This one is going to be long! It is a book review essay on Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being that I wrote for a grad Sociology Seminar in Sociological Institutions on the topic of Modern Morality, Fall 2001.
Here is what I said when I posted the Word doc to my website which almost no one knows about and which is not spiderable (in theory):
Talk about a new experience! This was the first literature (fiction period, even) that I had read in a long time, and then to have to analyze its morality….
Yes, it had in fact been a very long time since I had read any fiction, much less literature. I only got one take through the book before having to write this essay. I clearly need to go back and read this novel, but I am proud of my efforts here. Before you judge the style or content, just take a moment to remember the context of the ‘review.’ It was done as an analysis of the lived morality demonstrated within the novel. That is its primary focus. And yes, I have since read quite a lot of literature.
And as you will see, this boy can work in an Ani reference almost anywhere. Actually, every book review essay (4) and final exam (2) that I did for Dr. Richard Stivers contains at least one Ani reference. If I had taken the other course for a grade instead of just attending class then it would’ve been 6 and 3 respectively. Of that, I have no doubt.
Without further ado then:
Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being
In this paper I will address various aspects of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I will summarize the main themes of the novel, analyze the various relationships of the four main characters and try to see what this tells us about the aesthetical and the ethical as “spheres of existence.” I will also discuss the contrast of lightness and heaviness as it plays out in the lives of the main characters. Finally, I will offer a short, opinionated, evaluation of the novel.
Kundera’s novel is a novel of themes and variations. These themes, and the variations on them, are the dichotomies of lightness and weight, soul and body, strength and weakness, and fidelity and infidelity. Other themes are “the event” of totalitarianism, misunderstood words, the Grand March, and death, among others. The plot is not put forward as a straight chronology, but jumps around in time, with the author later interjecting bits that were left out previously. This makes the book more difficult than it needs to be.
The plot revolves around the various relationships of the four main characters, Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz. The chief main character is Tomas, a Czech surgeon, divorcee, and an “epic” womanizer. He has invented a form of “erotic friendship” that allows him to enjoy many mistresses without being responsible for any of them. This works well for him until he meets Tereza, a simple waitress from a country town. Tomas can not resist this love, which he tries to return, but he goes on womanizing. This is deeply wounding to Tereza.
Then the crisis of 1968 and the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia impact their lives. Tomas has unwisely published an anti-Party article in a newspaper. He accepts a job in Zurich, and Tereza accompanies him, hoping exile will solve the problems of their relationship. But, he continues womanizing, particularly with Sabina, another Czech émigré. Sabina also begins a liaison with Franz, a liberal Swiss academic.
Tereza thinks she is making Tomas miserable so she returns to Czechoslovakia. Tomas is relieved at first, but then finds that he cannot live without her. He thus returns to Czechoslovakia. They both know that they will not get out again. Tomas’ political black marks catch up with him, but he refuses to sign a retraction. He is demoted from surgeon to general practitioner, sent to a small clinic, and finally is relegated to the job of window-washer.
Window-washing gives him lots of opportunities for his brand of “erotic friendship,” and Tereza’s old problems return. She finally persuades him to move to the country, where he drives a truck ferrying farm workers to the fields.
Sabina ditches Franz at the precise moment that he leaves his wife for her. Franz has acquired, or been inspired to, a sort of political romanticism from Sabina. This leads him to join a demonstration to Cambodia in his quest to participate in “The Grand March.” The demonstration is a fiasco, and Franz is mugged and killed in the streets of Bangkok. Sabina moves on to Paris, and finally America. This is where she learns of Tomas and Tereza’s deaths and concludes that they were happy. This synopsis is quite different from the way the text is experienced.
The characters are superficially drawn, with very few details of dress, physical appearance, domestic décor, etc. Kundera seems to have created them out of the contrasts that they struggle with, and embody.
I will now try to elucidate some of the main themes of the novel.
Lightness and Weight (Heaviness)
Of the seven parts of the novel, parts one and five are entitled “Lightness and Weight.” They both primarily focus on Tomas. Lightness and weight are one of the fundamental oppositions of the physical world. The ancient philosopher, Parmenides, “saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/non-being.” (Kundera, 5) He called light, fineness, warmth, and being positive. The other half he called negative. But is weight positive or negative, and what about lightness? Parmenides assigned lightness as positive and weight as negative.
