The Unbearable Lightness of Being

There are always books that come the way of readers, books that ask them to reassess themselves in terms of perception, existence and conduct. The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera is one such book. First published in 1984, the book went to become a contemporary classic and still holds that position in the eyes of many. I am glad to say that I am not one of the many fans of this acclaimed work.

The fact of the matter is that this famed book has got where it is mainly by misdirecting the reading audience. There is a sense of urgency that Kundera portrays in finishing the book, personal and political. The protagonist of the book, Tomas, is similar to the Kundera of real life. Of his womanizing ways we know nothing save the unbearable smile he holds on the back cover but it is true that like Tomas of the words, Kundera too was oppressed in Czechoslovakia for writing material that was not approved by the national sensors. Thus, this later work of fiction depicting a fallen intellectual rings the bells of retribution.

The book begins with the discussion of Nietzsche’s idea of eternal return; an idea that implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know it. It argues that since everything is in a transitory state, we can’t really condemn or pass a verdict on anything. Another interesting notion, one carried by Parmenides, which expands better as the title of the book is the theory of opposites. Parmenides viewed the world in pairs of opposites i.e. warmth/cold, light/darkness and being/non-being. This division of all metaphysical matter into negative and positive terms is something that Kundera probes throughout the book.

The protagonist of the novel, Tomas, is a womanizer who tussles in his soul to settle down with a stranger, Tereza, with whom he falls in love with. While his wanton thoughts of lust and discovering the ‘millionth part dissimilarity’ in women occupies Tomas’s mind, Tereza’s head is full of nightmares that bizarrely reflect Tomas’s adultery. Their relationship becomes a battleground that neither army can bear to leave; partly due to love and part due to guilt. Kundera introduces a neutral territory, a milestone to the distance of their love by reeling in Karenin, a pup, which is adored by both the lovers.

Other main characters in the book are Sabina, a painter who is one of Tomas’s mistresses and Franz, her love. Since the book dwells on the question of light/heavy, all the characters are characterized by the weight of their troubles and solutions to the same. Tomas and Sabina are the light ones, Tereza heavy and Franz is quite incapable of lightness but highly sympathized. Tomas is considered light because in his eyes, sexual performance with the various women he comes across and the woman he loves, Tereza, are two distinct things. It is the same with his individuality in profession and politics but as time ravages his soul, his once firm beliefs seem to fade away, making him question his being and thus eventually making him heavy. Tomas started out as a surgeon but due to some political writing in the furnace of the Czechoslovakian political revolution, saw him decline as a window-washer and then finally depreciate as a farmer in a country village to find some peace.

Tereza is the heaviest of the lot because she continues to hold down Tomas right through the plot. All though the couple love each other, they feel miserable individually. This is because Tomas can’t help betraying her and Tereza’s terrible nightmares and innocence get too much for either of them to deal with. In a moment of clarity, she leaves Tomas in Zurich to come back to Prague, sacrificing her own happiness to relieve Tomas of the burdens of her love. It is precisely this selflessness, compassion and intelligence of character that Tomas simply can’t cast aside as heaviness and hence he follows her back to Prague. Tereza changes as the book progresses, the excess baggage of her soul disappearing as she finds company in Karenin and solace in the countryside. It is understood solely by the reader that as Tomas questioned his lightness so did Tereza question her heaviness. Sabina, on the other hand, has no such comforts. She leaves Franz because he shut his eyes during love-making and goes to America to pursue the unknown. It is her passion for wanderings in the unknown and constant betrayal of her past that eventually lets her into the secret of an unbearable lightness of being; a state of final suspension. She constantly betrayed things since childhood…her home, her father, her lovers, her paintings, her political causes and now…there is nothing left to betray but age and finally life. It would be right to say that she is the lightest of all the characters. The unbearable lightest.

The ends of these characters are not half as baffling as the bends of their lives. They all find their comfortable places under tombstones, reading their earthy goodbye notes. Tomas and Tereza die in a car crash and Franz, who was ever so reluctant to find a cause to find weight in and come down to earth, dies a meaningless death in Bangkok. This is kitsch, for all of them and it is awaiting all of us; ‘the stopover between being and oblivion.’

