Goodreads | The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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what is your idea about Tereza?	13	8 days ago, 07:02PM

J rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

06/16/08

Read in March, 1995

There is probably one novel that is the most responsible for the direction of my post-graduation European backpacking trip ten years ago which landed me in Prague for two solid weeks. Shortly before my friend Chad and I departed, he mailed me a letter and directed me to get my hands on a copy of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Just read it, he wrote. Whatever else you do, just read this book. It is about everything in the world.

Being already a Kafka fan of some long-stan...more

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dirt rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

08/10/07

Read in July, 2007

the people in this book have a lot of sex. 75% of the book is getting down and doing the nasty (or thinking about it). the sex parts are written in that lofty academic language of "heat" and "passion". the word moist is used liberally. all the really raunchy stuff about body fluids is left out. though probably not too much fluid was exchanged because these people fucked and fucked and fucked and never had babies. the really interesting stuff comes between the sex parts....more the people in this book have a lot of sex. 75% of the book is getting down and doing the nasty (or thinking about it). the sex parts are written in that lofty academic language of "heat" and "passion". the word moist is used liberally. all the really raunchy stuff about body fluids is left out. though probably not too much fluid was exchanged because these people fucked and fucked and fucked and never had babies. the really interesting stuff comes between the sex parts.

the book is propelled along with a series of misunderstandings. coincidences and other people actions are easy to misinterpret. is this song playing because the universe is conspiring to send me a message? do you understand me when i stand naked in front of a mirror wearing a bowler cap? probably not, unless you have read this book. shared understanding only develops over time.

the idea of the soul is huge:

"A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular beats in his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and inside the cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.

Today, of course, the body is no longer unfamiliar: we know that the beating in our chest is the heart and that the nose is the nozzle of a hose sticking out of the body to take oxygen to the lungs. The face is nothing but an instrument panel registering all the body mechanisms: digestion, sight, hearing, respiration, thought.

Ever since man has learned to give each part of the body a name, the body has given him less trouble. He has also learned that the soul is nothing more than the gray matter of the brain in action. The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away."

a question raised by the author, is our body a reflection of our soul? do we have a pretty face because we have a pretty soul?

another topic was our life as music. the motifs introduced early in our life are repeated as we grow older. when we are old the music is largely set. few new themes and ideas are added.

i don't particularly agree with these ideas, but it does give you something to munch on and ponder. the book abounds with interesting and unanswerable questions. you might be asking yourself, "what does mr. kundera think about questions?"

this is your answer:

"Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive questions are truly serious. They are questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit for human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence."...less

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Kirsten rated it:

(review of isbn 0571135390)

06/13/08

Read in June, 2008

"perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company."

"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 t...more "perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company."

"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."

"without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress. it is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. for he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."

"dreams are eloquent, but they are also beautiful. that aspect seems to have escaped Freud in his theory of dreams. dreaming is not merely an act of coded communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs."

"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."

"when the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object."

"kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. 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 by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously). before we are forgotten we will be turned into kitsch. kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

"we all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."...less

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Mary rated it:

06/30/07

bookshelves: boooo-you-suck

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: jerks.

Am I the only reader who found this book contrived, soulless, meandering, egotistical and overrated?

There is one way in which the author's writing puts the reader in the shoes of the characters: by feeling the dulled senses of someone in depression. Not much in the way of peaks or valleys of emotion or energy. Just slogging through life, and this book.

Maybe I just don't appreciate "high-art and metaphysical intrigue". If you really want to get some brain activity, without all...more

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Daniel rated it:

06/25/07

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its hor...more The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.

Will the war between the two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?

It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.

If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler's concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?

This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore cynically permitted.

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht)....less

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Bausertron added it (review of isbn 0571224385)

02/15/08

Read in February, 2008

There is a lot going on in this book, and I like most of it, but wasn't always able to see how it fit together.

It started off incredibly strong and I found myself dog-earing several pages. It is a great mix of ideas and philosophy, stances on the human condition, insights into the nature of people.

I would recommend it to just about any of my friends and it is a great book to read and discuss.

