A KIDNAPPED WEST

A slim volume of early writings by the celebrated Czech author focusing on Central European cultures and languages.

Kundera (b. 1929), who has lived in France since 1975, was part of the influential arts and theater movement in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, which helped spur the Prague Spring of 1968. In these republished essays, Kundera asserts that the revival of Czech culture and language (the Czech National Revival) assured the very sovereignty of the nation against the onslaught of globalization. “The process of integration risks absorbing all the small nations, whose only defense can be the vigor of their culture, the personality and the inimitable traits that are their contribution,” he said in a speech to the 1967 Writers’ Congress. In the showcase essay, “The Kidnapped West, or the Tragedy of Central Europe,” which appeared in the French periodical Le débat in 1983, Kundera wrote more freely on the significance of the cultural affinity between the Central European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary) and European culture elsewhere, rooted in Roman Christianity and the Enlightenment. Kundera examines the “succession of revolts” that have convulsed these nations in the mid-20th century and how they have all been brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union. He argues that the post-1945 Soviet crackdown on these countries has been no less than “an attack on their civilization. The deep meaning of their resistance is the struggle to preserve their identity—or, to put it another way, to preserve their Westernness.” The author also considers some of the brilliant writers and musicians from these beleaguered nations, examining their existential struggles in opposition to the dominant neighboring German and Russian cultures and languages. Lovely though brief, these essays have fresh resonance as Ukraine remains under siege by Russia. The author’s fans will best appreciate this thin book, but general readers may wish for more pieces and further context.

Kundera is characteristically incisive, but this is mostly for completists.