A 1980s essay by Czech writer Milan Kundera on the peoples trapped between east and west is enjoying a new lease of life, says research professor Jacques Rupnik
earlier this year. Central Europe, Kundera argued, belonged “culturally to the West, politically to the East and geographically in the centre”. The predicament of the small nations between Russia and Germany was that their existence was not “self-evident” but remained closely tied to the vitality of their culture, and historically intertwined with that of the west from which they had been “kidnapped” in 1945.
A key element of this change was the rediscovery of the varied cultural legacies of central Europe. But the most controversial issue in the 1980s debate concerned the region’s relationship with, against whom the borders and identities of central Europe were shaped. A most telling illustration of the ways cultural identities became entwined with political ones can be found in a memorable debate in Lisbon in 1988 involving writers from central Europe and from Russia. Though Kundera was physically absent, his essay was very much part of the debate.
“In the name of literature, there is no such thing as ‘central Europe’. There is Polish literature, Czech literature, Slovak literature, Serbo-Croatian literature, Hungarian literature, and so forth. It is impossible to speak about this concept even in the name of literature. It is an oxymoron.”
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