The Art of Memory in Exile

by: by Pichova PhD, Associate Professor Hana

Vladimir Nobokov-Milan Kundera
The most well known Czech émigré writer, Milan Kundera,
in one of his fictional works, describes exile in terms reminiscent
of Kafka’s story, explaining that the condition of exile is “a tight-
rope high above the ground without the net afforded a person
by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends,
and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he
has known from childhood.” To live as an émigré is to struggle
to maintain a tenuous balance as if at a precarious height; the
émigré finds himself or herself on a kind of unstable, rickety
bridge between two shores, where the new, unknown territory
has to be appropriated and familiarized while the old, known
territory becomes the realm of the imaginary.