Cervantes, as Kundera Sees It! Intro and Segment I

Thank you for the interest in joining the discussion on 

The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes.

For the full text of Kundera's essay, click here.

This study is divided into FOUR segments. You are expected to spend at least 30 minutes on each segment. Further, you may have to attempt to prepare brief answers to some questions and submit them online.

The text of the essay is divided into 10 sections, and are to be made available as a separate file. 

Segment 1

This contains

• an introduction to the essay
• Text of Sections 1 and 2
• Brief explanations of Sections 1 and 2
• Questions for discussion

Introduction

Milan Kundera (born 1 April 1929) is a Czech-born writer who has been living in exile in France since 1975. His best-known work is “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.

“The Art of the Novel” is a short collection, mainly of essays, which have been published individually. Divided into seven chapters, the book appears to be fragmented because of the different forms (essay, dialogue, public address, and dictionary entries) employed and the disjointed style that resulted from the pieces being written over a period of several years and published in various journals and newspapers. Kundera insists, however, that the sections were conceived of as a book. As one reads, certain themes and ideas recur and complement one another. Thus, although initially the chapters seem unrelated in form and content, a whole emerges.

The first essay, "The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes," was earlier published in 1984 in The New York Review of Books under the title "The Novel and Europe." The essay, which outlines the history of the European novel, is divided into 10 sections.

Text: Sections 1 & 2

1.

 In 1935, three years before his death, Edmund Husserl gave his celebrated lectures in Vienna and Prague on the crisis of European humanity. For Husserl, the adjective “European” meant the spiritual identity that extends beyond geographical Europe (to America, for instance) and that was born with ancient Greek philosophy. In his view, this philosophy, for the first time in History, apprehended the world (the world as a whole) as a question to be answered. It interrogated the world not in order to satisfy this or that practical need but because “the passion to know had seized mankind.”

 The crisis Husserl spoke of seemed to him so profound that he wondered whether Europe was still able to survive it. The roots of the crisis lay for him at the beginning of the Modern Era, in Galileo and Descartes, in the one-sided nature of the European sciences, which reduced the world to a mere object of technical and mathematical investigation and put the concrete world of life, die Lebenswelt as he called it, beyond their horizon.

 The rise of the sciences propelled man into the tunnels of the specialized disciplines. The more he advanced in knowledge, the less clearly could he see either the world as a whole or his own self, and he plunged further into what Husserl’s pupil Heidegger called, in a beautiful and almost magical phrase, “the forgetting of being.”

 Once elevated by Descartes to “master and proprietor of nature,” man has now become a mere thing to the forces (of technology, of politics, of history) that bypass him, surpass him, possess him. To those forces, man’s concrete being, his “world of life” (die Lebenswelt), has neither value nor interest: it is eclipsed, forgotten from the start.

 2.

 Yet I think it would be naive to take the severity of this view of the Modern Era as a mere condemnation. I would say rather that the two great philosophers laid bare the ambiguity of this epoch, which is decline and progress at the same time and which, like all that is human, carries the seed of its end in its beginning. To my mind, this ambiguity does not diminish the last four centuries of European culture, to which I feel all the more attached as I am not a philosopher but a novelist. Indeed, for me, the founder of the Modern Era is not only Descartes but also Cervantes.

 Perhaps it is Cervantes whom the two phenomenologists neglected to take into consideration in their judgment of the Modern Era. By that I mean: If it is true that philosophy and science have forgotten about man’s being, it emerges all the more plainly that with Cervantes a great European art took shape that is nothing other than the investigation of this forgotten being.

 Indeed, all the great existential themes Heidegger analyzes in Being and Time—considering them to have been neglected by all earlier European philosophy— had been unveiled, displayed, illuminated by four centuries of the novel (four centuries of European reincarnation of the novel). In its own way, through its own logic, the novel discovered the various dimensions of existence one by one: with Cervantes and his contemporaries, it inquires into the nature of adventure; with Richardson, it begins to examine “what happens inside,” to unmask the secret life of the feelings; with Balzac, it discovers man’s rootedness in history; with Flaubert, it explores the terra previously incognita of the everyday; with Tolstoy, it focuses on the intrusion of the irrational in human behavior and decisions. It probes time: the elusive past with Proust, the elusive present with Joyce. With Thomas Mann, it examines the role of the myths from the remote past that control our present actions. Et cetera, et cetera.