Kundera opens the novel with his reflections on Nietzsche’s idea of eternal return, which leads to the discussion of Parmenides’ dichotomization of the world. He concludes this section by asking whether Parmenides was correct or not in his assigning lightness as positive, and weight as negative. “Was he correct or not? That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious of all.” (Kundera, 6) Tomas’ existential question or problem thus becomes: “What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” (Kundera, 5)
Lightness is associated with freedom, escape, and a lack of commitment. It is attractive, but also “unbearable,” largely because lightness is so fragile, and so threatened by the weight of existence. Weight is associated with the idea of eternal return, and the weight of unbearable responsibility.
Tomas does not seem to show any familiarity with Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return. He believes that, because life only occurs once, that “[h]istory is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” (Kundera, 223) At one point, Tomas does entertain an idealized form of eternal return, one that is incompatible with Nietzsche’s and is internally incoherent. Tomas’ reflections on the insubstantiality and meaninglessness of life leads him to conclude that “[t]here is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?” (Kundera, 8) It is this sense of life and its’ meaning which Kundera calls its’ “unbearable lightness.”
Freedom to pursue happiness in one’s own way seems to be the ultimate value of modern culture. Freedom is certainly light, and burdens are heavy, but Kundera reminds us that so is the weight of a man’s body on a woman’s in the act of love. Thus, “[t]he heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment.” (Kundera, 5)
Tomas’ carefree philandering is associated with lightness, while his compassion (love) for Tereza and her needs is associated with weight, the crushing weight of burdens. Kundera says that “the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.” (Kundera, 5)
Tomas allows himself to sink to the level of window-washer partly because he secretly longs to be free of responsibility, and “to follow the spirit of Parmenides and make heavy go to light.” (Kundera, 196)
Tereza is by nature committed to heaviness. Kundera says that “[s]he knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love[,]” at least as Kundera and Tomas claim it to be. (Kundera, 143)
Early in the novel, Tomas is trying to decide if his compassion for Tereza is necessary, which would imply responsibility, or whether it is mere fortuity, which would mean freedom from the weight of such responsibility. Tomas makes a spontaneous, not rational, decision for necessity, and now experiences the “weight” of Tereza and her “large and enormously heavy” suitcase. (Kundera, 10)
The relationship between Tomas and Sabina is lightness, but Sabina lives more consistently within the code of lightness. “Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.” (Kundera, 122) Sometime after learning of the deaths of Tomas and Tereza, Sabina composes a will in which she requests to be cremated and her ashes scattered to the winds. “Tereza and Tomas had died under the sign of weight. She wanted to die under the sign of lightness. She would be lighter than air. As Parmenides would put it, the negative would change to positive.” (Kundera, 273)
Soul and Body
Parts two and four, entitled “Soul and Body,” are mostly about Tereza. Tereza’s problem or motif is a dualistic split between body and soul. Kundera talks about characters being “born of a stimulating phrase or two or from a basic situation. Tomas was born of the saying “Einmal ist keinmal.“ Tereza was born of the rumbling of a stomach.” (Kundera, 39) “Tereza was therefore born of a situation which brutally reveals the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience. Kundera muses that the body, once unfamiliar and alien, has been made familiar by modern medicine, and that “[t]he old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.” (Kundera, 40)
“But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.” (Kundera, 40)
The split between the body and soul is an ancient one. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had much to say about it at length. Others must have considered it even before it was written down, at least written on the documents that we do have.
