The Art of Memory in Exile : Vladimir Nabokov & Milan Kundera

In The Art of Memory in Exile , Hana Píchová explores the themes of memory and exile in selected novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. Both writers, Píchová argues, stress how personal and cultural memory serves as a creative means of overcoming the artist’s and exile’s loss of homeland. In their virtuoso displays of literary talent, Nabokov and Kundera showcase the strategies that allow their protagonists to succeed as émigrés: a creative fusing of past and present through the prism of the imagination. Píchová closely analyzes two novels by each author: the first written in exile (Nabokov's Mary and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ) and a later, pivotal novel in each writer's career (Nabokov's The Gift and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being ). In all four texts, these authors explore how the kaleidoscope of personal and cultural memory confronts a fragmented and untenable present, contrasting the lives of fictional émigrés who fail to bridge the gap between past and present with those émigrés whose rich artistic vision allows them to transcend the trials of homelessness. By juxtaposing these novels and their authors, Píchová provides a unique perspective on each writer's vast appeal and success. She finds that in the work of Nabokov and Kundera, the most successful exiles express a vision that transcends both national and temporal boundaries. In The Art of Memory in Exile, Hana Pichova explores the themes of memory and exile in selected novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. Both writers, Pichova argues, stress how personal and cultural memory serves as a creative means of overcoming the artist's and exile's loss of homeland. In their virtuoso displays of literary talent, Nabokov and Kundera showcase the strategies that allow their protagonists to succeed as emigres: a creative fusing of past and present through the prism of the imagination.Pichova closely analyzes two novels by each author: the first written in exile (Nabokov's Mary and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) and a later, pivotal novel in each writer's career (Nabokov's The Gift and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being). In all four texts, these authors explore how the kaleidoscope of personal and cultural memory confronts a fragmented and untenable present, contrasting the lives of fictional emigres who fail to bridge the gap between past and present with those emigres whose rich artistic vision allows them to transcend the trials of homelessness.By juxtaposing these novels and their authors, Pichova provides a unique perspective on each writer's vast appeal and success. She finds that in the work of Nabokov and Kundera, the most successful exiles express a vision that transcends both national and temporal boundaries. "In The Art of Memory in Exile, Hana Pichova explores the themes of memory and exile in selected novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. Both writers, Pichova argues, stress how personal and cultural memory serves as a creative means of overcoming the artist's and exile's loss of homeland. In their virtuoso displays of literary talent, Nabokov and Kundera showcase the strategies that allow their protagonists to succeed as emigres: a creative fusing of past and present through the prism of the imagination.". "Pichova closely analyzes two novels by each author: the first written in exile (Nabokov's Mary and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) and a later, pivotal novel in each writer's career (Nabokov's The Gift and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being). In all four texts, these authors explore how the kaleidoscope of personal and cultural memory confronts a fragmented and untenable present, contrasting the lives of fictional emigres who fail to bridge the gap between past and present with those emigres whose rich artistic vision allows them to transcend the trials of homelessness."--BOOK JACKET. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Abbreviations......Page 12 Introduction:Other Shores......Page 14 Part One:Personal Memory......Page 28 1.Vladimir Nabokov:Variations on a Butterfly......Page 30 2.Milan Kundera: Variations on Letters and Bowler Hats......Page 59 Part Two:Cultural Memory......Page 80 3.Vladimir Nabokov: Writers Blind and Dangerous......Page 82 4.Milan Kundera: Photographers Armed and Dangerous......Page 101 Conclusion:The Art of the Novel......Page 121 Postscript......Page 128 Notes......Page 132 Bibliography......Page 152 Index......Page 158 Nabokov's first novel, Mary (1926), written only a few years after the writer's own exile, opens predictably with an emigre setting of a pension "both Russian and nasty" in the midst of Berlin: Russian, because it is inhabited by people derailed from their homeland owing to the tragic force of the Bolshevik revolution; nasty, because the pension is so close to the railroad that its walls shake and rattle as if a train were going through it.