Favorite Quotes:

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we ...more There is a lot going on in this book, and I like most of it, but wasn't always able to see how it fit together.

It started off incredibly strong and I found myself dog-earing several pages. It is a great mix of ideas and philosophy, stances on the human condition, insights into the nature of people.

I would recommend it to just about any of my friends and it is a great book to read and discuss.

Favorite Quotes:

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come." - pg. 8

Pretty much all of Chapter 9 - pgs. 19-21

"Thomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not 'Es muss sein!' (It must be so), but rather "Es konnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise). - pg. 35

"A man who chooses to be a politician, say, voluntarily makes the public his judge, with the naive assurance that he will gain its favor. And if the crowd does express its disapproval, it merely goads him on to bigger and better things, much in the way Tomas was spurred on by the difficulty of a diagnosis.

A doctor (unlike a politician or an actor) is judged only by his patients and immediate colleagues, that is, behind closed doors, man to man. Confronted by the looks of those who judge him, he can respond at once with his own look, to explain or defend himself." - pg. 183

"The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love." - pg. 251

"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." - pg. 289...less

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Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

02/11/08

The book seems to have a conscious Project that annoys me. I feel like M`s comments about the Art of the Novel pertain to this book that seems very much as though it is trying to write itself into a Eurocentric tradition of the Novel, down to the smallest Classical namedrops - Bach, Apollonian and Platonic ideals...It tries to be profound with its play on binaries - Lightness, Weight - Levity, Hostility - Male, Female, etc. It sets up what seem to be clear binaries, but also - while clearly stat...more The book seems to have a conscious Project that annoys me. I feel like M`s comments about the Art of the Novel pertain to this book that seems very much as though it is trying to write itself into a Eurocentric tradition of the Novel, down to the smallest Classical namedrops - Bach, Apollonian and Platonic ideals...It tries to be profound with its play on binaries - Lightness, Weight - Levity, Hostility - Male, Female, etc. It sets up what seem to be clear binaries, but also - while clearly stating that the best novels are ones where we need to read between the lines - to show that binaries are only made to be deconstructed. It is a book about margins, the spaces between the binaries that it constructs. This would be interesting I think given the play with gender and also the political context in which the story unfolds - totalitarian Czechoslovakia - (it seems this play with binaries is definitely connected to the politics of the novel) however the Project is too conscious - the reader is practically hit over the head with the fact that something Complicated is happening here. For example, do we really need to link women to territory so explicitly.¨Sabrina, you are a woman.¨ She could not understand why he accentuated the obvious with the solemnity of a Columbus who has just sighted land.¨ 89

Yet the novel would still merit a really fruitful discussion. Although it is a bit too obvious that Something is happening, it is not entirely clear to me exactly what that is. I like the shadows of the book, its margins. For example, we have Thomas, classical womanizing man. But we also have Sabrina, a woman who seems to be his `foil` of sorts, the only person who really understands him, and also a manizing (there is no such word...) woman. The spotlight is on Thomas (we meet Sabrina through him), such that a reader might almost miss what is more subtly happening with Sabrina. The novel seems to be anchored somewhere (Thomas, in the boundaries defined by the binaries - lightness and weight, man and woman) but ends up being about the interstital spaces between them. Those spaces - both in gender and politics - would be interesting to explore....less

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Paula rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

01/28/08

Read in January, 2008

I loved this book. Loved it. Literally had my breath taken away at moments. I always figured I would like it, but I'm surprised at how good it is.

As anyone with a passing knowledge of the book will tell you, "Lightness" is about a womanizer, Tomas, torn between his wife Tereza and his hobby. The story follows their courtship, marriage, and dalliances, all against the background of post-Prague Spring Prague. But the plot is really secondary. I realized, as I tried to write this summ...more

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Marie rated it:

(review of isbn 0060932139)

11/01/07

Read in November, 2007

2). 3.999999999 stars. I felt like abandoning it at one point. How much more can I hear about the doctor's "imperative enslaving" to womanizing?!

and I was feeling a little irked by the fact that Tomas was made known to us in not just his sexuality but also in long passages regarding his politics, his work and family relations whereas the woman where mostly summed up by elaborating on their sexuality. I'm not ready to burn bras over it or anything but it did seem to trivialize the ...more

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Kelly rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

05/23/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: people who enjoy heavy philosophy/communist depression

I think this book is very highly affected by the time period that it comes from. And I don't just mean that in terms of it's framing and context, but in terms of it's style and the questions that it tackles.

