Polyphony of form and ideas in the works of Milan Kundera

Abstract

This article explores the influence of music on the composition of Milan Kundera’s novels, focusing particularly on how polyphonic thought influences his most recent published novel The Festival of Insignificance. This text exemplifies Kundera’s use of the principles of fugue – a form in which each voice, though independent and equal in status to the other voices, forms an integral part of a complete entity and helps to make meanings. The novel demonstrates an experimental thought process that opens up space for dialogue both within the text and outside it. In general terms, the principle of polyphony in literature is connected with the idea that nothing in the world is entirely unambiguous. It rests on the principle of plurality: there exists no single truth, no single viewpoint or perspective, so any thought or idea always exists in counterpoint with another thought or idea. However, the fact that we can hear more voices does not objectivize or relativize the meaning of a text; instead it creates a genuine polyphony of voices, each of which has equal status, which can exist in various relationships to each other, without any individual voice ever representing the definitive truth. This article also seeks to demonstrate how the polyphonic principle is a phenomenon existing on the boundary-line between music and literature; to do so, it draws on the concept of intermediality. From this perspective, polyphony can be viewed as an intermedia phenomenon, positioned at a point between intermedia reference (in the form of imitation) and transmedialization.