The struggle against forgetting

Sign and Sight continues to monitor the Kundera affair:

The Economist comments rather drily on the discovery of Milan Kundera's signature at the bottom of a letter denouncing a Czech spy. "As Mr Kundera himself has written so eloquently, 'the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.' Under totalitarianism, fairy tales good and bad often trumped truth. Some heroes of the Prague Spring in 1968 had been enthusiastic backers of the Stalinist regime's murderous purges after the communist putsch of 1948. Mr Hradilek [the man who found the incriminating file -ed.] surmises that Mr Kundera probably acted out of self-interest, not malice or conviction. Millions faced such choices in those times. Some have owned up; many have not. Countless episodes like that linger over eastern Europe like an invisible toxic cloud."The Economist has been sending out warning signals about the credit crunch since December 2004 - on its font cover. Gawker has compiled these images of doom.

It appears as though the Economist accepts that Milan Kundera did indeed rat on another student to the authorities.

A Kundera quote to remember:

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.