Testaments BetrayedMilan Kundera
Testaments Betrayed
by Milan Kundera · first published 2023
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2014–2025first – last mentioned
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That Foster Wallace essay is great: when he was good, he was really very good, and that's one of his better pieces. Milan Kundera's Testaments Betrayed is pretty excellent as well; the last chapter (and title) cover Brod not burning Kafka's papers, and then manufacturing tortured genius Kafka instead of sticking with the fairly ridiculous reality (the…
on “What kind of funny is Kafka?” ↗…translation by professional human translators between languages? is it really any better at preserving the intent and sub-text? Kundera has an amazing essay—- “The Sentence”—-in his collection of essays “Testaments Betrayed” on the woes of translation of, yes, a single sentence from Kafka’s “The Castle”. As he (or his translator Linda Asher) say: The sentence “describes the coition of K. and Frieda”. Under the bar too…
on “I do not want AI to "polish" me” ↗His fiction was great, but his non-fiction is astounding. I liked, not loved "The Unbearable Likeness," which probably needs a re-reading at this point. But his masterpiece I think is "Testaments Betrayed," in which he examines the art of the novel. The habit for re-reading novels I picked up because of his explanation of the nature of the novel in this book. This man was a giant of humanities and European…
on “Milan Kundera, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ Novelist, Dies at 94” ↗This reminds me of Milan Kundera's "Testaments Betrayed", which expresses the profound challenge (near impossibility) of translations doing justice to original works.
on “Text Editing Hates You Too” ↗