“Tereza tried to see herself through her body.” (Kundera, 41) She often stood in front of the mirror, even as a girl. She looked in the mirror to see “her own “I.”" (Kundera, 41) “[S]he thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face.” (Kundera, 41) She often saw her mother in her features, which was quite upsetting to Tereza. When she did, she would stare harder and wish them away. “Each time she succeeded was a time of intoxication: her soul would rise to the surface of her body…” (Kundera, 41)
Tereza’s mother had a profound influence on Tereza, especially on her views of the body. Kundera even links the two to the same motif, such that “her entire life was merely a continuation of her mother’s, much as the course of a ball on the billiard table is merely the continuation of the player’s arm movement.” (Kundera, 41) Tereza’s mother often looked in the mirror, also. Her behavior was very odd, especially for the time period. She would blow her nose noisily in public, talk to people in public about her sex life, and demonstrate her false teeth in public. Her mother had no shame, and would march around the house in her bra, or even naked, with the window open. This behavior, and others, of Tereza’s mother, Kundera says, can help us understand Tereza’s secret vice of looking in the mirror. “It was a battle with her mother. It was a longing to be a body unlike other bodies, to find that the surface of her face reflected the crew of her soul charging up from below. It was not an easy task: her soul – her sad, timid, self-effacing soul lay concealed in the depths of her bowels and was ashamed to show itself.” (Kundera, 47)
The first time Tomas and Tereza made love, and for the first year, Tereza would scream. Kundera says that it is not the scream of sensuality, which is “the total mobilization of the senses.” (Kundera, 54) Her scream was directed at crippling the senses. “What was screaming in fact was the naïve idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of body and soul, banish perhaps even time.” (Kundera, 54)
Kundera says that Tereza longed for “something higher.” This was due to her servile nature. She supplied drunks with their beer, and ensured that her siblings had clean clothes. Kundera says that one whose aim is “something higher” must expect to experience vertigo someday. Is vertigo the fear of falling? “No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us, which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” (Kundera, 60) Her dream about the women marching around the swimming pool doing knee bends while Tomas shot them from above refers to Tereza’s vertigo. “These were her vertigo: she heard a sweet (almost joyous) summons to renounce her fate and soul.” “She was ready to dismiss the crew of her soul from the deck of her body.” (Kundera, 60) Tereza’s psychic vertigo escalated into physical vertigo when Tomas opposed her trip to see her supposedly ailing mother. Hours later, she fell in the street and injured herself. She began to bump into things, fell almost daily, and at the very least, dropped things. “She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of vertigo.” (Kundera, 61) This translation of psychic vertigo into actual physical falling represents a possible connection between the body and soul. This possible, and even necessary, connection of the body and soul is one reason Tereza was unable to fully divorce her soul from her body.
Looking in the mirror one day, Tereza thought, “there was nothing monstrous about her body.” (Kundera, 138) She would like to make her nipples much smaller and inconspicuous, though. She began to wonder about her features growing and changing in small ways each day. If she no longer looked like herself, would she still be Tereza? “Of course. Even if Tereza were completely unlike Tereza, her soul inside her would be the same and look on in amazement at what was happening to her body.” (Kundera, 139) What is the relationship between Tereza and her body? Could her body honestly call itself Tereza? These questions with no answers are serious ones, and Tereza had been asking them since she was a child.
Tereza ends up having a liaison with an “engineer” to try and get back at Tomas by becoming like him. In this experience Tereza learns quite a bit about the relationship of her body to her soul. The touch of his hand on her breast “erased what remained of her anxiety. For the engineer’s hand referred to her body, and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone.” (Kundera, 154) At first, Tereza does not respond to the engineer’s caresses and undressing of her. Her soul has decided to remain neutral, although it did not condone what was happening. Tereza then begins to feel excited by this encounter, as her body responds against her will. Her soul must remain mute if she is to stay excited. “The moment it said its yes aloud, the moment it tried to take an active part in the love scene, the excitement would subside. For what made the soul so excited was that the body was acting against its will; the body was betraying it, and the soul was looking on.” (Kundera, 155)
Once undressed, Tereza’s soul finally sees her body for the first time as something fascinating and extraordinary. “This was not the most ordinary of bodies (as the soul had regarded it until then); this was the most extraordinary body.” (Kundera, 155) This realization changes her excitement to an “intoxicating hatred.” After the sex act Tereza goes to the bathroom where she is “overcome by a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness.” (Kundera, 157) Losing its onlooker’s curiosity, her soul retreats to the depths of her body again, “waiting desperately for someone to call it out.” (Kundera, 157)
Does this encounter with sex teach her “that casual sex has nothing to do with love[?] That it is light, weightless?” (Kundera, 159) Kundera answers no. Her soul retreated to the very depths of her body. Tereza’s screaming during Tomas’ and her lovemaking subsided with time. “[B]ut her soul was still blinded by love, and saw nothing. Making love with the engineer in the absence of love was what finally restored her soul’s sight.” (Kundera, 161)
Thus Tereza’s life is a study in the (supposed) dichotomy between soul and body.
