead of claiming to convey some apodictic message, remaining hypothetical, playful, or ironic).
INTERVIEWER
These three points seem to capture your entire artistic program.
KUNDERA
In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length. Musil's The Man Without Qualities is one of the two or three novels that I love most. But don't ask me to admire its gigantic unfinished expanse! Imagine a castle so huge that the eye cannot take it all in at a glance. Imagine a string quartet that lasts nine hours. There are anthropological limits--human proportions--that should not be breached, such as the limits of memory. When you have finished reading, you should still be able to remember the beginning. If not, the novel loses its shape, its "architectonic clarity" becomes murky.
INTERVIEWER
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is made up of seven parts. If you had dealt with them in a less elliptical fashion, you could have written seven different full-length novels.
KUNDERA
But if I had written seven independent novels, I would have lost the most important thing: I wouldn't have been able to capture the "complexity of human existence in the modern world" in a single book. The art of ellipsis is absolutely essential. It requires that one always go directly to the heart of things. In this connection, I always think of a Czech composer I have passionately admired since childhood: Leo? Jana?ek. He is one of the greatest masters of modern music. His determination to strip music to its essentials was revolutionary. Of course, every musical composition involves a great deal of technique: exposition of the themes, their development, variations, polyphonic work (often very automatic), filling in the orchestration, the transitions, et cetera. Today one can compose music with a computer, but the computer always existed in composers' heads--if they had to, composers could write sonatas without a single original idea, just by "cybernetically" expanding on the rules of composition. Jana?ek's purpose was to destroy this computer! Brutal juxtaposition instead of transitions; repetition instead of variation--and always straight to the heart of things: only the note with something essential to say is entitled to exist. It is nearly the same with the novel; it too is encumbered by "technique," by rules that do the author's work for him: present a character, describe a milieu, bring the action into its historical setting, fill up the lifetime of the characters with useless episodes. Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations. My purpose is like Jana?ek's: to rid the novel of the automatism of novelistic technique, of novelistic word-spinning.
INTERVIEWER
The second art form you mentioned was "novelistic counterpoint."
KUNDERA
The idea of the novel as a great intellectual synthesis almost automatically raises the problem of "polyphony." This problem still has to be resolved. Take the third part of Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers; it is made up of five heterogeneous elements: (1) "novelistic" narrative based on the three main characters: Pasenow, Esch, Huguenau; (2) the personal story of Hanna Wendling; (3) factual description of life in a military hospital; (4) a narrative (partly in verse) of a Salvation Army girl; (5) a philosophical essay (written in scientific language) on the debasement of values. Each part is magnificent. Yet despite the fact that they are all dealt with simultaneously, in constant alternation (in other words, in a polyphonic manner), the five elements remain disunited--in other words, they do not constitute a true polyphony.
INTERVIEWER
By using the metaphor of polyphony and applying it to literature, do you not in fact make demands on the novel that it cannot possibly live up to?
KUNDERA
The novel can incorporate outside elements in two ways. In the course of his travels, Don Quixote meets various characters who tell him their tales. In this way, independent stories are inserted into the whole, fitted into the frame of the novel. This type of composition is often found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century novels. Broch, however, instead of fitting the story of Hanna Wendling into the main story of Esch and Huguenau, lets both unfold simultaneously. Sartre (in The Reprieve), and Dos Passos before him, also used this technique of simultaneity. Their aim, however, was to bring together different novelistic stories, in other words, homogeneous rather than heterogeneous elements as in the case of Broch. Moreover, their use of this technique strikes me as too mechanical and devoid of poetry. I cannot think of better terms than "polyphony" or "counterpoint" to describe this form of composition and, furthermore, the musical analogy is a useful one. For instance, the first thing that bothers me about the third part of The Sleepwalkers is that the five elements are not all equal. Whereas the equality of all the voices in musical counterpoint is the basic ground rule, the sine qua non. In Broch's work, the first element (the novelistic narrative of Esch and Huguenau) takes up much more physical space than the other elements, and, even more important, it is privileged insofar as it is linked to the two preceding parts of the novel and therefore assumes the task of unifying it. It therefore attracts more attention and threatens to turn the other elements into mere accompaniment. The second thing that bothers me is that though a fugue by Bach cannot do without any one of its voices, the story of Hanna Wendling or the essay on the decline of values could very well stand alone as an independent work. Taken separately, they would lose nothing of their meaning or of their quality.
