The world of literature is in mourning. Czech writer Milan Kundera passed away on July 12, 2023, at the age of 94, in Paris after a prolonged illness.
The artist was one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century in literature. In his first novel, The Joke, he highlighted his great ability to mix fiction and essay, as well as a profound use of irony with diverse narrative voices that give life to the story.
Something that stands out in his writings is that in his first works, he exposed all his criticisms of totalitarianism and the exile he lived with the invasion of what was the Soviet Union to his country. His work has been translated into numerous languages and is internationally acclaimed. He has received several literary awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize in 2007 and the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize in 2010.
In each of his books, under a light and friendly tone, themes of enormous depth are hidden. They not only reflect Kundera’s fears and concerns but are also those that he shares with the world at large. Kundera’s literature masterfully delves into the realms of the political and the spiritual. Proof of this is the phrases he wrote in his novels that give us a deeper definition of such ‘simple’ themes as beauty, love, or unhappiness.
Milan Kundera’s Quotes on Beauty
“Beauty is more than justice, beauty is more than truth, it is more real, more indubitable, and even more attainable. Beauty is above all, and at this moment it is already definitely lost to him. It had only come to show itself to him at the last moment so that he would not think that he had known everything and had lived his life to the bottom of all its possibilities.” The Farewell Waltz
“Women don’t look for beautiful men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. That’s why having an ugly lover, is a fatal mistake.” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
“Whoever seeks infinity should close his eyes.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Children are not the future because someday they are going to grow up, but because humanity is going to get closer and closer to the child because childhood is the image of the future.” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan Kundera’s Quotes About Love
“What was between them was not love, it was immortality.” Immortality
“Loves are like empires: when the idea on which they have been built disappears, they perish too.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Love does not manifest itself in the desire to sleep with someone, but in the desire to sleep next to someone.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being
It is not necessity, but chance, that is full of charms. If love must be unforgettable, chances must fly towards it from the first moment.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera’s Quotes on Unhappiness
“Memories go if they cease to be evoked again and again in conversations between friends.” Ignorance
“At this moment, I am not really here. I should have left yesterday, and here I am nothing but my delay.” The Farewell Waltz
“To be sincere, it is necessary to know oneself, and to know oneself takes years.” The Farewell Waltz
“For everything in this world is forgiven in advance, and therefore everything cynically permitted.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Kundera may be of Czech origin and may have adopted French nationality, but his work is neither French nor Czech. It belongs to another territory, another history, another corpus than that of the languages in which it was written: the transnational and translinguistic space of the novel. There are very few contemporary writers of whom this can be said,” is how François Ricard, professor at McGill University in Montreal, defined the author.
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