The two are inextricably linked and she can do nothing about it.
The Grand March
“The fantasy of the Grand March that Franz was so intoxicated by is the political
kitsch joining leftists of all times and tendencies. The Grand March is the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and on, obstacles notwithstanding, for obstacles there must be if the march is to be the Grand March.” (Kundera, 257) “What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.” (Kundera, 257) “The identity of kitsch comes not from a political strategy but from images, metaphors, and vocabulary.” (Kundera, 261)
In this part, Kundera makes a blistering attack on sentimentality, hypocrisy, and humanity’s desire to avoid the unpleasant, in other words, kitsch. Kitsch is an aesthetic ideal. “It follows then that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist.” (Kundera, 248)
Kundera links kitsch to totalitarianism, calling the Russian May Day ceremony the “model of Communist kitsch.” (Kundera, 249) In “totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.” (Kundera, 254) Sabina, the artist, the “person who asks questions,” is the real enemy of kitsch. “My enemy is kitsch, not Communism,” Sabina claims. (Kundera, 254) She most clearly speaks out for individualism and beauty against conformity and kitsch. Sabina, who best understands Tomas, tells him, “The reason I like you,”…”is you’re the complete opposite of kitsch. In the kingdom of kitsch you would be a monster.” (Kundera, 12)
Franz’s quest for the Grand March takes him on a trip to Thailand. It is demonstration protesting that international medical personnel be allowed to enter Cambodia, which is racked by famine, occupation, and war. The demonstration is a fiasco and Franz is mugged in the streets of Bangkok. He wakes up in a hospital in Geneva with his wife leaning over his bed. He does not survive, and his death is meaningless. “What remains of Franz?
An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.
And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.” (Kundera, 278)
Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia
“The event” of totalitarianism is the essential reference point, and provides the
external catalyst for most of the events in the book. The characters’ lives are shaped by political events, but are not determined by them. For instance, Tomas’ and Tereza’s return to Czechoslovakia is for emotional, not ideological reasons. Their deaths, meaningless as they are, like Franz’s, are not the fault of the regime, but of Tomas. Tomas won’t retract his article not as a courageous act of political defiance, but more from stubbornness and complicated feelings for his dissident son. He allows himself to sink to window-washer partly because he secretly longs to be free from responsibility, “to make heavy go light.” He has no desire to take on the burden of fighting the regime.
Aesthetical / ethical (as “spheres of existence)
For Kierkegaard, the aesthetic and the ethical are “domains of culture,” or “existence spheres.” The aesthetical approach involves living in the pleasure of the moment, and involves the impact of things on our senses. The ethical approach involves a struggle with the self to achieve a consistent, coherent, unified self. According to Kierkegaard the ethical sphere is a higher existence sphere, which involves more freedom.
In the novel, Kundera gives us many examples of the aesthetic. What seems to be lacking is the ethical sphere. Tomas, rationalist that he is, might be said to live in the ethical sphere. He seems to be trying to achieve a consistent, unified self.
Some of the examples of the aesthetic that Kundera gives us follow.
Questioning, as well as an activity, is a form of existential being. “A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies behind it. In fact, that was exactly how Sabina had explained the meaning of her paintings to Tereza: on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth showing through.” (Kundera, 254) Thus, Sabina’s art is aesthetic.
Sabina’s inner revolt against Communism is aesthetical, not ethical. She was repelledby the “mask of beauty it tried to wear – in other words, Communist kitsch.” (Kundera, 249)
Dreaming is an aesthetic activity according to Kundera. “Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.” (Kundera, 59) Tereza’s dreams, a motif that I did not touch on, are extremely important in Tomas’ and her relationship. “If dreams were not beautiful, they would be quickly forgotten But Tereza kept coming back to her dreams, running through them in her mind, turning them into legends. Tomas lived under the hypnotic spell cast by the excruciating beauty of Tereza’s dreams. [Sorry, yes, the end quote and citation is missing in the original paper. Having borrowed this book from the library I cannot currently verify the citation.]