In my view, the basic requirements of novelistic counterpoint are: (1) the equality of the various elements; (2) the indivisibility of the whole. I remember that the day I finished "The Angels," part three of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I was terribly proud of myself. I was sure that I had discovered the key to a new way of putting together a narrative. The text was made up of the following elements: (1) an anecdote about two female students and their levitation; (2) an autobiographical narrative; (3) a critical essay on a feminist book; (4) a fable about an angel and the devil; (5) a dream-narrative of Paul Eluard flying over Prague. None of these elements could exist without the others, each one illuminates and explains the others as they all explore a single theme and ask a single question: "What is an angel?"
Part six, also entitled "The Angels," is made up of: (1) a dream-narrative of Tamina's death; (2) an autobiographical narrative of my father's death; (3) musicological reflections; (4) reflections on the epidemic of forgetting that is devastating Prague. What is the link between my father and the torturing of Tamina by children? It is "the meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella" on the table of one theme, to borrow Lautreamont's famous image. Novelistic polyphony is poetry much more than technique. I can find no example of such polyphonic poetry elsewhere in literature, but I have been very astonished by Alain Resnais's latest films. His use of the art of counterpoint is admirable.
INTERVIEWER
Counterpoint is less apparent in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
KUNDERA
That was my aim. There, I wanted dream, narrative, and reflection to flow together in an indivisible and totally natural stream. But the polyphonic character of the novel is very striking in part six: the story of Stalin's son, theological reflections, a political event in Asia, Franz's death in Bangkok, and Tomas's funeral in Bohemia are all linked by the same everlasting question: "What is kitsch?" This polyphonic passage is the pillar that supports the entire structure of the novel. It is the key to the secret of its architecture.
INTERVIEWER
By calling for "a specifically novelistic essay," you expressed several reservations about the essay on the debasement of values which appeared in The Sleepwalkers.
KUNDERA
It is a terrific essay!
INTERVIEWER
You have doubts about the way it is incorporated into the novel. Broch relinquishes none of his scientific language, he expresses his views in a straightforward way without hiding behind one of his characters--the way Mann or Musil would do. Isn't that Broch's real contribution, his new challenge?
KUNDERA
That is true, and he was well aware of his own courage. But there is also a risk: his essay can be read and understood as the ideological key to the novel, as its "Truth," and that could transform the rest of the novel into a mere illustration of a thought. Then the novel's equilibrium is upset; the truth of the essay becomes too heavy and the novel's subtle architecture is in danger of collapsing. A novel that had no intention of expounding a philosophical thesis (Broch loathed that type of novel!) may wind up being read in exactly that way. How does one incorporate an essay into the novel? It is important to have one basic fact in mind: the very essence of reflection changes the minute it is included in the body of a novel. Outside of the novel, one is in the realm of assertions: everyone's philosopher, politician, concierge--is sure of what he says. The novel, however, is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses. Reflection within the novel is hypothetical by its very essence.
INTERVIEWER
But why would a novelist want to deprive himself of the right to express his philosophy overtly and assertively in his novel?
KUNDERA
Because he has none! People often talk about Chekhov's philosophy, or Kafka's, or Musil's. But just try to find a coherent philosophy in their writings! Even when they express their ideas in their notebooks, the ideas amount to intellectual exercises, playing with paradoxes, or improvisations rather than to assertions of a philosophy. And philosophers who write novels are nothing but pseudonovelists who use the form of the novel in order to illustrate their ideas. Neither Voltaire nor Camus ever discovered "that which the novel alone can discover." I know of only one exception, and that is the Diderot of Jacques le fataliste. What a miracle! Having crossed over the boundary of the novel, the serious philosopher becomes a playful thinker. There is not one serious sentence in the novel--everything in it is play. That's why this novel is outrageously underrated in France. Indeed,Jacques le fataliste contains everything that France has lost and refuses to recover. In France, ideas are preferred to works. Jacques le fataliste cannot be translated into the language of ideas, and therefore it cannot be understood in the homeland of ideas.
INTERVIEWER
In The Joke, it is Jaroslav who develops a musicological theory. The hypothetical character of his thinking is thus apparent. But the musicological meditations in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting are the author's, your own. How am I then to understand whether they are hypothetical or assertive?
KUNDERA
It all depends on the tone. From the very first words, my intention is to give these reflections a playful, ironic, provocative, experimental, or questioning tone. All of part six of The Unbearable Lightness of Being ("The Grand March") is an essay on kitsch which expounds one main thesis: kitsch is the absolute denial of the existence of shit. This meditation on kitsch is of vital importance to me. It is based on a great deal of thought, experience, study, and even passion. Yet the tone is never serious; it is provocative. This essay is unthinkable outside of the novel, it is a purely novelistic meditation.
