Kundera's Europe

“The identity of a people and of a civilization is reflected and concentrated in what has been created in the mind — in what is known as ‘culture’. If this identity is threatened with extinction, cultural life grows correspondingly more intense, more important, until culture itself becomes the living value around which all people rally.”

“The writer no longer addresses the public directly — he must communicate with it through the semi-transparent barrier of the mass media.”

“Only in a world that maintains a cultural dimension can Central Europe still defend its identity. The real tragedy for Central Europe is not Russia — but Europe — a Europe where Europe is no longer experienced as a cultural value.”

From New York Review of Books
26 April 1984