“[A] world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist,” is the aesthetic ideal called kitsch. (Kundera, 248)
The contrast of the aesthetic and the ethical is possibly the one I least understood in this novel. I recognized it in many places where it cropped up, but I was unable to put it into a coherent analysis. With so many themes and variations on these themes, another reading might possibly help me.
Relationships
Tomas – Tereza
This is the primary relationship of the novel. Tomas’ erotic friendship is lightness. His compassion and love for Tereza is heaviness. Tereza’s love for Tomas is lightness, while the pain caused by Tomas’ philandering is heaviness. For Tomas, love and sex are quite distinct. They are the same for Tereza. “Tomas kept trying to convince her that love and love-making were two different things. She refused to understand.” (Kundera, 142) For Tereza, his infidelities are deeply wounding.
When Tereza returns to Czechoslovakia and leaves Tomas in Zurich, Tomas becomes light at first. “She might as well have chained an iron ball to his ankles. Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared. He had entered Parmenides’ magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being.” (Kundera, 30) But, he quickly begins to miss her and sees her everywhere. “On Saturday and Sunday, he felt the sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future. On Monday, he was hit by a weight the likes of which he had never known. The tons of steel of the Russian tanks were nothing compared to it. For there is nothing heavier than compassion.” (Kundera, 31) Tomas does his best not to give in to his sickness, compassion, but is unsuccessful. Tomas had earlier decided for necessity and its attendant responsibility, and thus its unbearable burden.
Tereza’s view of Tomas’ and her relationship is beautifully summarized by Ani DiFranco in the song Marrow. “You were smoking me / weren’t you? / between your yellow fingers / you just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word / Where was your conscience? / Where was your consciousness?” “Cuz the answer came like a shot in the back / while you were running from your lesson / which might explain / why years later all you could remember / was the terror of the question / plus I’m not listening to you anymore / my head is too sore and my heart’s perforated / and I’m mired in the marrow of my (well…ain’t that) funny bone / learning how to be alone and devastated / Where was my conscience? Where was my consciousness?” (DiFranco)
Tomas – Sabina
As I said earlier under Lightness and Weight, the relationship between Tomas and Sabina is lightness, with Sabina living more consistently within the code of lightness. “Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.” (Kundera, 122)
Sabina is a Czech émigré and artist. She moves further and further away from, and removes herself from, Czechoslovakia as the novel progresses. She eventually ends up on the West coast of America. To Sabina, Tomas represented a Don Juan type in her relationship with him, and as a Tristan in Tereza’s relationship with Tomas. When Sabina receives the letter telling her of Tomas’ and Tereza’s deaths, she concludes that they were happy because they were coming back from a weekend trip to a hotel that they enjoyed. Her epithet for Tomas is, “He died as Tristan, not as Don Juan.” (Kundera, 124)
Sabina – Tereza
Although Tomas’ philandering is a terrible weight on, and deeply wounding to, Tereza, her burden is all of Tomas’ womanizing. Thus, his specific relationship to Sabina does not compromise her ability to have a relationship with Sabina herself. Tereza and Sabina actually become friends, made much easier by Tereza’s “rush of admiration for Sabina, and because Sabina treated her as a friend it was an admiration free of fear and suspicion and quickly turned into friendship.” (Kundera, 64)
Tereza was somewhat in awe of Sabina as seen by the line, “Tereza listened to her with the remarkable concentration that few professors ever see on the face of a student…” (Kundera, 63) Also, “She was completely at the mercy of Tomas’s mistress. This beautiful submission intoxicated Tereza. She wished that the moments she stood naked opposite Sabina would never end.” (Kundera, 66) This is pretty heady stuff for a woman who has had pretty serious issues with her body, primarily due to her mother, for most of her life.
Sabina – Franz
Franz is a married intellectual in Geneva. He falls in love with his mistress, Sabina. But, he will not have sex with her in Geneva because going from the bed of woman to that of another in the space of a few hours, “he felt, would humiliate both mistress and wife and, in the end, himself as well.” (Kundera, 81) “The ban on making love with his painter-mistress in Geneva was actually a self-inflicted punishment for having married another woman. He felt it as a kind of guilt or defect.” (Kundera, 83) He begins to accept all invitations to lecture at foreign universities and takes Sabina with him. Sabina inspires a kind of political romanticism in Franz, but he never really understands her, which is why it is so easy for him to romanticize her.
