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Life is Elsewhere

by Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher (Translator)

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 5,388 ratings · 163 reviews

The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his lov...more

Paperback, 432 pages

Published July 25th 2000 by Harper Perennial (first published 1973)

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Nov 30, 2011 Mashael Alamri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: translated, books-in-2010, european-literature, favorites

قرأتها منذ شهر تقريباً وعجزت عن كتابة رفيو مع أنها من أفضل الروايات التي مرت عليّ ,
,كأن كونديرا يكتب من أجل أن يصحح الأخطاء القديمة التي ارتكبها,قرأت سابقاً عنه أنه كان متحمساً للشيوعية ومنتمياً إليها,ولكن ماذا حصل ؟ لم يعد يقف في صف الجماعة,وأخذ يبتعد ويعلن عن خيبة أمله عن طريق الرواية.
جاروميل هذا الشاب الذي كان شاعراً,هاجم به كونديرا سذاجة واندفاع الشباب و الشعر الذي كان كونديرا نفسه يكتبه سابقاً, كان جاروميل متحمساً للثورة الشيوعية بيد أنها أصبحت قمعاً أكثر منه إنقاذ للتشيك , تساءل ذات مرة...more قرأتها منذ شهر تقريباً وعجزت عن كتابة رفيو مع أنها من أفضل الروايات التي مرت عليّ ,
,كأن كونديرا يكتب من أجل أن يصحح الأخطاء القديمة التي ارتكبها,قرأت سابقاً عنه أنه كان متحمساً للشيوعية ومنتمياً إليها,ولكن ماذا حصل ؟ لم يعد يقف في صف الجماعة,وأخذ يبتعد ويعلن عن خيبة أمله عن طريق الرواية.
جاروميل هذا الشاب الذي كان شاعراً,هاجم به كونديرا سذاجة واندفاع الشباب و الشعر الذي كان كونديرا نفسه يكتبه سابقاً, كان جاروميل متحمساً للثورة الشيوعية بيد أنها أصبحت قمعاً أكثر منه إنقاذ للتشيك , تساءل ذات مرة في كتابه النقدي ” فن الرواية ” ما معنى الشباب والثورة والشعر ؟”وعبر عنها عن طريق جاروميل الفتى الجميل الذي يهرب من الأنثى التي تحيط به تواجهه تربيه تتغلغل إلى داخله تحاول أن تمحي أي مسافة بينها وبين أبنها الذي يكبر تقتحم خلوة الأسرار تريد أن تكون كل شيء بالنسبة لجاروميل الذي خرج ثمرة حب وزواج طائش, ورزمة أحلام يعيش داخلها يتدرب عليها مسبقاً لكن الحياة هي في مكان آخر دائماً أينما كان في أحلامه في الواقع بين هذا وذاك يجد أن الحياة تفر منه باتجاه الآخر هذا المكان الذي لم يجده كونديرا وبالتالي لم يجده حاروميل , ومن حلم إلى حلم ومنه إلى حلم يجد جاروميل أنه حتى شخصياته في الأحلام تهرب منه إلى حلم يولد من داخل الآخر القديم ,يبحث عن ” أناه” الضائعة الذي كلما هم يريد أن يمارسها يجد أنه يتقمص دور شخص آخر, يريد أن يكون هو نفسه ولكنه عجز, يوجه كل طاقة الشباب لحب الحزب والانتماء إلية وللكتابة له والإخلاص له حتى لو كلف ذلك الوشاية بأحد قريب وأخذ يفكر حينما انتحت الأمور للجانب الجدي بعيد عن الشعر والثرثرة للـ الحزب ” هل ما فعله صحيحاً ؟ ” وأخذ الشك يتسلل إلى داخله .
وأشياء أخرى رائعة تجدونها في روايات ميلان كونديرا الذي يثبت ثانية بأنه يكتب روايات رائعة بفلسفة مختلفة جدا :)
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Dec 11, 2008 Eszter rated it 4 of 5 stars

the first hundred pages or so made me really anxious because i just couldn't make myself like the book, and who am i, really, if i am actively disliking a book by kundera?? i was like, yeah, uh huh, i get what you're doing with the misogyny, but please, either knock it off or redeem your little monster of a protagonist, stat. and why are there still two hundred more pages left? what. a. chump. (though i was hoping he was just toying with me.)

then! before i knew what was happening, kundera zipped...more

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May 02, 2011 La Stamberga dei Lettori added it · review of another edition

Shelves: polyfilo

Il racconto lineare della vita di un poeta, dall'infanzia alla maturità, fino alla morte, del suo rapporto con la madre, l'amore e le ideologie nella Praga in cui si costruisce l'utopia comunista filosvietica, diventa l'occasione per una riflessione generale, meglio un'osservazione quasi clinica - e un po' anche cinica -, sul ruolo della poesia e dell'arte nella vita umana.

