Abstract

Abstract:

The polemic generated by Milan Kundera's 1968 essay 'Czech Destiny' and fuelled by Vaclav Havel's sharp reply represents an important milestone in the debate over the merits of the struggle for Czech self-determination. Kundera employs his bold thesis — that the Czechs are the protagonists in a Darwinian contest that pits rationalism and creativity against brutish hegemony — to justify a puzzlingly timid political programme. This paper seeks a tool for examining the stylistic and thematic paradoxes of Kundera's essay in Mikhail Bakhtin's genre study ' Epic and Novel' and it contends that, by invoking an imagined destiny for the Czechs, Kundera becomes complicit in its realization.

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