Milan Kundera - Jakab and az ura

"When the oppressive Russian irrationality burst upon my country, I felt an instinctive urge to draw abundantly from the spirit of the new age of the West. And I found that it is nowhere as concentrated as in the carnival of reason, humor and fantasy, in Jakab geg a gazdajaja . So that I could stay in the company of Jakab and his owner for as long as possible, they appeared in my imagination like characters in my own play. I wrote Jakab and the Lord as a personal consolation," says Milan Kundera in his introduction about the background to the creation of his play written in 1971. His piece is a masterfully woven, colorfully orchestrated version of Denis Diderot's novel Jakab og gádzajaja. And as Kundera points out: "Jakab et ura is not a rewrite: it is my play, my 'variation on Diderot', or, as it gave birth to admiration, my 'homage to Diderot'".