E la vita è altrove, come dice il titolo. La vita di Jaromil è tutta votata da un lato a perseguire l'obiettivo di diventare...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Pierre E. Loignon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: litterature

Si la vie humaine était éternelle, la mort ne nous serait jamais venue à l’esprit. L’existence se déploierait en dehors de toutes urgences, de tous termes. La temporalité serait comprise comme étant le mouvement en général.
Mais alors, la vie non plus n’apparaîtrait pas à l’esprit. C’est en effet parce que l’on meurt que l’on vit et parce que l’on vit que l’on meurt. La vie et la mort sont consubstantielles.
L’existence humaine réelle se déploie à partir d’un passé, dans lequel on ne peut reveni...more Si la vie humaine était éternelle, la mort ne nous serait jamais venue à l’esprit. L’existence se déploierait en dehors de toutes urgences, de tous termes. La temporalité serait comprise comme étant le mouvement en général.
Mais alors, la vie non plus n’apparaîtrait pas à l’esprit. C’est en effet parce que l’on meurt que l’on vit et parce que l’on vit que l’on meurt. La vie et la mort sont consubstantielles.
L’existence humaine réelle se déploie à partir d’un passé, dans lequel on ne peut revenir autrement qu’en souvenir, pour passer en un présent insaisissable vers un futur inconnu, alors que la mort peut constamment survenir. Or il y a tant de moyens de se distraire existentiellement, de vivre comme si l’on était éternel, comme si seuls l’expression et la connaissance comptaient, en dehors de toutes considérations pour notre finitude.
Et c’est pourquoi j’aime tant Kundera. Il s’attaque si bien aux illusions humaines qui nous distraient d’une conscience authentiquement propre à la condition humaine concrète!
Ici, citant de nombreux poètes, c’est au monde de la poésie lyrique qu’il s’attaque, ce « champ magique [où] ... toute affirmation devient vérité pour peu qu’il y ait derrière elle la force du sentiment vécu. » (402)
Le poète fuit l’angoisse de l’existence humaine réelle dans les rêves de l’imagination pure, où sa liberté débridée lui permet de s’égarer avec une force de séduction quasi irrésistible pour son entourage si le hasard veut qu’il soit talentueux. C’est que cette fuite infantile, immature, veut être adorée comme le Dieu éternel qu’il était enfant dans le petit cercle familial rempli d’amour maternel (Kundera cite Wolker sur ce point (323)).
Derrière l’idéologie politique, la volonté d’être « moderne », la jalousie (sur ce point, Kundera cite Keats(319) et Hugo (331)), se manifeste l’exigence de l’absolu au présent qu’implique le refus d’une prise de conscience de ce qu’est la condition humaine.
Ces douces folies, d’apparence innocentes et charmantes se déploient ainsi dans une innocence dont l’irresponsabilité absolue passe à côté de la vie et de la mort : « Le mur, derrière lequel des hommes et des femmes étaient emprisonnés, était entièrement tapissé de vers et, devant ce mur, on dansait. Ah non, pas une danse macabre. Ici l’innocence dansait! L’innocence avec son sourire sanglant. » (401)
Oui, si la vie humaine était éternelle, la mort ne nous serait jamais venue à l’esprit, mais nous ne sommes pas éternels, alors méfions nous des modes d’existences qui se déploient comme si c’était le cas. Notre innocente cruauté envers notre entourage pourrait bien mener à notre propre chute (Kundera mentionne l’exemple de Lermontov (449)) et ce, de manière aussi vaine que ridicule.
Évidemment, l’histoire rapportée par le roman est triste, pathétique même, mais le message en vaut la peine et dans ce court espace où Kundera introduit le quadragénaire, on y aime aussi certains personnages, le temps d’une « pause tranquille, où un homme inconnu a allumé soudain la lampe de la bonté. » (428)
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Apr 20, 2012 Stven rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book-cover artwork on Goodreads is bright and cheery compared to the subdued, softer colors of the actual paperback cover, like a sunny day instead of a cloudy day. Likewise the text itself, kind of epic heroic if you read the reviews, more subtle if you read the book.

