Words&Dirt

Summary:

Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fictional mélange of philosophy, history, romance, and political commentary.  Set in Prague during the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the novel recounts the story of two couples struggling to find peace and connection in turbulent times. In a world where time flows forward and everything happens only once, Kundera suggests that events and relationships lack weight, creating “the unbearable lightness of being.” Kundera’s poignant, startling, and visceral confrontation with this existential conundrum invites readers to contemplate the inherent pluralism of human experience as well as the undeniable commonalities of human nature.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• I first read this novel for an undergraduate Existentialism course in the spring of 2007. Given Kundera’s preoccupations with the concept of “eternal return” and role of repetition in human life, I enjoyed coming back to this text fifteen years later. This second time around, I was intrigued, confused, annoyed, impressed, and ultimately devastated by a great novel that’s even greater than I remember. Although of course life itself can never be repeated (at least as far as we know), I was reminded that our ability to revisit impactful pieces of art is truly one of the great gifts of human existence.
• Needless to say, I’m not the same person in my mid-thirties as I was in my late teens. The growth of my personal identity, values, and priorities produced significant shifts in my experience of this story. In particular, I found Kundera’s sexual musings far less compelling than in the past, but related much more to his political ideas. I also connected with the novel’s final section––which addresses humanity’s ethical relationship with nonhuman animals––in a completely fresh and profound way. Ultimately, The Unbearable Lightness of Being proved itself not only still wonderful but also differently so. Given that classic literature always strives for a flavor of timeless relevance, it’s hard to think of higher praise.

Favorite Quotes:

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the Earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, 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.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? (5)

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs…but if they meet when they are older…their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them. (88-9)

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. (221)

One way of saving love from the stupidity of sex would be to set the clockwork in our head in such a way as to excite us at the sight of a swallow.

And with that sweet thought he started dozing off. But on the very threshold of sleep, in the no-man’s-land of muddled concepts, he was suddenly certain he had just discovered the solution to all riddles, the key to all mysteries, a new utopia, a paradise: a world where man is excited by seeing a swallow and Tomas can love Tereza a without being disturbed by the aggressive stupidity of sex. (237)

Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. (248)

Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end up by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.”

In this light, we can regard the gulag as the septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse. (251-2)

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. (289)

No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Karenin surrounded Tereza and Tomas with a life based on repetition, and he expected the same from them…

Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition. (298)

Assuming the role of Death is a terrifying thing. Tomas insisted that he would not give the injection himself; he would have the vet come and do it. But then he realized that he could grant Karenin a privilege forbidden to humans: Death would come for him in the guise of his loved ones. (299-300)

The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness. (313-4)

Rating: 10/10