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<p>The study, which is based on contemporary theoretical discussions on world literature (P. Casanova, D. Damrosch, P. Hajdu, F. Moretti, H. Saussy, etc.), especially from the perspective of so-called small literatures (M. Juvan, R. Gáfrik, etc.), deals with the way Milan Kundera penetrated from the periphery of Brno to the centre of literary events, to Paris. At the same time, it asks whether this symbolic journey towards worldliness can be considered typically Central European, given that the author is commonly referred to as a Central European. In his monograph <i>Worlding and Peripheral Literature</i> (2019), the Slovenian comparatist Marko Juvan speaks of a variety of “capillary,” secondary lines through which texts from small literatures transfer to universal “fame” in the case of Central European authors. This is usually a path mediated by individual contacts or the sanctification of a generally recognised authority. Kundera, striving to blend in with the French milieu, exploits these moments, but at the same time adds to them a specific strategy of consecration. This manifests itself in a dynamic and functionally variable movement in a transcultural network of various “pitfalls,” such as the level of translation, the transition to French, media presentation, reception horizon, tradition, and enduring readerly “fame,” Kundera bases his “worldliness” not only on the particularism of the “regional” or “local,” i.e. not only on the power of extra-literary factors, but above all on the ability to constitute the “world” through his novels in the form of aestheticizing the image of “Central Europeanness” presented as an alternative Western value.</p>

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Milan Kundera and his “Central European” path to worldliness

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月29日

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  • Agnieszka Janiec-Nyitrai,
  • Anna Zelenková

摘要

The study, which is based on contemporary theoretical discussions on world literature (P. Casanova, D. Damrosch, P. Hajdu, F. Moretti, H. Saussy, etc.), especially from the perspective of so-called small literatures (M. Juvan, R. Gáfrik, etc.), deals with the way Milan Kundera penetrated from the periphery of Brno to the centre of literary events, to Paris. At the same time, it asks whether this symbolic journey towards worldliness can be considered typically Central European, given that the author is commonly referred to as a Central European. In his monograph Worlding and Peripheral Literature (2019), the Slovenian comparatist Marko Juvan speaks of a variety of “capillary,” secondary lines through which texts from small literatures transfer to universal “fame” in the case of Central European authors. This is usually a path mediated by individual contacts or the sanctification of a generally recognised authority. Kundera, striving to blend in with the French milieu, exploits these moments, but at the same time adds to them a specific strategy of consecration. This manifests itself in a dynamic and functionally variable movement in a transcultural network of various “pitfalls,” such as the level of translation, the transition to French, media presentation, reception horizon, tradition, and enduring readerly “fame,” Kundera bases his “worldliness” not only on the particularism of the “regional” or “local,” i.e. not only on the power of extra-literary factors, but above all on the ability to constitute the “world” through his novels in the form of aestheticizing the image of “Central Europeanness” presented as an alternative Western value.