[In the following review of Testaments Betrayed, von Kunes focuses on Kundera's views on the arts of Kafka and Janácek.]

Milan Kundera continues his discussion on the art of the novel in his new collection of essays Les testaments trahis (The Betrayed Testaments), published seven years after L'art du roman (Eng. The Art of the Novel) by the same house, Gallimard. Breaking his traditional structure of seven parts, Kundera examines writers from Rabelais, Hemingway, and Kafka to Kundera himself, and musicians from Stravinsky to Janácek, this time in nine parts, each independent yet—like a novel—united by the theme of betrayed art. He advances his thesis of "the art of the novel being born from humor, i.e. laughing at God," arguing that humor—dispersed in a novel's ambiguity—is the most difficult aspect of art to understand. As in his previous essays, Kundera treats music as an aggressive, mysterious force that has influenced the history and development of the art of the novel.

The central figure of the author's discussions is Kafka, in particular his two works The Castle and The Trial. Examining word by word a passage on the sexual encounter of K. and Frieda, Kundera proves the translators' betrayals: their liberty in adapting Kafka's situations to their own world and epoch or, even more, in replacing Kafka's repetitions by a range of synonyms because of their feeling of being ashamed of his inadequate language. In Kundera's eyes, Kafka remains a misunderstood artist. The "dryness" of his German style, which has been considered a kind of unestheticism—"his indifference toward beauty"—is in fact, Kundera claims, Kafka's esthetic intention and one of the most distinctive signs of beauty in Kafka's prose.

It is not only history that betrays art; it is also the position that a nation holds within nations; whereas a small nation may enjoy the richness of its cultural life, it suffers from an inaccessibility (in terms of its language, history, and culture) in the world arena. Janácek, the composer and musician from Moravia, used a technique of destroying the unimportant in his compositions: only a musical note that conveys something should remain; everything else (variations, transitions) should be left out. This is the very same literary approach that Kundera has adopted for his prose writing. He proudly acknowledges Janácek to be the greatest artist that Czechoslovakia, his own country of origin, has ever had. However, the smallness of his country did not allow recognition of Janácek's genius, just as the provincialism of Prague did not allow Kafka to be recognized as a leading writer of his own time.

Josef K.'s trial takes place on two levels: in the novel and in the criticism of the novel. As critics search for reasons for Josef K.'s guilt, they come up with a spectrum of accusations, another sort of trial, another force qui juge. Is not Kundera himself, however, an additional "power that accuses"? Accusing Max Brod of betraying Kafka (it is solely because of Brod that Kafka's letter to his father is known to the public, in fact to everyone except Kafka's father), or accusing Ansermet of betraying Stravinsky (for suggesting to Stravinsky that he edit one of his symphonies), Kundera accuses too, and he does so in his typically flamboyant, original, and witty way.