I've read a couple of other books by Milan Kundera, and this one fulfills some expectations that The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting created: It's a self-reflective novel where the narrator...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Corey Pung rated it 5 of 5 stars

Life is Elsewhere is Kundera’s brazen send-up of the world of poetry, particularly the world of poets who involve themselves with politics. It follows in the tradition of the nineteenth century novel where your given the main character’s life from birth onwards, although it does cut out portions, a la A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The main character is Jaromil, a man who has a painfully awkward childhood (complete with a few hysterically funny scenes) who grows up to believe he’s dest...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Sarah Capps rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cult-y-classics, favorites

“Because real life is elsewhere. The students are tearing up the cobblestones, overturning cars, building barricades; their irruption into the world is beautiful and noisy, illuminated by flames and greeted by explosions of tear-gas grenades. How much more painful was the lot of Rimbaud, who dreamed about the barricades of the Paris Commune and never got to it from Charleville. But in 1968 thousands of Rimbauds have their own barricades, behind which they stand and refuse any compromise with th...more “Because real life is elsewhere. The students are tearing up the cobblestones, overturning cars, building barricades; their irruption into the world is beautiful and noisy, illuminated by flames and greeted by explosions of tear-gas grenades. How much more painful was the lot of Rimbaud, who dreamed about the barricades of the Paris Commune and never got to it from Charleville. But in 1968 thousands of Rimbauds have their own barricades, behind which they stand and refuse any compromise with the former masters of the world. The emancipation of mankind will be total, or it will not exist.

But only a kilometer from there, on the other bank of the Seine, the former masters of the world continue to live their lives, and the din of the Latin Quarter reaches them as something far away. Dream is reality, the students wrote on the walls, but it seems that the opposite was true: that reality (the barricades, the trees cut down, the red flags) was a dream.” Life is Elsewhere (pg 237)

Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera is the ultimate attack on Romanticism—childhood, motherhood, love, revolution, and especially poetry. Published in 1973, the book takes place in Czechloslovakia before, during, and after the Second World War and focuses on a young poet and revolutionary named Jaromil. Because Jaromil’s father never wanted a family, the boy’s mother makes her son the center of her world. Nothing Jaromil does as a child goes unnoticed. Childishly cryptic remarks are seen as grand philosophical statements. The sketching of dog heads on human bodies due to the inability to draw human ones is seen as profound artistic vision. Simple rhymes are seen as poetic genius. As Jaromil grows up, he believes himself to be a prodigy, because he has always been told he is.

However, as he gets older he begins to yearn for independence. He joins the revolution, tries to meet girls, becomes secretive, and attempts to turn himself into an individual by rejecting the philosophies of childhood mentors and taking opposing stances. The tragic story unfolds as time and time again the poet tries to free himself of his mother and finds the task an impossibility. Throughout the novel the reader’s feelings toward Jaromil are tugged from one extreme to the other. At times he is cruel, unforgivable, whiney, and concieted, and at others he’s a sympathetic victim of a clingy and embarrassing mother who will stop at nothing to make sure she’s the only woman in her son’s life.

Kundera’s story is compelling, philosophical, brilliantly written, and filled with sadness as the the author no doubt thought back to his country before his exile.(less)

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Aug 03, 2011 Dariana Dudette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Milan Kundera sets the destiny of a whole generation under the sign of failure.

The hero isn't a young boy from those places and times, but one that lives his painful growth in the age when the communism settled down in Czechoslovakia. He is a vulnerable adolescent, haunted by the fear of pathetic, but he has an extreme purity.

The poet Jaromil is attracted by the ideology of Marx, which promises him a revenge against a world that can not include him. Step by step, he becomes a prisoner of a sys...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Chris Gager rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just began last night and am enjoying it. My only other contact with MK is from watching the movie "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". A great movie. This is the story of a poet with the overbearing mother from hell. Kind of reminds me of the Patty-Joey mess from "Freedom". Growing up in a Communist country that abhors(officially) "decadent" modernism. Could this be some kind of commentary about Havel? Probably not. He was a good guy as far as I know.
Day two... Jaromil continues to stumble towa...more

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May 13, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with

...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Kat Stromquist rated it 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved this book, but it's probably not for everyone.