INTERVIEWER
The polyphony of your novels also includes another element, dream-narrative. It takes up the entire second part of Life Is Elsewhere, it is the basis of the sixth part of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and it runs through The Unbearable Lightness of Being by way of Tereza's dreams.
KUNDERA
These passages are also the easiest ones to misunderstand, because people want to find some symbolic message in them. There is nothing to decipher in Tereza's dreams. They are poems about death. Their meaning lies in their beauty, which hypnotizes Tereza. By the way, do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories and come up with nothing but cliches: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), et cetera. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself. Novalis knew that when he praised dreams. They "protect us against life's monotony," he said, they "liberate us from seriousness by the delight of their games." He was the first to understand the role that dreams and a dreamlike imagination could play in the novel. He planned to write the second volume of his Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a narrative in which dream and reality would be so intertwined that one would no longer be able to tell them apart. Unfortunately, all that remains of that second volume are the notes in which Novalis described his aesthetic intention. One hundred years later, his ambition was fulfilled by Kafka. Kafka's novels are a fusion of dream and reality; that is, they are neither dream nor reality. More than anything, Kafka brought about an aesthetic revolution. An aesthetic miracle. Of course, no one can repeat what he did. But I share with him, and with Novalis, the desire to bring dreams, and the imagination of dreams, into the novel. My way of doing so is by polyphonic confrontation rather than by a fusion of dream and reality. Dream-narrative is one of the elements of counterpoint.
INTERVIEWER
There is nothing polyphonic about the last part of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and yet that is probably the most interesting part of the book. It is made up of fourteen chapters that recount erotic situations in the life of one man--Jan.
KUNDERA
Another musical term: this narrative is a "theme with variations." The theme is the border beyond which things lose their meaning. Our life unfolds in the immediate vicinity of that border, and we risk crossing it at any moment. The fourteen chapters are fourteen variations of the same situation's eroticism at the border between meaning and meaninglessness.
INTERVIEWER
You have described The Book of Laughter and Forgetting as a "novel in the form of variations." But is it still a novel?
KUNDERA
There is no unity of action, which is why it does not look like a novel. People can't_imagine_ a novel without that unity. Even the experiments of the nouveau roman were based on unity of action (or of nonaction). Sterne and Diderot had amused themselves by making the unity extremely fragile. The journey of Jacques and his master takes up the lesser part of Jacques le fataliste; it's nothing more than a comic pretext in which to fit anecdotes, stories, thoughts. Nevertheless, this pretext, this "frame," is necessary to make the novel feel like a novel. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting there is no longer any such pretext. It's the unity of the themes and their variations that gives coherence to the whole. Is it a novel? Yes. A novel is a meditation on existence, seen through imaginary characters. The form is unlimited freedom. Throughout its history, the novel has never known how to take advantage of its endless possibilities. It missed its chance.
INTERVIEWER
But except for The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, your novels are also based on unity of action, although it is indeed of a much looser variety in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
KUNDERA
Yes, but other more important sorts of unity complete them: the unity of the same metaphysical questions, of the same motifs and then variations (the motif of paternity in_The Farewell Party_, for instance). But I would like to stress above all that the novel is primarily built on a number of fundamental words, like Schoenberg's series of notes. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the series is the following: forgetting, laughter, angels, "litost," the border. In the course of the novel these five key words are analyzed, studied, defined, redefined, and thus transformed into categories of existence. It is built on these few categories in the same way as a house is built on its beams. The beams of The Unbearable Lightness of Being are: weight, lightness, the soul, the body, the Grand March, shit, kitsch, compassion, vertigo, strength, and weakness. Because of their categorical character, these words cannot be replaced by synonyms. This always has to be explained over and over again to translators, who--in their concern for "good style"--seek to avoid repetition.
INTERVIEWER
Regarding the architectural clarity, I was struck by the fact that all of your novels, except for one, are divided into seven parts.
