Encounter: Essays

Encounter

Title page for Une rencontre (2009)
Author	Milan Kundera
Original title	Une rencontre
Language	French
Publisher	Éditions Gallimard
Publication date	26 March 2009
Publication place	France
Published in English	2010
Pages	208
ISBN	9782070122844

Encounter: Essays (French : Une rencontre) is a 2009 essay collection by the Czech-French writer Milan Kundera. It consists of essays on the works of writers, composers and painters of varying fame and recognition. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}

Contents

1. The Painter's Brutal Gesture: On Francis Bacon
2. Novels, Existential Soundings
   • The Comical Absence of the Comical (Dostoyevsky: The Idiot )
   • Death and the Fuss (Louis-Ferdinand Céline: From Castle to Castle )
   • Love in Accelerating History (Philip Roth: The Professor of Desire )
   • The Secret of the Ages of Life (Gudbergur Bergsson: The Swan )
   • The Idull, the Daughter of Horror (Marek Bieńczyk: Tworki)
   • The Debacle of Memories (Juan Goytisolo: The Curtain Falls)
   • The Novel and Procreation (Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude )
3. Blacklists, or Divertimento in Homage to Anatole France
4. The Dream of Total Heritage
   • A Dialogue on Rabelais and the Misomusists
   • The Dream of Total Heritage in Beethoven
   • The Arch-Novel: An Open Letter for the Birthday of Carlos Fuentes
   • The Total Rejection of Heritage, of Iannis Xenakis (a text published in 1980, with two interventions from 2008)
5. Beautiful Like a Multiple Encounter
6. Elsewhere
   • Exile as Liberation According to Věra Linhartová
   • The Untouchable Solitude of a Foreigner (Oscar Milosz)
   • Enmity and Friendship
   • Faithful to Rabelais and the Surrealists Who Delved into Dreams
   • On the Two Great Springs, and on the Škvoreckýs
   • From Beneath You'll Breathe the roses (The Last Visit with Ernest Breleur)
7. My First Love
   • The Long Race of a One-Legged Runner
   • The Most Nostalgic Opera
8. Forgetting Schoenberg
   • No Celebration (a text published in 1995 in the Frankfurter Rundschau together with other pieces celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of cinema)
   • What Will Be Left of You, Bertolt?
   • Forgetting Schoenberg
9. The Skin : Malaparte's Arch-Novel

References

1. "Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera". The Guardian . 22 August 2010. Retrieved 20 April 2025.
2. "The Language of Exile". The New York Times . 26 August 2010. Retrieved 20 April 2025.
3. "Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera". The Guardian . 21 August 2010. Retrieved 20 April 2025.
4. "Book review: 'Encounter' by Milan Kundera". Los Angeles Times . 15 August 2010. Retrieved 20 April 2025.
5. "Encounter". Kirkus Reviews . 15 May 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2025.
6. "Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera: review" . The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 20 April 2025.

External links

• Gallimard