Abstract

The words of the most important living Czech writer, Milan Kundera, graphically illustrate an important dilemma with which anyone involved in working with the concept of ICH struggles. Referring to a colorful and ancient ceremony, the folk tradition called ‘The Ride of the Kings’, he writes:

Yesterday’s action is obscured by today, and the strongest link binding us to a life constantly eaten away by forgetting is nostalgia. Remorseful nostalgia and remorseless skepticism are the two pans of the scales that give the novel its equilibrium.

(Kundera, 1967, p. viii)