From the Bookshelf of Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)…

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

Start date: August 1, 2021

Finish date: August 31, 2021

Discussion: Current Group Reads

Why we're reading this: August 2021 Revisit the Shelf

Prior Group Reads:
Contemporary Classic Group Read, December 2012
[close] August 2021 Revisit the Shelf

Prior Group Reads:
Contemporary Classic Group Read, December 2012

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of -1 topics — 515 comments total

Current Group Reads

* The Republic of Plato - Spoilers
By Lynn · 22 posts · 39 views

last updated 13 hours, 1 min ago

* The Last September - Spoilers
By Sara , New School Classics · 1 post · 13 views

last updated Oct 31, 2025 03:09PM

showing 10 of 66 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Feb 10, 2024 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fin-2024, 1980s-fiction

I've had a bad string of luck lately with books I pick so I went into this with low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this novel. Maybe I should always strive to start a book with low expectations lol.

What I enjoyed the most was the narrator's (or is it the author's?) voice. The characters were secondary to me. They were tools the narrator/author used to illustrate his ideas. Tomas and Tereza are the main characters and Sabina and Franz are the supporting I've had a bad string of luck lately with books I pick so I went into this with low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this novel. Maybe I should always strive to start a book with low expectations lol.

What I enjoyed the most was the narrator's (or is it the author's?) voice. The characters were secondary to me. They were tools the narrator/author used to illustrate his ideas. Tomas and Tereza are the main characters and Sabina and Franz are the supporting characters. None are particularly appealing to me. Tomas especially is not someone I would want to know in real life. A compulsive cheater, a father who abandons his son with such ease that his own parents are horrified enough to break ties with him, a womanizer who doesn't even remember the women he has sex with....Kundera paints Tomas in a flattering light, for the most part, so when I was reminded of Tomas's egregious behaviors I would feel somewhat startled by how awful they were.

Tomas would tell his mistresses that he was unable to fall asleep with anyone next to him, and drive them home after midnight. Yuck.

Tomas decided on the spur of the moment never to see him again. Why should he feel more for that child, to whom he was bound by nothing but a single improvident night, than for any other?Yikes.

He would tell his mistresses: the only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.Yeah, right. Why does he get to set the rules?

His love for Tereza was beautiful, but it was also tiring: he had constantly had to hide things from her, sham, dissemble, make amends, buck her up, calm her down, give her evidence of his feelings, play the defendant to her jealousy, her suffering, and her dreams, feel guilty, make excuses and apologies.What an unpleasant relationship, it's like an example of how a relationship ought not to be.

Tereza is the definition of a doormat. I struggled to connect with her except when it came to her love of their dog Karenin. I could certainly see why Tomas would want to cheat on her, she was such a wet noodle. She didn't seem real to me, but more a structure to hang ideas upon. I found the few scenes about her mother more fascinating.

The reason she finally chose the ninth suitor was not so much that he was the most manly of all as that when she whispered "Be careful, very careful" to him during their lovemaking he was purposely careless, and she had to marry him after failing to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion.
And so Tereza was born. A perfect explanation for Tereza's clinginess and insecurity.

She realized that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences.

She taught that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

You mean you were really jealous?" Tereza asked him ten times or more, incredulously, as though someone had just informed her she had been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Sabina was a much more appealing female character. I regretted it whenever the story veered away from her. Franz grew on me. I thought the section of the book called A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words in which Kundera detailed all the ways Sabina and Franz thought differently about life was brilliant.

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, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

Really, though, I have to stress how the plot and characters were secondary to the musings of Kundera. I wonder if he ever wrote any non fiction? I'd love to read some essays by him. I am assuming the voice is his, but maybe the narrator is another character?

I'm sure I didn't "get" everything Kundera contemplated upon. What was up with the constant use of the phrase she seemed a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed. He must have repeated the bulrush basket phrase a dozen times throughout the book. Tereza is Tomas's savior like Moses saved the Jews? She is alone like baby Moses was and needs saving?

Random quotes I liked:

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.I have no idea what that means but it intrigues me.

In the world of eternal the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht). If eternal 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?

Which one is positive, weight or lightness? Parmenides responded: lightness is positive, weight negative.Was he correct or not? That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/ weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all.

vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

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. ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2012 Trisha rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics

The novel was very interesting....but a little difficult to explain. It had a very existential feel to it, focusing on the importance of living in the moment and embracing the lightness of being. However, the characters in the novel were representative of the constant struggle with being content and at peace. The "lightness of simply being" would become unbearable and they would over-analyze situations and decisions until they were no longer at peace. As Kundera frequently stated "They had faile ...more

Like · see review

Aug 12, 2021 Renate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, translation

The title gives a hint of the tone of this book:- Weird, pretentious, sometimes just silly but also containing deep philosophical thoughts and interesting commentary on human nature. I wanted to give up a few times, but it is so skilfully crafted that I was gradually won over, and ended up staying with it until the end. There is so much to ponder, dissect and discuss in this novel.

The author plays with language and various themes. An attentive reader could go back and forth, join in the game pi ...more

Like · see review