Lost Letters
- Kundera paints a picture of a triumphant Klement Gottwald, Czechoslovakia's first Communist president, standing on a balcony in Prague.
- Gottwald is surrounded by his best party buddies, including one Vladimir Clementis, who will later be erased from all photos taken on that day. Spoiler alert: Clementis is later executed.
- Despite the fact that many Czechoslovakians have seen the pics of Clementis with Gottwald, the government's propaganda machine has noooo problem removing Clementis from history.
- So, we're in Czechoslovakia, 1971.
- We're introduced to Mirek, a character who has been breaking the first rule of living in a Communist society, the rule that says keep no records.
- But Mirek believes that remembering things accurately is a way to stick it to the man, so he keeps a diary of all his important meetings and conversations.
- After a workplace accident, Mirek decides to get his life right: he's going to destroy all those papers to keep his friends safe. But not until he meets with a woman called Zdena.
- Mirek had an affair with Zdena when he was a young man, but his memories of that time are very spotty. In fact, Mirek isn't sure whether to trust his memories of Zdena or not.
- Mirek remembers two specific occasions: 1) Zdena crying over the death of one Masturbov (which made him suspicious), and 2) Zdena informing Mirek that he had no skills in the bedroom.
- To be specific, Zdena accuses Mirek of making love like an intellectual. Mirek doesn't really know what this means, but in those days, it was pretty bad to be an intellectual behind the Iron Curtain.
- Mirek notices that he's being tailed as he makes his way to Zdena's apartment. He stops at a repair shop outside Prague to have his buddy fix his car.
- There's a guard lady standing by a barrier outside the repair shop, and she won't let Mirek pass.
- Mirek's mechanic friend appears and tells Mirek that he is persona non gratabecause he's had some unwanted publicity of late. (Mirek, that is.)
- And right on cue, one of the guys that had been following Mirek appears, peeking under the hood of Mirek's car as the mechanic works on it.
- The mechanic questions the snoop but gets nothing out of him. It's clear that Mirek's friend is disgusted by the hostile atmosphere in Czechoslovakia.
- Kundera steps back from Mirek's story to give some background—and to tell us something about revising history.
- Kundera opens by listing atrocities that have happened in the recent past. He notes that each one is quickly forgotten when the next horrible thing happens. Sound familiar?
- Kundera gives some background about the coup in 1948 that brought the Communists to power in Czechoslovakia. Intellectuals were pretty pleased with this turn of events.
- The reason that the opponents of Communism lost? They had no vision. No great plan. Communism, on the other hand, offered a kind of utopian vision for society to those who could get on board.
- But not everyone wanted to go with this change. Those who tried to flee were seen as enemies of the state and were imprisoned. There were lots of them.
- In the end, those idealistic intellectuals who supported the Communist takeover began to see that maybe they'd done the wrong thing. Their beautiful ideal had turned into a monster.
- Back to Mirek. He leaves his mechanic friend to continue his journey to Zdena.
- The strange car immediately follows Mirek again.
- Mirek realizes that he's really screwed up by not hiding those papers that might put his friends in danger. He knows that his story is pretty much coming to a close.
- Mirek remembers breaking up with Zdena. After this, he hooked up with and married a beautiful woman.
- And after he is widowed, Mirek becomes even more interesting to women.
- Things are going smoothly for Mirek, who, as a scientist, is pretty much above the wrath of the state. Until he isn't. When he won't play nice with the Russians, he loses his job.
- But that doesn't stop Mirek. He kind of loves the tragic story that his life is turning into.
- Mirek loves his destiny, which seems to be a thing separate from himself. Kundera says that Mirek approaches his own life as an artist would his work, as something to be perfected.
- And that's where Zdena comes in.
- In order to make the story of his life read like a great novel, Mirek has to edit Zdena out of the narrative.
- Kundera wants to tell us why Zdena is such a problem for Mirek. It could be that she's a supporter of the Russian Communists.
- That's a drag, but it's not the major problem.
- The major problem is that Zdena is ugly. For real. Fugz.
- Zdena's basicness bothers Mirek because in his mind, having been with an ugly woman makes his chances of hooking up with a hottie pretty slim.
- Women apparently like to be with men who have dated beautiful women. Who knew?
- But Zdena always brings up their relationship in public, and there is no way that Mirek can revise the past to his liking.
- So why did Mirek stay with Zdena so long when he was a young man? He tells his friends that Zdena was in with the Communist Party, and he was a social climber. Ugliness didn't matter back then.
- Kundera steps in to keep Mirek from lying to us.
- According to Kundera, Mirek didn't stay with Zdena because he was a social climber. He stayed with her because he didn't think pretty women would go for him.
- Mirek recalls another time that he and Zdena had sex. He was trying really hard to impress her after she'd told him he made love like an intellectual. From the descriptions, he didn't succeed.
- Mirek would like to erase all of these facts from his memory—and from the story of his life.
