Un encuentro – Kundera Milan (2012)

AN ENCOUNTER introduces us to a somewhat unpublished KUNDERA. Indeed, although the author reflects, as he confesses at the beginning of the book, on his 'old existential and aesthetic themes,' the truth is that in this passionate - and fascinating - 'encounter' with some masterpieces of literature, music, and painting, the Czech writer addresses issues that have been little or not at all traversed in his previous books. Thus, he explores what the novel - and only the novel, that 'existential probe' - can explain about the human being, and also investigates the repercussions, not always negative, that exile has for the creator (with an emotional comparison between the two Springs of '68, that of Paris and that of Prague). He also delves into the role of memory in the face of the tragedies of the 20th century and speaks of the desperate struggle of the true artist to embrace the best of the tradition of their art (with an ironic question about what posterity ultimately preserves of the authors). Finally, he argues that only a thorough analysis of the formal composition of a work reveals the aesthetic intentions of its author (and demonstrates this with a brief and fascinating essay dedicated to KAPUTT and which he qualifies as...