When I lectured at Palacký University in Olomouc in the 1990s, I co-taught a class in translation with my good friend Václav Řeřicha.
One of the authors we used to study was Milan Kundera, whose birthday it is today, mostly his short stories from Laughable Loves (Směšné lásky).
However, I had come to Kundera in my late-teens through his book the Joke and after that I devoured everything he had written.
I suppose my favourite is the Book of Laughter and Forgetting wherein he describes a famous/infamous Czechoslovak photograph from February 1948, where Vlado Clementis (Foreign Minister) stood next to Klement Gottwald (Prime Minister).
It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded, in an act of generosity, Clementis took off his fur hat and gave it to Gottwald to wear.
A few years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged.
The propaganda section erased him (along with Karel Hájek) from the photograph.Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the balcony... Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald's head.
This all too brief vignette underlines the motif of forgetting, and I suppose acts as a warning to us all, lest we forget.
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