Jerusalem Address And The Depreciated Legacy Of Cervantes

What guides authors to write the books they do has been a subject of great debate for many years. Author Milan Kundera was a believer in what he called the “wisdom of the novel.” In his “Jerusalem Address” and “The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes” Kundera goes into what he thinks this wisdom actually is. To Kundera the writer does not actually make a novel, they just channel some outside force makes the novel. According to Kundera the wisdom of the novel “always explains why great novels are a little more intelligent than their authors” (Kundera, p. 158). Even in his first book, The Joke, Kundera was able to channel this wisdom of the novel. In The Joke the wisdom Kundera was channeling was the knowledge that we don’t have as much control over our lives as we thought, our lives are largely directed by other people and forces. In The Joke the character whose life is least directed by himself is Ludvik. At the start of the book Ludvik believed he was in control of his life. In the university study groups his professors and peers criticized Ludvik for “harbors [harboring] traces of individualism” (Kundera, p. 32). Ludvik was a party member, held multiple important posts, switched “faces” (Kundera, p. 33) when ever he wanted, and overall felt like he was

Back long before the rise of Communism in Moravia “... the boys use to do [organize] the Ride of the Kings by themselves... [they] use to elect the king themselves” (305). The boys, not the party or the party’s organizations, had final choice in the whole ride. By the time of The Joke The Ride of the Kings was “run by a dozen organizations and even the Party District Committee had a meeting about it” (305). What choice and decision making power the boys had over the ride was taken away from them by the self proclaimed lovers of folk traditions in the