It's ostensibly about a young poet and his overbearing mother during the period following the Czech communist revolution, but that's basically just an excuse for Kundera to talk about art, poetry, politics, and integrity for four hundred pages. You know, all that human stuff that's a little uncomfortable to talk/read about unless it's done really well. Kundera's ideas are challenging and provocative, but his irrepressible charm ma...more

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Jul 21, 2010 Andra rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 16, 2013 Christopher Herz rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my top 5 novels of all time. For me, it has everything I need in a book. That quality that makes you put it down and say, or scream DAMN! HOW DID HE DO THAT?

Milan Kundera seems to transcend writing - I can't explain it or figure out how he did it, but the experience of reading this book made me shake and tremble and wonder if there was magic being spilled onto the pages. The story, characters and writing were all so amazing I feel that no other writer can come close to what he did...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Zoë (In The Next Room) rated it 4 of 5 stars

"With his poems the poet paints his self-portrait; but since no portrait is faithful, I can also say that with his poems he touches up his face."

Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera is the surreal story of Jaromil, a poet growing up in socialist Czechoslovakia who is very close to his mother and idolizes his father who died in a concentration camp during WW2. The actual details of the story aren't what is important, but rather the general experiences that Kundera manages to portray. Life Is Else...more "With his poems the poet paints his self-portrait; but since no portrait is faithful, I can also say that with his poems he touches up his face."

Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera is the surreal story of Jaromil, a poet growing up in socialist Czechoslovakia who is very close to his mother and idolizes his father who died in a concentration camp during WW2. The actual details of the story aren't what is important, but rather the general experiences that Kundera manages to portray. Life Is Elsewhere is a story about youth and poetry, about growing up and the relationships we have, especially with our parents but also with our lovers. It touches on the themes of revolution and motherhood, as well as what life was like in a Communist state. However although the politics do play a key role in the story, I found it was not what left a lasting impact in my mind, but rather the emotions that were caused as a result of laws which restricted creativity and expression.

The book is made up of seven sections, and to be honest I didn't enjoy the first two, I found that they dragged and didn't grab my interest at all. Fortunately, the rest of the book gets more interesting and after the first quarter of the book I was pulled into Kundera's world with full force. It's significantly different than my first try at Kundera, Ignorance, which was a much shorter book, full of powerful phrases but characters I never quite connected to. With Life Is Elsewhere Kundera manages to keep up his strong description and phrases you want to put on magnets like "The worst thing isn't that the world isn't free, but that people have unlearned their freedom." However the characters in the novel, especially Jaromil, his mother, and his lover are all realistic, and even when they do things you despise you understand the reasoning they had and you remain thoroughly engaged in the story.

In many ways Life Is Elsewhere reminded me of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in that it is a journey of a creative person and their life experiences. Although Life Is Elsewhere is certainly easier to follow and read than Joyce, what both left me with after reading was not a memory of specific details and events, but of emotions and themes. There are also portions of the book which discuss how the author is framing the main character, specifically why certain sections of the book cover over a decade in fewer pages than another section covers a year. I found this discussion of the book within the book, oddly intriguing and interesting, it definitely wasn't something I'm used to. Ultimately, Kundera manages to transport the reader into a foreign world which is both powerful and devastating; Life Is Elsewhere asks profound questions about humanity, love, and art. ****(less)

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Jan 27, 2013 Fernanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Luego de haber leído a Kundera continuamente, este libro viene a establecer de manera más sólida en mi persona las ideas con las que Kundera suele jugar en todos sus libros. No he leído su trabajo de manera cronológica, pero aún así el camino que he tomado se siente como si fuera el correcto.

Este libro de Kundera es como cualquier otro, al principio no sabes muy bien hacia donde va la historia y entonces ves como las situaciones se llenan de ironía y de un humor negro que te hacen cuestionar tu...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Sónia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A vida não é aqui é o quarto livro que leio de Milan Kundera, de forma que já vou conhecendo a sua escrita, os seus pensamentos... Mas resumir ou comentar este livro é bastante complicado.

