an efflores- cence in the arts. "The identity of a people and of a civilization is re- flected and concentrated" in culture, Kundera writes. "If this identity is threatened with extinction, cultural life grows correspondingly more intense."
But even as culture was increasing in importance in captive Central Europe, it was declining in Western Europe. Indeed, Kundera be- lieves, the mass-communications media have supplanted culture there: Sophisticated Western Europeans now discuss...