Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Fiction by Milan Kundera

• Zert (The Joke), 1965                                   

• Laughable Loves, 1968                                  

• Life Is Elsewhere, 1969                                   

• The Farewell Party, 1975                                   

• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1978 

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984 

• Immortality, 1990 

• La Lenteur (Slowness) 1994

• Identity, 1996

 Biography

Born April 1, 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, Kundera was a jazz musician in his youth.

He was a communist party member twice, from 1948-1950 and 1956-1970. He was expelled from the party both times for heterodox opinions.

These political forces affected his employment at the Film Faculty at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Prague, where he taught until 1969, when he was fired and his works proscribed from legal publication in Czechoslovakia.

In response to these restrictions, Kundera immigrated to France in 1975, where he taught at the University of Rennes from 1975-1978.

He now lives in Paris with his wife, Vera Hrabankova.

Timeline of Events related to Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Dialogue on the Art of the Novel” is part of an edited interview between Milan Kundera and Christian Soloman. In it, Kundera articulates his theory of the novel.

I. Kundera & the Tradition of the Novel

A. Elements of the ‘traditional’ novel

1. Writers give detailed information about characters (physical appearance, speech patterns, behavior)

2. Characters are embellished with details about their past (motive).

3. Characters are ‘independent;’ the author does not give personal opinions about characters, b/c they exist independently from the author’s will.

B. How Kundera revolts against traditional standards

1. Characters are defined by their personal crises with self identity (crisis of existence, existential being), not by their physical manifestations.

2. Details about a character’s past or person serves to illuminate their inner selves.

3. The author intervenes in the story, giving his own opinions about characters actions.

* cf. p. 4

II. Kundera & History

A. Existence & in-der-Welt-sein (being in the world; Nietzsche, Heidegger)

“That reflection introduces directly, from the very first line of the novel, the fundamental situation of a character—Tomas; it sets out his problem: the lightness of existence in a world where there is no eternal return . . . To apprehend the self in my novels means to grasp the essence of its existential problem. To grasp its existential code. As I was writing The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I realized that the code of this or that character is made up of certain keywords. For Tereza: body, soul, vertigo, weakness, idyll, Paradise. For Tomas: lightness, weight” (29).

B. Kundera’s principles: “The novelist is neither historian nor prophet: he is an explorer of existence.”

1. History = stage backdrop (minimal)

2. Historical circumstances in the novel only exist because they reveal the characters’ “existential situation” (36).

3. Kundera is dissatisfied with the fact that historiography neglects the history of people and focuses on ‘society.’ History in novels, he argues, should be about human situations, “a growing existential situation” (38).

III. How these Theorems Relate to Unbearable

A. Characters’ ‘existential codes’ (not miscellaneous data)

- “The quest for the self has always ended, and always will end, in a paradoxical dissatisfaction” (25).

- music / ‘themes; cf. p. 32 (actual music); variation of Tomas’ theme (takes on Teresa’s heaviness)

B. The failure of history to describe human feeling and identity

- Example of existential codes (Teresa = weight: heavy things, heavy dreams, heavy thoughts, heavy books; schwer = difficult, weighty, heavy)

IV. Similarities to Kafka

    “Kafka drew his knowledge of the technique of culpabilization, which became a major theme of his fiction . . .

    Totalitarian society, especially in its more extreme versions, tends to abolish the boundary between the public and the private; power, as it grows ever more opaque, requires the lives of citizens to be entirely transparent. The ideal of life without secrets corresponds to the ideal of the exemplary family: a citizen does not have the right to hide anything at all from the Party or the State, just as a child has no right to keep a secret from his father or his mother. In their propaganda, totalitarian societies project an idyllic smile: they want to be seen as ‘one big family' . . . Joseph K.’s story also begins with the rape of privacy: two unknown men come to arrest him in bed. From that day on, he never feels alone: the Court follows him, watches him, talks to him; his private life disappears bit by bit, swallowed up by the mysterious organization on his heels.

    Lyrical souls who like to preach the abolition of secrets and the transparency of private life do not realize the nature of the process they are unleashing. The starting point of totalitarianism resembles the beginning of The Trial: you’ll be taken unawares in your bed. They’ll come just as your father and mother used to” (110-11).

Discussion

1. How does each character’s profession say about him or her, especially in terms of the character's relationship to lightness/heaviness?