Este livro aborda a vida de Jaromil, o poeta, desda infância até a sua morte, sendo que grande parte do livro se concentra na sua adolescência. Para mim Jaromil é em grande parte uma criação da sua mãe, sendo que ao longo do livro percebe-se que é uma relação em que a mãe de Jaromil acha que o filho é a sua vid...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Soňa Faithová rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book was irritating me from the begining to part five. I thought of it as the work of a... well, perhaps a sociopath- the author was expressing no empathy through Jaromil, no positive emotions, he made Jaromil a monster for us only to regret it later. When I finished the last two parts, I was immensly sorry for everyone- for the readhead, who loved Jaromil and took his disastrous behavior; for Jaromil, because I never really undrestood him, but I spent much time with him and loosing him was...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Mehrnaz Javanrouh rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of a poet from his conception to his early adulthood. The boy is always a poet and always struggles for his independence from his overbearing mother whose greatest accomplishment in life is having the poet. The poet grows to fall in love with a woman but his love is short lived when he becomes insanely jealous of his girlfriend's past love experience. The poet never achieves manhood and dies after betraying his girlfriend and fails to make love to another woman.

I found "Life i...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Keith MacKenzie rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book shook me to my very bones. I was a young man of about 25 working at a coffee kiosk in Victoria, BC, and reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, when one of my customers suggested Life is Elsewhere as a Kundera book I'd probably like. It got me right in the jugular, and probably was a perfect storm for me. If I had read it a few years earlier or a few years later it may not have had the resonance it did have, and I don't even plan to read it again, because I know a re-read would ruin...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Nidhi rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: given-up-on-1st-attempt

This is my second attempt at finishing this book, the first one being three years before. But this time around, unlike the first one I have completed the book and yes I have to concede that many a times it was a test of my will.

Is the book that bad? is the next obvious question. And the answer is - it depends ( a typical consultant answer anywhere in the globe) I will like to cite an example in this case to elucidate on my point. The book - My Name is Red, by Orhan Phamuk, a nobel prize winner n...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Maya Mircheva rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is about the journey of a young man from childhood through adolescence to his premature death who struggles to escape from the suffocating embrace of an overbearing mother and discover his own identity, between poetry and personal rebellion. The third-person narrative with minimal dialogue and the semi-autobiographical style reminds of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but it is also characteristic of Kundera's sensual humanism.
(I'd actually give it five stars, had I not...more

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May 17, 2011 Corina Romonti rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: are-you-kidding

I think from all the novels that I`ve read from him, this one I liked the least. I don`t know why. Maybe I had very high expectations from it. Because i really love Kundera and the way he writes. I really disliked the main character, the poet and his lack of humanity and his obsession with his own persona. I know that the socialist `era` had this dark power to amputate the individual and his feelings and his sensibility, but I couldn`t feel sorry for the Poet. He was to self absorbed and the nov...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Kent Winward rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kundera's novels appeal to my aesthetics in ways that few authors can accomplish. Part 6 is worth the entire book, just to show what some structural changes can do to add depth and breadth to a story. Also, on how utterly incapable we are of truly knowing other people. It is refreshing to be told a story in a way that is unique and not formulaic.

The Rimbaud and Lermontov counterpoint to Jaromil resonates like great poetic images.

Jaromil is Kundera's lyrical soul incarnate, incorporating all of...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Andrew McMillen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this on Ryan Holiday's recommendation (via Neil Strauss). Neil told me about it in person in 2009 ("I like Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, which is about life choices; doing what you’re born to do, versus doing what society and family pressures you to do.") but I didn't follow up til Ryan urged me. It was an excellent read, really vividly told. The two main characters - Jaromil and his mother - were completely three dimensional. Lots of great writing about their internal dialogues. Kund...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Catalina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: eastern-european, contemporary

"Life is Elsewhere" seems even more pertinent in today's urbanizing world, where the popular culture is dominated by the so-called hipster movement and the children of the old bourgeois choose to pretend they are in dare financial situations. We are all Jaromil in the sense that we all hope to get the public's attention and make it big through some rare talent that we have been blessed with by the providence. However, most of us live our life in a manner that would make the statement 'life is el...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Laala Alghata rated it 4 of 5 stars

“The poet shouted that freedom was poetry’s duty, and that even a metaphor was worth fighting for.” — Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

Almost surprisingly for a Kundera novel, I can actually summarise this one quite neatly. It’s the story of Jaromil, a boy growing up in Czechoslovakia (true fact: I had to check my history dates in order to know whether to say Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic), his parents, especially his mother and the influence of social change, love, and family on our live...more

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Nov 05, 2008 Pierce rated it 3 of 5 stars

Listen, I know that I am reading Kundera in too quick succession. After the density of Faulker I was looking for something that was, if not light thematically, at least clean and lyrically simple. Easy-reading with substance, if you will.

