The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Overdue Podcast

Feb 23, 2015 Liam Berry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015

I tend to start a new book the same day or night I finish the last one. The completion of a good book leaves me with a sensation of mild euphoria and a kind of hunger which leads me to stand in front of my bookcase for a little while deciding on what will best sate me. However as I like to leave a little time for the book I've just finished to slosh around in my head what I usually do is read one page of the new book as a gesture of commencement and then put it down until the next day. When I pi I tend to start a new book the same day or night I finish the last one. The completion of a good book leaves me with a sensation of mild euphoria and a kind of hunger which leads me to stand in front of my bookcase for a little while deciding on what will best sate me. However as I like to leave a little time for the book I've just finished to slosh around in my head what I usually do is read one page of the new book as a gesture of commencement and then put it down until the next day. When I picked out The Unbearable Lightness of Being the same night I finished reading The Glasshouse I had read 60 pages almost before I had realised it. I've owned the book for about 9 years without having read it and there is something very fitting about that. I used to buy books based on the idea that ownership was tantamount to achievement; a vain, pretentious and, above all, foolish conceit and one that I am slowly making up for by reading through the library of “impressive” titles I have amassed over the years. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is perhaps the perfect example of this folly. The title implies a seriousness of thought and perhaps a depth of text that might make it difficult to read. This was the impression that both led me to buy it and then to leave it untouched for so long. What I found amazing as I read the book, asking myself right from the start ‘why has Kundera chosen this title?’, was that the naming of the book is to some extent tied to that very notion of fixing the book with an implied intellectual weight. That the book is extraordinarily readable despite it dealing with such profound and philosophical points as Kundera weaves into the text is the first of the diametric paradoxes that he suggests to the reader. Kundera then goes on to use these diametric paradoxes as the basis for his philosophical investigations into existence, love, sex, power, death and other topics.

I found myself initially thinking that this book was about the relationship between sex and violence, and I still think that is the primary focus of the first two sections of the book, but soon the ideas and dimensions of the book are outstripping singular concerns. There is too much that Kundera wants to explore to think that one strand of thought may be enough to occupy him. His notion of diametric paradoxes is introduced early (the idea of positive and negative opposites, such as lightness and weight, actually being inverted. The example he gives for these two specifically is how a weight which holds you close to the ground could be seen as offering stability and a comforting force but that an experience of lightness may cause you to feel unconnected to anything and have a detrimental effect on, for want of a better word, your soul) and is then played around with and used to pose questions that sometimes he answers directly and sometimes leaves open to interpretation. On one occasion he even interjects to state that there is no answer to one of his questions. The way he regularly draws attention to the artifice of the novel tells us that he truly is using it as a vehicle for investigation rather than trying to tell us a story.

However, tell us a story he does. The inter-connected lives of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz serve primarily to play out as tools for Kundera’s investigations and examples of his propositions but at the same time he masterfully weaves several stories of love and pain from various points of view, often showing us the conflicting thoughts different characters have about the same situation or moment, as well as showing us how their interpretations of the other person’s responses vary also. I believe that in doing so he is creating the characters as further examples of diametric paradoxes. Individuals that are connected to each other and who should in theory complement each other, but between whom there is nothing but confusion. Often love yes, but a love based in devotion despite betrayal or fear or loathing. Kundera is asking us the question, how is love possible with all these factors weighing upon it? How do people stay connected even when they are trying to repel themselves away from each other, even passively, even unconsciously.

I think he is anyway.

The final two sections of the book (The Grand March and Karenin’s Smile) serve specific functions.

The Grand March provides Kundera’s reason for his constant deployment of diametric paradoxes: an attack on the notion of meta-narratives. How people who want to be able to interpret the world through a series of beliefs will ignore or change that world to suit themselves rather than change their systems of belief. There is no truth, there is only the perception of truth and the interpretation thereof.

Finally, in Karenin’s Smile, Kundera pulls a sneaky, yet incredibly effective narrative trick on us. I won’t go into any details (spoilers) but suffice to say that even though he has spent part of the book interjecting his thoughts into the narrative and discussing how he was inspired to create some of the characters, you are suddenly dragged into the narrative as if beneath the surface of a river, aware no longer that anything exists other than the water and the current. I suddenly felt incredibly moved by the story I was reading (whereas before I had been entertained and inspired) and I felt that sensation move backwards like a shock wave through the rest of the events of the novel. It was quite something to behold.

Kundera gives this novel of thoughts and propositions a human end, one that could conceivably bring a tear to the eye, and it’s tempting to simply think he wanted to end the story in the most effecting way he could. However I think there’s also the possibility that he wanted to drive home one final paradox, and with ending he does just that.

I gave this book a decent amount of thought while I read it but I have written this pretty much off the cuff and am not going to draft it so I can’t pretend to know exactly what I’m talking about. I suppose I just felt that a book of this magnitude deserved a better review than just:

“About some people in the Czech republic. Milan Kundera write good.”

It made me think and these are just some of those thoughts.

Was good.
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