2. What might the romantic liaisons in the novel allegorize about countries and their political relations?

 3. What techniques, characteristics, and/or themes does Kundera “borrow” from Modernist novelists?

Discussion L. 26

1. Why does Tereza long for and seem obsessed by death? What does ‘death’ mean in this novel? Consider Kundera’s comment on life and death in The Art of the Novel: “That life is a trap we’ve always known: we are born without having asked to be, locked in a body we never chose, and destined to die” (26).

2. Kundera defends himself against feminist critique with the following excerpt from Art of the Novel: “MISOGYNIST: From our earliest days every one of us is faced with a mother and a father, a femininity and a masculinity. And thus marked by a harmonious or disharmonious relation with each of these two archetypes. Gynophobes (misogynists) occur not only among men but among women as well, and there are as many gynophobes as there are androphobes (men and women who live in disharmony with the masculine archetype). Both these attitudes are fully legitimate possibilities of the human condition. Feminist manicheism has never considered the issue of androphobia and has transformed misogyny into mere insult. Thus the psychological component of the notion, the only one that is interesting, is evaded” (139-40).

Do Kundera’s depictions of women need any ‘defense’ at all (and if yes, does this comment suffice)? What does gender identity mean in the novel compared to previous ones we’ve read?

3. Pose one of your own discussion questions to the group.

Discussion L. 27

Consider Kundera’s formulation of ‘the unbearable lightness of being’ in his Art of the Novel: “It was while I was writing The Unbearable Lightness of Being that—inspired by my characters, all of whom are in some fashion withdrawing from the world—I thought of the fate of Descartes’ famous formulation: man as ‘master and proprietor of nature.’ Having bought off miracles in science and technology, this ‘master and proprietor’ is suddenly realizing that he owns nothing and is master neither of nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of History (it has escaped him), nor of himself (he is led by the irrational forces of his soul). But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is moving through the void without any master. There it is, the unbearable lightness of being” (41).

Can you describe the ‘unbearable lightness of being’ in your own words? What is the unbearable lightness of being for Sabina? (248-9, 253-4, 256, 273) How do Tereza and Tomas find unbearable lightness? (222-223, 234, 236, 283-4)

2. How do Tomas’s conflicts with Communism relate to the story of Oedipus? Do Tomas and Tereza have their own Oedipal story? Why does Tomas refuse to sign a retraction of his article? Why does Tomas refuse to sign the amnesty letter for political prisoners?

Discussion L. 28

1. Why does Kundera object so strongly to kitsch? How does it threaten the “self”? (251-54, 256-57, 261-62, 278) Kundera on kitsch in Art of the Novel:

“In the French version of Hermann Broch’s celebrated essay, the word ‘kitsch’ is translated as ‘junk art’ (art de pacotille). A misinterpretation, for Broch demonstrates that kitsch is something other than simply a work in poor taste. There is a kitsch attitude. Kitsch behavior. The kitsch-man’s (Kitschmensch) need for kitsch: it is the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one’s own reflection. For Broch, kitsch is historically bound to the sentimental romanticism of the nineteenth century. Because in Germany and Central Europe the nineteenth century was far more romantic (and far less realistic) than elsewhere, it was there that kitsch flowered to excess, it was there that the word ‘kitsch’ was born, there that it is still in common use. In Prague, we saw kitsch as art’s prime enemy. Not in France. For the French, the opposite of real art is entertainment. The opposite of serious art is light, minor art. But for my part, I never minded Agatha Christie’s detective novels. Whereas Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz at the piano, the big Hollywood films like Kramer vs. Kramer, Doctor Zhivago (poor Pasternak!)—those I detest, deeply, sincerely. And I am more and more irritated by the kitsch spirit in certain works whose form pretends to modernism. (I add: Nietzsche’s hatred for Victor Hugo’s ‘pretty words’ and ‘ceremonial dress’ was a disgust for kitsch avant la lettre” (135-36).

2. How do you explain Kundera’s ambivalence about Communism? For example, why does the exile Sabina fail to support anti-Communist sentiment (91 in ch. 3& 95/ch. 4 in III/Words, 254/ch. 11 in VI/Grand March); how and why does Kundera criticize leftist protests in “The Grand March”? (256-75/chs. 13-26 in VI/Grand March)

3. How does the ending of this novel compare to other ones we’ve read? Why is there emphasis on the butterfly? (286-89, 296-98, 314)

Study Guide