“Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?”
Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature
Source: Life is Elsewhere
“The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become”
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Milan Kundera198
Czech author of Czech and French literature 1929–2023Related quotes
Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic
Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'
Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji
Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 25
“The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno.”
Italo Svevo (1861–1928) Italian writer
James Wood in London Review of Books, January 3, 2002. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n01/wood02_.html. <br class="br">Criticism
“The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness.”
Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook
Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 1"<!-- p. 59 -->
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it.
“A confession has to be part of your new life.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 18e
“History is a novel whose author is the people.”
Alfred De Vigny (1797–1863) French poet, playwright, and novelist
L'histoire est un roman dont le peuple est l'auteur.
"Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art", p. 6; translation from James H. Johnson Listening in Paris (1995) p. 252.
Cinq-Mars; ou, une conjuration sous Louis XIII (1826)