regimes, that dour tribe in control,npoints to the fact that Kundera knewnthat he would, if he wanted to remain anwriter of literature, leave the country.nTruth is the most potent enemy of thenvicious and the humorless. Konrad isnmore specific about his awareness of thenpotency of literature, especially with regardnto his novel’s reception in thenWest. He recognizes that fictions arenoften accepted as reality. The narrator ofnThe Loser says that Western intellectualsn”prove with their articles that theyntexts. Each knows that he must usenwords that appear in Time magazine andnyet cause them to result in a messagenthat transcends factual banality.nMetaph or of place is a key devicenemployed by the two writers. It is onenthat has proven to be very effective innconveying an understanding of what lifenis like behind “the iron curtain” (anmetaphor of place that once workednwonderfully well, but which has disappearednnot only because of detente, butn•’Milan Kundera… has essentially tbrsworn the novelist’s (^ligation He is contentnto let his eharaeters serve as carttxjn figures in a l:iiulsca)X’ of indictment that lacks .siiifieientndimension to declare it.self a portrait of the human condition.”n—Village Voicenknow what socialism is; we prove it withnour ulcers. After reading a few booksnthey declare it a paradise; after a fewnmore they say it is hell. They don’t knownwhat it is when they visit party secretaries;neven now, when they are interviewingndissidents, they still don’t.”nWrite an ulcer. That’s what these twonauthors have to do. It’s clear that “ulcer”nis a metaphor for pain, but in a worldnwhere readers have become inured tonwritten descriptions of suifering (otherwise,nhow could people casually readnabout wars and disasters, two key subjectsnfor “the news”?), it is extraordinarilynhard to convey. Words, when properlynused, have the power to create and destroy.nKonrad and Kundera, men whonwork or worked in places where “tonhave written” can mean “to have committedna crime” (Konrad-. “Anarchistsnlug around bombs in their briefcases—nhere you just slip your diary in your bag,nand presto you’ve become an outlaw”),nrecognize that power. Indeed, The Jokenshows how three sentences written on anpostcard with a sense of irony, interpretednby a one-dimensional State, come tonhave an effect on a man’s life that oncencould otily have been caused by thengods or some other metaphysical force.nThus, words and their meaning, elementsnof literature, are of critical importancento both men, as evidenced in theirnbecause publications like Time couldn’tnpicture themselves to be spies). Shownsomeone a world map and ask her tonlocate the Gulag Archipelago. Undoubtedly,nshe’ll begin searching the area designatednthe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.nIt won’t be found, but she’llnknow it’s there, even if she’s never readnSolzhenitsyn. By defining a universe, anworld, a country, a landscape, a city, anstreet, a building, a house, a room, a bed,nthe reader is able to locate himself vis-avisnthe author’s creation. True meaningnof place comes from art, not fact. That is,nin Time one could read that Andropovnwas born in “the village of Nagutskoye innthe northern Caucasus,” a presumablynfactual datum that is virtually meaninglessnto all but those who have knowledgenof the specific place (find it on thenmap; should you, then ask what it means).nA room or a cell in Konrad’s or Kundera’snworks, while obviously a fiction, is morenmeaningfial than an actual geographicalnlocation (for the general reader in thenWest—certainly those in Nagutskoyenfind their home meaningftjl).nThe novels have disparate plots andnare set in different places. However,nthere is an important common point:nboth of the presented simations arenproducts of and are controlled by CommunistnParties. The protagonist of ThenLoser helped set up the Hungarian re­nnngime with Matyas Rakosi, Emo Gero,nImre Nagy, and others (who are designatednwith single initials in the book);nthe protc^onist in The Joke joined thenKomunisticka Strana Ceskoslovenskanwhile a student. Both sincerely believednthat they were doing the right thing.nBoth, unfortunately for their well-beingnin the new societies, retained a sense ofnhumor. The worlds created by the authors,nthe ones in which the protagonistsnlive, worlds which are like the “real” onen(i.e., I assume that Time magazine andnNagutskoye both exist in the worldsnthough they aren’t mentioned) yetnmade more real through the metamorphosingnpower of literature, are like anplace in an Edgar Allan Poe story. Thenplace is the Maison de Sante describednin “The System of Doctor Tarr and ProfessornFether.” In that short story, thenlunatic asylum’s superintendent describesnan uprising by the inmates-.n’. . . it all came to pass by means of anstupid fellow—a lunatic—who bynsome means, had taken it into his headnthat he had invented a better systemnof government than ever heard ofnbefore—of lunatic government, Inmean. He wished to give his inventionna trial… and so he persuaded the restnof the patients to join him in a conspiracynfor the overthrow of thenreigning powers.’nThe revolt was a success. It becomesnclear that the superintendent had literallynand figuratively joined the ranks of hisnformer charges. The worlds (i.e.,n”Hungary” and “Czechoslovakia”) presentednby the novelists are governed bynthe mad. In those worlds, only a sense ofnhumor and the ability to perceive ironyncan keep one sane. The “invention” innthe Poe story was put to an end once thenkeepers of order were able to escapentheir captivity via a sewer system. Ifnfictions are or can become real, thennperhaps we can one day read that othernunderground efforts were similarly successfulnin putting down the “better systemnof government” Konrad and Kunderanbring to life. DnMay 1983n