- Kundera lapses into memories of 1968—the "Prague Spring," when Czechs got a breather from repressive Communism.
- Though the Russians strategically retreated, they had no intention of staying away permanently. On Aug. 21, Russia sent a huge number of troops into Bohemia and crushed the rebellion.
- But that's a lot of ugliness to support the beautiful Communist "idyll," so the whole episode gets swept under the carpet—Aug. 21 isn't exactly a national holiday.
- Kundera tells us that the Russians were all about revising history. Those intellectuals who had a change of heart and helped oust the Russians in the first place? It's like they never existed.
- Including Mirek.
- Mirek finally makes it to Zdena's apartment, despite the thugs tailing him.
- Zdena doesn't get why Mirek has come. But she does know that he's in trouble with the authorities. She advises him to make nice with the government and ask for mercy.
- Mirek is familiar with this route, but he's not willing to sell out. He's not going to renounce his anti-Communist statements on national TV just to get his life back. He wants a cooler life story.
- Zdena is acting shady, and now Mirek understands: she's working for the Man. She's there to convince him to surrender to the authorities.
- Is Mirek really interpreting Zdena's actions correctly?
- Kundera says no.
- Mirek suddenly understands that he's been flattering himself. Zdena really wants him to save himself.
- Suddenly, Mirek wonders if he's misinterpreted all of Zdena's actions. Like her loyalty to the party. It wasn't because she loved Communism; it was all for Mirek.
- Kundera imagines exactly how this strange reaction to love for Mirek would have played out for Zdena, especially when the Russians returned to Bohemia.
- Then, Mirek tells Zdena why he's really there: he wants all his old love letters back.
- Zdena says that she's recently re-read those letters, and that she was surprised by the amount of emotion in them. That is not what Mirek wants to hear.
- Mirek tries to convince himself that his love letters to Zdena were sentimental because he was trying hard to be in love with her.
- But Zdena reminds Mirek of an inconvenient truth—he's expressed lots of sentiments that he wouldn't like to be connected with. It seems that Mirek had been a budding Communist back when the two of them were together.
- Zdena concedes that Mirek was a different person back in the day, but Mirek can only think about destroying those letters and rewriting that part of his history.
- Zdena wants to know what Mirek intends to do with the love letters. He says that he's getting old and wants to read them so that he will know the truth about their past.
- Lies.
- But Zdena isn't fooled. She refuses to hand over the letters.
- Mirek hates that Zdena has this part of his life in her hands. He contemplates bludgeoning her to death with a heavy object and stealing them back.
- Mirek points out the two secret policemen who have followed him to Zdena's apartment, but she refuses to believe that he's being followed. Mirek thinks that's because she's one of them.
- Mirek and Zdena say goodbye, and Mirek is totally certain that he never wants to see Zdena again.
- Zdena, contrary to what Mirek thinks, is really panicked over the appearance of the secret police. She knows that Mirek's fate is out of her control.
- As luck would have it, Mirek is able to give the secret police the slip on the way back to his apartment. He slows down and looks at everything as he passes by.
- Mirek asks himself a hard question: why did he go to see Zdena when he could have been burning his own letters and diaries?
- Mirek understands that there was nothing rational about the trip. He just wanted the chance to change his past by destroying those love letters.
- Mirek stops at a railroad crossing to wait for a train, and he sees a village with a house in it.
- The house at the railroad station reminds Mirek of a place where he stayed for summer vacations as a young man.
- Mirek remembers meeting Zdena in that place. And then the truth comes out: Mirek had loved Zdena.
- More than that, Mirek and Zdena shared a love for Communist ideals. They even denounced people to the government to support that love.
- And then we get another big revelation: Mirek himself is no better than the Communist Party he's come to hate. Like the party people, he wants to revise history to make himself look better. Womp womp.
- Kundera observes that people (and governments) only want power so that they can change the past—erase it completely, if it suits them.
- But Mirek is only affected by these revelations for about a second. He drives on and wipes the memory from his mind. He's on a mission to create the perfect ending to his life story.
- It doesn't even matter that Mirek shook off the secret police who had been following him all day. By the time he gets home, they are waiting for him.
- Mirek's upset son is also waiting for him. (He thought his dad's trip was bonkers.)
- The police upended the apartment, looking for Mirek's papers. And they find them.
- One of the searchers tells Mirek that keeping those damning papers meant that he wasn't a very good friend since a lot of people are now going to get in trouble.
- But Mirek doesn't seem upset by the thought of going to prison. In fact, it's a better ending for his life narrative.
- That's because it's easier to erase the memory of people who emigrate or fade away from public life. News of Mirek's imprisonment will linger for a long time.
- Also, Mirek loves the idea of being a blot on the Communist "idyll." If he's going down, he's going to take a little bit of the tyranny with him.
- In the end, Mirek gets six years in prison, and his son gets two. Ten of his friends are imprisoned as well, based on "incriminating" evidence found in the papers Mirek failed to destroy.