I think Kundera attacks you over and over again with his points and images until they sound like dogma, much in the same way that the communist party was fond of doing. This book was published in 1984, before Gorbachev took power and instituted reforms, so I can see him attempting to make...more

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Cynthia rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

07/11/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: someone looking for something off the beaten path

wow. Where do I begin? First of all, I didn't know you could write books like this. A novel, a set of stories about love (or the search for it) a series of essays on the human condition, a brief history of Prague Spring and the Czech occupation. It has many philosophical digressions like one of my favorite authors, Tom Robbins, but where his truly are digressions, Kundera's serve as plot development, character analysis, and tie the book together in its ruminations on the human experience.

I'm...more

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Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

03/31/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone

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

The linguistic simplicity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as well as the heavy use of repetition, made me wonder if it was a function of the text’s translation from the original Czech or if it was a conscious choice made by the author. Another possibility: it was an unconscious mirroring of the author’s concise and flowerless thought patterns as he aimed to communicate his themes to an everyman audience. Kundera’s character-driven novel uncovers struggles between individuality and ...more

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Ben rated it:

(review of isbn 0060932139)

02/29/08

recommended to Ben by: Mick, but it's okay
recommends it for: Mick

well, it was pretty much what i expected. the writing was very good, but there wasn't a shred of joy or humor in the entire book. not one single funny line or moment where anybody seemed to be enjoying life or themselves-- not even in the "love" scenes. just straight up flatline pathos from cover to cover. which to me gets pretty boring pretty fast.

also, i didn't see what nietzsche's eternal recurrence had to do with anything. and all that stuff about heaviness and lightness. blah....more

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Elise rated it:

08/12/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Lovers, humans

A narrative about love, sex, humanity, psychology, set in post-1968 Czechoslovakia. References to Nietzsche and Beethoven a'plenty, but not to the point where it's gag-worthy or pretentious (other readers may disagree). Very compelling characters. Well worth reading.

My favorite passage. On its own, not so poignant, but read the book, maybe it'll strike you, too:

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live un...more

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Diana rated it:

03/22/07

Read in March, 2007

recommends it for: all

"Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)."

A philosophical window into love, passion, jealousy, and duty--set during the Russian invasion of the Czechoslovakia. When you read this, you will re-evaluate your relationships--past and...more

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Mina rated it:

(review of isbn 0060932139)

02/15/08

Ok, first off. This book should go on my Never Ever Gonna Finish It list. Truth be told, I was pages away, but felt justified in snubbing the text by not closing the deal and leaving the finale to someone else who is willing to give it a go.

I was lent this book by a good friend who would have given it 5 stars... perhaps 6. A philosopher at heart, I can understand his draw to this one - this is a work of thinly veiled philosophical musings of Kundera, nearly insulting to call them actual c...more

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Lilin rated it:

03/25/07

Truly great books jolt you out of your sense of complacency – a been there, read that kind of attitude. Lightness was electrifying – every page reminding me of the need to read. Despite the lack of utilitarian value, books open up worlds we engage with and liberate us from the narrowness of ourselves. The tension between weight and lightness shows how the individual seems to be torn between the need for solitude and, at the same time, the need to associate with the Other. And it is in part t...more

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Nicholas rated it:

(review of isbn 0571224385)

09/26/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: The Unbalanced and Inquisitors of Life

A bizarre segment of the book (out of place in plot, however not in the narrative) appeared on pg. 221. It contained a confession of Kundera - or rather the narrator. I found this statement to be quite profound in the books overall meaning and purpose. Here it is quoted:

"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 (the border beyond which my own 'I' ends) whic...more

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