Testaments Betrayed

8.0
I don`t usually like reading essays. I`m not an intellectual person to that level, but for Milan Kundera I can make an exception. In this work he discusses the problems of misunderstanding that various geniuses have faced. The central person among those geniuses is Franz Kafka, who asked his best friend to burn his all works after his death but not only Kafkas unfinished novels were published, which is a good thing, but also every word he had ever written without even thinking that it could be of some value as a finished piece. But Kafka isn`t the only hero of this essay, there`s a Czech composes Janachek who wrote operas in prose and whos works were usually edited at the perfrormances, there`s Hemminguay who is put into cliches by various critiques, there`s Stravinsky who recorded most of his works himself being the conductor fearing that otherwise his legacy would have been made fun of. It`s a subject that Kundera has already discussed in his literary works - for example in the novel "Immortality" and in the story "Old decedents must give their place to new decedents". What I got from the book was the interest for Kafkas other two novels apart from "The process" which are discussed quite throughout in this essay, and for the already mentioned Janachek. And if anybody shall say that it means nothing he doesn`t know what he`s saying.
2004-08-07
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