In 1968 Milan Kundera refused to stage Dostoevsky in the theatre, and seventeen years later wrote about it in the essay "Preface to a Variation", in which he speaks openly of his dislike of Dostoevsky and of the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia
"I reread The Idiot and understood that even if I had to go hungry, I could not do this work. Dostoevsky's world, with its gestures that overflow their banks, its murky depths and its aggressive sentimentality, repelled me. A world where feelings are raised to the rank of values and of truth."
To this confession Joseph Brodsky unexpectedly replied, coming to Dostoevsky's defence in an article, "Why Milan Kundera Is Unfair to Dostoevsky", in the New York Times Book Review:
"Milan Kundera recalls Dostoevsky either because his sense of geography is predetermined by his sense of history, or because the very existence of this writer awakens in him a feeling of insecurity. His notion of European civilisation is somewhat narrow and lopsided, if Dostoevsky cannot be admitted into it and is regarded as a threat to it. ... The metaphysical man of Dostoevsky's novels is of greater value than Kundera's wounded rationalist, however modern and widespread the latter may be. ... What North and South, indeed, can a Czech speak of (Poland? Germany? Hungary?)."
