This masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, had brought him well-deserved worldwide fame. But Milan Kundera was much more. And in this masterpiece was a love phrase for Palermo. As of today, Kundera is no longer there. He died at the age of 94. The Czech naturalized French writer died in Paris. The announcement of the disappearance was made this morning on Czech television.
Since 1969 his works were banned in Czechoslovakia and since then he has not granted anyone the right to translate into Czech. For this reason, Kundera was criticized at home, even in the circles of the Charter ’77 dissidents. It will be necessary to wait until 2006, when Kundera will give permission to publish the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being also in the Czech Republic, through an anastatic edition of the novel, published in Czech already in Toronto in 1985 Right in the Misunderstood Words chapter of the novel there is a passage that goes like this: “If you don’t mind, we could go to Palermo in ten days,” he said. “I prefer Geneva.” She answered. Standing in front of the easel examining a canvas, she began: “How can one live without knowing Palermo?”
Known around the world for his works translated into about forty languages, Kundera was a very reticent author, appearing very rarely in public, especially from the 1980s onwards. His official biographical information was limited to the following statement: “Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia. He moved to France in 1975.”
Milan Kundera was born on April 1, 1929 in Brno in what was then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and was the son of Ludvík (1891-1971), a well-known pianist and director of the Brno Academy of Music. Milan studied music since childhood, especially the piano, and his passion for music is often reflected in his literary texts. After attending literature and philosophy courses at Charles University in Prague, Kundera moved to the Faculty of Cinematography at the Academy of Performing and Musical Arts in Prague, where he graduated in 1958 and became a professor of Comparative Literature (1958-1958 ). 69).
A member of the Communist Party since his student days, he was expelled twice (1950 and 1970) for his ideas, which corresponded to the official lines of the ideological canon imposed by the regime of real socialism. In 1968 he joined the reform movement of the so-called “Prague Spring”: After the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, Kundera was no longer able to publish, in 1970 he was dismissed and lost his teaching position. After obtaining a temporary residence permit for France, he settled in Paris in 1975 and taught first at the University of Rennes and then at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in the French capital.