But then I really did read it too quickly, the bulk of it was consumed during a five hour wait in Madrid airport last week. But right now it's pretty fresh, so here goes:

Jaromil, the central character, is repugnant. A young and opportunistic poet willing to aba...more Listen, I know that I am reading Kundera in too quick succession. After the density of Faulker I was looking for something that was, if not light thematically, at least clean and lyrically simple. Easy-reading with substance, if you will.

But then I really did read it too quickly, the bulk of it was consumed during a five hour wait in Madrid airport last week. But right now it's pretty fresh, so here goes:

Jaromil, the central character, is repugnant. A young and opportunistic poet willing to abandon anybody in order to construct an image in others' eyes. It shows the poet's development through childhood, the emergence of his hunger for appreciation, mostly brought on by an over-adoring mother and isolation from any critical influences.

The rise of socialism in Prague forces Jaromil to abandon his original, promising poetic development in order to embrace the simplistic romanticism required by totalitarian socialism. He basically fucks over everybody and everything to go with the flow and make a name for himself.

So I'm not sure what Kundera is saying here. He is either saying: a) Jaromil is a bastard. or b) poetry is the problem. If it's (a) then it's a fairly straightforward historical account of a socialist dickhead in Czechoslovakia. If it's (b), that's a much bigger question. There are passages where he suggests that poetry's great power is that it makes anything true. That it wraps up an argument and presents it in such a way as to make it undeniable (This is similar, in my mind, to great music). There's certainly a clear lack of emotional lyricism in Kundera's own work, but at the same time he appears to speak of poets and poetry with too much knowledge and affection for this to really be his position. I think.

The other big theme is mothers and sons, and it's old and universal. Overbearing and over-loving mother. Alternatively clinging and resenting son. A sad, uncomfortable story.

As always in Kundera's work, there is a plot revolving around the ways totalitarian socialism impacts on the individuals in a society. As always I am appalled by the manner in which people turn to complete shit with the softest provocation. That this actually happened, anywhere. How the idea that an ideology enacted on the real world that had to be propped up by imprisonment sans trial and disappearings could ever have been considered an acceptable solution. I know we do not live in a world of absolutes but come on. The passage where "revolutionary" students turn on the guest poets of the old brigade is a horrifying inversion of our largely positive notion of student demonstration in the 20th century.

They fucked us over doubly. Firstly, by the terrible wrongs done by the those administrations. Secondly, by a fear implanted in many Western countries so strong that they could see e.g. medical care or Sweden as bad ways of doing things.(less)

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Aug 30, 2007 Tyler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: czech

The beginning of this promises for it to be a more traditionally formed novel than Kundera's well-known, more free-form books, like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being or The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting. The book deals with the main character's adolescence, although the first section lingers on all the "David Copperfield shit," as an infamous fictional teenager put it. However, the introduction of a seemingly tangentially related dream subplot slowly reminds the reader of Kundera's signature...more

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Mar 30, 2007 علی rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-modern-literature

کوندرا را به این دلیل بسیار دوست دارم که مرا در چهارچوب بسته ی یک روایت زندانی نمی کند. خواندن کونرا مثل این است که دوستی را پس از سال ها در یک کافه ملاقات کنید و در حالی که به قصه ی روزگار رفته ی او گوش می دهید، قهوه تان را می نوشید، به موسیقی که از بلندگوی کافه پخش می شود، گوش می کنید، گهگاه متوجه ی صحبت ها و خنده هایی از میزهای کناری می شوید، صدای عبور و مرور خیابان در پس پشت این همه جاری ست، دوره گردی چیزی می فروشد، عبور تراموای، و همه چیز، درست مثل خود زندگی، ...
I like Kundra because he doe...more

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Nov 22, 2010 miaaa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to miaaa by: Ariyati

Shelves: fictions-others

First encounter with Milan Kundera, quite mesmerized and craving for more.

Meet Jaromil, Maman beloved one, and Xavier, Jaromil's archenemy. This book is about life, If we cannot change the world, let's at least change our lives and live them freely. If every life is unique, let's live uniquely.(p.46); about dreams, terrible are the wounds / of a murdered dreams. (p. 165); and about death, for the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought (...more

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About Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is a Czech and French writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke.

Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not conside...more

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