KUNDERA
When I had finished my first novel, The Joke, there was no reason to be surprised that it had seven parts. Then I wrote Life Is Elsewhere. The novel was almost finished and it had six parts. I didn't feel satisfied. Suddenly I had the idea of including a story that takes place three years after the hero's death--in other words, outside the time frame of the novel. This now became the sixth part of seven, entitled "The Middle-Aged Man." Immediately, the novel's architecture had become perfect. Later on, I realized that this sixth part was oddly analogous to the sixth part of The Joke ("Kostka"), which also introduces an outside character, and also opens a secret window in the novel's wall. Laughable Loves started out as ten short stories. Putting together the final version, I eliminated three of them. The collection had become very coherent, foreshadowing the composition of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. One character, Doctor Havel, ties the fourth and sixth stories together. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the fourth and sixth parts are also linked by the same person: Tamina. When I wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I was determined to break the spell of the number of seven. I had long since decided on a six-part outline. But the first part always struck me as shapeless. Finally, I understood that it was really made up of two parts. Like Siamese twins, they had to be separated by delicate surgery. The only reason I mention all this is to show that I am not indulging in some superstitious affectation about magic numbers, nor making a rational calculation. Rather, I am driven by a deep, unconscious, incomprehensible need, a formal archetype from which I cannot escape. All of my novels are variants of an architecture based on the number seven.
INTERVIEWER
The use of seven neatly divided parts is certainly linked to your goal of synthesizing the most heterogeneous elements into a unified whole. Each part of your novel is always a world of its own, and is distinct from the others because of its special form. But if the novel is divided into numbered parts, why must the parts themselves also be divided into numbered chapters?
KUNDERA
The chapters themselves must also create a little world of their own; they must be relatively independent. That is why I keep pestering my publishers to make sure that the numbers are clearly visible and that the chapters are well separated. The chapters are like the measures of a musical score! There are parts where the measures (chapters) are long, others where they are short, still others where they are of irregular length. Each part could have a musical tempo indication: moderato, presto, andante, et cetera. Part six of Life Is Elsewhere is andante: in a calm, melancholy manner, it tells of the brief encounter between a middle-aged man and a young girl who has just been released from prison. The last part is prestissimo; it is written in very short chapters, and jumps from the dying Jaromil to Rimbaud, Lermontov, and Pushkin. I first thought of The Unbearable Lightness of Being in a musical way. I knew that the last part had to be pianissimo and lento: it focuses on a rather short, uneventful period, in a single location, and the tone is quiet. I also knew that this part had to be preceded by a prestissimo: that is the part entitled "The Grand March."
INTERVIEWER
There is an exception to the rule of the number seven. There are only five parts to The Farewell Party.
KUNDERA
The Farewell Party is based on another formal archetype: it is absolutely homogeneous, deals with one subject, is told in one tempo; it is very theatrical, stylized, and derives its form from the farce. In Laughable Loves, the story entitled "The Symposium" is built exactly the same way--a farce in five acts.
INTERVIEWER
What do you mean by farce?
KUNDERA
I mean the emphasis on plot and on all its trappings of unexpected and incredible coincidences. Nothing has become as suspect, ridiculous, old-fashioned, trite, and tasteless in a novel as plot and its farcical exaggerations. From Flaubert on, novelists have tried to do away with the artifices of plot. And so the novel has become duller than the dullest of lives. Yet there is another way to get around the suspect and worn-out aspect of the plot, and that is to free it from the requirement of likelihood. You tell an unlikely story that chooses to be unlikely! That's exactly how Kafka conceived Amerika. The way Karl meets his uncle in the first chapter is through a series of the most unlikely coincidences. Kafka entered into his first "sur-real" universe, into his first "fusion of dream and reality," with a parody of the plot--through the door of farce.
INTERVIEWER
But why did you choose the farce form for a novel that is not at all meant to be an entertainment?
KUNDERA
But it is an entertainment! I don't understand the contempt that the French have for entertainment, why they are so ashamed of the word "divertissement." They run less risk of being entertaining than of being boring. And they also run the risk of falling for kitsch, that sweetish, lying embellishment of things, the rose-colored light that bathes even such modernist works as Eluard's poetry or Ettore Scola's recent film Le Bal, whose subtitle could be: "French history as kitsch." Yes, kitsch, not entertainment, is the real aesthetic disease! The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious--think of Cervantes! In The Farewell Party, the question is, does man deserve to live on this earth? Shouldn't one "free the planet from man's clutches"? My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form. Nor is this purely an artistic ambition. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being.
INTERVIEWER
So you could just as well have used the title of your latest novel for The Farewell Party?
KUNDERA
Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and, unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or to write.
INTERVIEWER
There are, then, two formal archetypes of composition in your novels: (1) polyphony, which unites heterogeneous elements into an architecture based on the number seven; (2) farce, which is homogeneous, theatrical, and skirts the unlikely. Could there be a Kundera outside of these two archetypes?
KUNDERA
I always dream of some great unexpected infidelity. But I have not yet been able to escape my bigamous state.