style="font-size:15px;"> Michael Heim: Kundera, Kundera, Kundera. By far. All intellectuals have heard of him. Whether they’ve read him is a different story. But they enjoy playing with the title of his best-known novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, going on about the unbearable lightness of this and the unbearable lightness of that. I laugh when I run across newspaper headlines adopting the formulation. The editor who commissioned me to do the translation first heard the title over a bad transatlantic phone connection from Kundera in French. All he could make out was that it consisted of three abstract words. I realized a title consisting of “three abstract words” would be a hard sell in the US but was surprised the initial opposition to a literal translation came from Kundera himself. “I realize that for you Americans the title will be a bit hard-going,” he told the editor, “so we can try something else.” And he suggested one of the chapter titles: “Karenin’s Smile.” I protested. “We’re not children,” I told the editor. “If The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the title, so be it.” And so it stayed. I’m glad I pushed for it. Even the film based on the book adopted it. Unfortunately, the film, though a box-office success, failed to take advantage of the cinematic structure inherent in the novel.
Cornel Ungureanu: How would you describe Kundera’s relationship with the Czech spirit?
Michael Heim: Kundera now calls himself a “European writer.” And that’s what he is. He wrote his last two books directly in French. But for me, he is still a Czech writer. And he is extremely conscious of his roots. He wrote a study of Vladislav Vančura, a great Czech novelist, unknown abroad, because he is very hard to translate. His material is very Czech. Maybe one day I’ll attempt a translation.
Cornel Ungureanu: Czech writers have a strong relationship with Czech directors . . .
Michael Heim: Yes, Kundera himself didn’t teach at a school of letters, but at the well-known Prague film school. He taught French literature there. Film is extremely important in this relationship. It has helped me personally to promote Czech literature in the American market. Czech culture had already impacted the public through Menzel or Forman. I remember the Oscar for Menzel’s film Closely Watched Trains. Because of it, I was able to win the battle for the novel on which it’s based. Also important were the events of 1968.
Cornel Ungureanu: Is that when you met Hrabal?
Michael Heim: No. I met him in 1965 when I was in Czechoslovakia and he was introduced to me as the most important living Czech author. I’d like to go back for a moment to Kundera’s Czech roots. In that study of Vančura, Kundera also admits he owes a great deal to Čapek. Whoever has read The Joke can see it. Čapek argues in most of his novels, including An Ordinary Life, that there are no mediocre, banal, indistinguishable lives, that each one has its own purposeful biography, and thus its own point of view, its personal vision.
Cornel Ungureanu: How did Hrabal strike you then, in 1965?
Michael Heim: He was my true introduction to Central European literature. Through him, I discovered a completely new universe. In my opinion, Hrabal is the incarnation of Central Europe. Because his works have all the major themes of this area, but not in an elevated, highbrow way—quite the opposite. Everything Hrabal does is extremely popular, but it is clear also that he is a very cultivated person. He knows German literature and philosophy very well, especially Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and even Hegel.
Daciana Branea: Which Central European literature is the best known in the U.S.?
Michael Heim: Certainly Czech literature, because of Kundera.
Daciana Branea: Was his article, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” as important as they say?
Michael Heim: It was extremely important, only because it came after Kundera was already celebrated as an author. Kundera became known in the States as a writer first, for The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, at the beginning of the ’80s.
“The Tragedy of Central Europe” was an important explanation of “the other Europe.” Earlier, Philip Roth had started a series of translations from Central European literatures, called “Writers from the Other Europe.” This became the place to go to find all these authors. You, an ordinary American reader, not knowing which books to choose, you could let Roth judge for you. He could be your guide . . . and so he was for many people. And his name was on the cover of every book, printed just as large as the name of the author. I’m sure the publishers did this on purpose, because they knew it was much more likely that the American reader would buy a book with Philip Roth’s name on the cover than one with a name no one could pronounce and no one had seen before.
Daciana Branea: You were saying that Czechoslovakia enticed you because you had heard so much about its beautiful women. Were you disappointed?
Michael Heim: I came to Czechoslovakia for the first time in the summer of 1965. I was 22, and the quality to which you refer was very important . . . and I was completely satisfied [laughter] . . . by what I found. I don’t mean only the women, but everyone my age. I learned something that surprised me about myself: they taught me how “American” I was.
I had been in the Soviet Union three years before. This was 1962, my first trip to Europe, and I was very naïve, in the best sense of the word. I didn’t have any preconceived ideas. I was simply horrified by all I found there: the lack of freedom, the fear . . . When I came to Czechoslovakia, everything was different. I met people my own age who knew how to stand up to the system, how to manage within it, and who were not at all afraid. They weren’t afraid, for example, to have a conversation with a foreigner. While in the Soviet Union, you planned your meetings far in advance, and if you met someone in the street, for example, you could only say a few words because you knew you could make trouble for them. In Prague there were no such problems.
Daciana Branea: What were the major differences between Czechoslovakia and the USSR?
Michael Heim: The most important was the fact that there, in 1965, people trusted each other. And they could say whatever they wanted. Even if they didn’t do it in public, they were as free as possible with each other. For me, the most important thing was that I learned you shouldn’t believe everything you read, and my friends were much more sophisticated readers than I was. Readers of magazines, but by extension, readers of everything, including literature. I had been schooled to believe that everything I read was, more or less, true. And more or less, everything I had been reading was true. My Czech friends were used to questioning everything, while I tended to accept it.
Daciana Branea: What did they read?
Michael Heim: They read everything they could. They also translated, here and there. But Czech literature was becoming more and more interesting. I constantly asked them who were the best writers of the moment, because there were some exceptional young writers. The first time I was in Czechoslovakia, I had only studied the language a year, so of course I wasn’t ready to read literature. But I went back the next year, in 1966, and again in 1968, and I learned a lot about a group of authors that now everyone knows about, today they are a part of world literature. The most important names were Hrabal, Kundera, Škvorecký. At the time, completely unknown outside of Czechoslovakia. My first summer there, 1965, I met Havel. As I have mentioned, we didn’t become friends, but I shook his hand at the premiere of Memorandum.
Daciana Branea: Who was the first Czech author you translated, and why?
Michael