Several passages point to this lack of comprehension of his mistress on Franz’s part. “That stare bewildered him; he could not understand it.” “The problem was, Franz had not the slightest notion what it was asking.” (Kundera, 84) “Again he had to smile at how poorly he understood his mistress.” (Kundera, 85) “It was neither obscene nor sentimental, merely an incomprehensible gesture. What made him feel uncomfortable was its very lack of meaning.” (Kundera, 88)
If this is not evidence enough, Kundera gives us about seventeen pages of misunderstood words between Sabina and Franz. They have vastly different meanings for words, and ideas, such as ‘woman,’ ‘fidelity’ and ‘betrayal,’ ‘music,’ ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ ‘parades,’ ‘Sabina’s country,’ ‘cemeteries,’ and ‘strength,’ among others.
The primary dichotomy signifying Franz’ and Sabina’s relationship is betrayal/fidelity. When he tells Sabina that he is leaving his wife, Marie-Claude, “Sabina felt as though Franz had pried open the door of their privacy.” (Kundera, 115) Although Sabina is quite upset with Franz, “she [makes] love to him with greater frenzy than ever before, aroused by the realization that this was the last time.” (Kundera, 117) Sabina plans on betraying Franz. Franz does not know “that Sabina values betrayal more than fidelity.” (Kundera, 91) “Each was riding the other like a horse, and both were galloping off into the distance of their desires, drunk on the betrayal that freed them. Franz was riding Sabina and had betrayed his wife; Sabina was riding Franz and had betrayed Franz.” (Kundera, 117)
Commentary
Now I’d like to add a bit of opinionated commentary on Kundera’s novel. The out-of-sequence chronology is confusing, particularly to someone not well versed in the events in the Spring of 1968. I find the author somewhat intrusive, and very much so on a few occasions. This is not exactly objectionable, but it does tend to distract me from the narrative. I find the characters to be perfunctorily drawn, with very few details of dress, physical appearance, domestic décor, etc. These things go a long way to building characters with which one can empathize. I don’t believe that Kundera even wants us to empathize with his characters, with the possible exception of Tomas. I, though, am unable to sympathize with a womanizer, whether of the “lyrical” or “epic” stripe. Neither reason for “collecting” is agreeable to me. Kundera’s vision of sexual relations seems to be reflective, philosophical, speculative, lucid, but also cold, bleak, and hopeless. There is not a single happy relationship and few instances of happy sex. I did find the novel interesting, though. Whether or not it is important depends upon what each reader takes from the narrative. I myself find it important because it seems to show that most great dichotomies are not really dichotomies, but a continuum. Fidelity/infidelity, strength/weakness, and all the other supposed dichotomies are in fact necessary. One does not preclude, or is not a negation of the other. The identification of one side, in fact, necessitates the identification of the other side of the dichotomy.
There are several other themes and ideas which Kundera presents in this novel. I did not have the time or space to include them here or perhaps another reading of the narrative might elucidate them for me. These include fidelity/infidelity, strength/weakness, the musical composition motif for an individual life, Sabina’s bowler hat as a totemic object, the dichotomies of words misunderstood, the Petrin Hill dream sequence, which I did not understand, and Karenin and his relationships with Tereza and Tomas.
Another issue I have is with translation. Not necessarily with this particular translation, but with translation in general. In this case, how well do Czechoslovakian words and concepts ‘translate’ into English words and phrases. Kundera’s example of the etymology of “compassion” clearly shows that even words we think are the same, are in fact not. The philosopher, W. V. O. Quine, would argue that the ‘indeterminacy of translation’ prevents any translation. I believe that his theory is logically correct, but it is certainly not pragmatically correct. We do in fact communicate with others, even with people who speak different languages than us. Thus, how well does the Czech translate into English? What did we lose in the translation?
In this paper I have addressed various aspects of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I summarized the main themes of the novel and analyzed the various relationships of the four main characters. I also offered a short, opinionated, evaluation of the novel.
Sources
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim)
DiFranco, Ani. Marrow on revelling. Righteous Babe Records, 2001.