The novel has accompanied man uninterruptedly and faithfully since the beginning of the Modern Era. It was then that the “passion to know,” which Husserl considered the essence of European spirituality, seized the novel and led it to scrutinize man’s concrete life and protect it against “the forgetting of being”; to hold “the world of life” under a permanent light. That is the sense in which I understand and share Hermann Broch’s insistence in repeating: The sole raison d'etre of a novel is to discover what only the novel can discover. A novel that does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel’s only morality.

 I would also add: The novel is Europe’s creation; its discoveries, though made in various languages, belong to the whole of Europe. The sequence of discoveries (not the sum of what was written) is what constitutes the history of the European novel. It is only in such a supranational context that the value of a work (that is to say, the import of its discovery) can be fully seen and understood.

Brief Explanations - Sections 1 & 2

The flow of ideas:

Husserl (German philosopher) and his views of the crisis of European humanity – Reference to Galileo and Descartes – Heidegger (pupil of Husserl) and his reflections on Husserl’s idea of “the world of life” (dei lebenswell) – Heidegger’s idea on “the forgetting of being” – the relevance of Cervantes and the novels.

1. Kundera starts his essay with a reference to the lectures by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) in Vienna and Prague, on the crisis of European humanity. For Hesserl, ‘Europe’ was a spiritual identity which goes beyond geographical Europe (to America, for instance). Such an idea that apprehended the world as a whole came from ancient Greek philosophy. This philosophy interrogated the world not in order to satisfy this or that practical need but because of a passion to know.

For Husserl, the roots of the crisis lay at the beginning of the modern era, in Galileo and Descartes: the one-sided nature of the European sciences reduced the world to a mere object of technical and mathematical investigation. The concrete world of life – dei lebenswell – was beyond their horizon. The rise of sciences turned man into tunnels of specialized disciplines. With advancement in knowledge, he failed to see the world as a whole, or his own self. Husserl’s pupil Heidegger (1889 – 1976) calls this ‘the forgetting of being’.

Though Descartes once called man as “master and proprietor of nature”, man has now become a mere thing to the forces of technology, politics or history that bypass him, surpass him or possess him. To these forces, man’s world of life has no value.

2. The two philosophers Galileo and Descartes laid bare the ambiguity of this epoch, which is decline and progress at the same time. This ambiguity does not diminish the last four centuries of European culture. Among the founders of the modern era, Kundera considers another name: Cervantes.

Galileo- 1554- 1642; Descartes- 1596 -1650; Cervantes- 1547-1616

Philosophy (Descartes) and science (Galileo) have forgotten about man’s being. With Cervantes, a great European art took shape – the investigation of this forgotten being. In his work Being and Time, Heidegger presents some existential themes which he considers to have been neglected by all earlier European philosophy. These themes have been unveiled, displayed and illuminated by four centuries of the novel: “In its own way, through its own logic, the novel discovered the various dimensions of existence one by one: …”

With Cervantes and his contemporaries (16^th century), the novel enquires the nature of adventure.

With Richardson, (17^th century), the novel enquires “what happens inside”… to unmask the secret life of the feelings

With Balzac, (19^th century), the novel enquires man’s rootedness in history

With Flaubert, (19^th century), the novel enquires the _terrain_ previously _incognita_ of the everyday

With Tolstoy, (16^th century), the novel enquires intrusion of the irrational in human behavior and decisions.

With Proust, (19^th century), the novel enquires of TIME – the elusive past

With Joyce, (19^{th/ 20th} centuries), the novel enquires of TIME – the elusive present

With Thomas Mann, (20^th century), the novel enquires the role of myths from the remote past that control our present actions

The novel has accompanied man since the beginning of the Modern Era, with the ‘passion to know’ (Hesserl). It has been scrutinizing life and protecting it against ‘the forgetting of being’ to hold ‘the world of life’ under a permanent light. Kundera takes an idea from the Austrian writer Hermann Broch and says: “the sole purpose of existence (raison d’etre) of the novel is to discover what only the novel can discover”.

The novel is Europe’s creation. Its discoveries belong to Europe. This sequence of discoveries constitutes the history of the European novel.