The book in itself is not that badly written for there are various themes of sexuality, Czech history, philosophy, destiny and human life at play in the piece. What lacks is the foundation of a theme that makes literature rise in the reading eyes. From time to time, I sensed the plot of the book get out the door for a smoke while Kundera substitutes good fictional fibre with basic philosophy lectures. Fortunately, the story is not a heavy smoker and steps back in to rescue us from Kundera’s mental masturbation. True, the thoughts of Nietzsche and Parmenides contribute a lot to the essence of the book but after reading the book I recalled something said by Hamlet, something I just had to mutter to myself as well because at times the best way to see something sensibly is to see it in terms of words that made some sense to me;

He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

I think these words that once rang true in the rotten state of Denmark, ring truer in this novel. Kundera indeed has tried his best to drown the stage of his so called masterpiece with tears and horrid speech. It is quite unsettling that a contemporary classic from 1984 should have dedicated chapters on shit, the bowel movements of God and man, the constant sexual fantasies of self-obsessed men and other such 'philosophical' issues.

A noted backdrop for the novel, away from all the above and yet so involved, is the whole Czech revolution. It plays an important role in determining the political and human outlooks of the characters. As Tomas and Sabina are light, they do not pay special significance to the Soviet military occupation of their beloved land save the Oedipus article that Tomas writes and stands by, causing him to lose his social and professional circle. Sabina is a painter and needs to be free in order to be weightless so she betrays her country and moves to the west, away from all the Communist shenanigans in her homeland. It must be noted that Milan Kundera, himself, chose to exile himself from Czechoslovakia and never return like her. Tereza was a little more patriotic and was reluctant to leave Prague in all it’s political ruins; she didn’t want to see her beautiful country destroyed by forced ideologies and participated in the revolution with a camera in her hand, imprinting on film the horrors of the war that human eyes seemed to miss. But more important than the political movement is the movement of the bodies of the characters. These colourful, sinful people moving away from each other, moving away to different places…moving away from their own weight and lightness.

Nothing more can be said about a piece of literature like The Unbearable lightness of being because it leaves a lot to the imagination. I think it was John Lennon who said that ‘Reality leaves a lot to the imagination’, maybe Kundera was a Lennon fan because in a way, all his philosophical quests can only make the reader wonder what reality really is. Is life merely a road that you walk with a single objective in mind and dismiss everything else? Is it a failed cause in which you are too heavy if you choose body over soul (realistic) or too light if you choose soul over body (surrealistic)? Is it worth doing anything at all if you can only do it once and then fade away? Is God really God if doesn’t have to take a dump? These are the questions that Kundera wants you to ask yourself.

I have a rough idea of what was going in Kundera’s mind when he wrote this novel;
------------What----was------------------------------that? -----I---think-----it-----was------------something----but----what-------really---is---something?----Are---the---atoms---in------air----charged----by----the-----sexual-----------thoughts------of-----an----old---woman------in----the---Siberian---plateau?----because----Nietzsche----said----that—if---you----gaze---into---the------abyss-for-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------long-------then-------the---abyss------also-------------gazes—into—you.---------------------------------- ------------I’m-loving-it.

Ok, so not exactly but you get the idea. Philosophy is best suited for people who want to look for black cats in coal mines, for those of us with the slightest wish to get busy living; such questions do not hold any weight. The beauty of life, for me at least, is that nothing really matters because everything is simply matter and we are nothing but the imaginations of ourselves. Just don’t let a dating guide make you feel like Plato, which is the mistake the critics of the 80’s favouring this novel made. But you have to cut them slack, it must be really difficult to read a book when you have disco music playing in the background, Grease on your television and cocaine on the table, eh? In a decade involved in soul destruction it is no surprise that a book dripping with the words soul and being should be hailed as a classic.

Trust me, the important choices for the common man of 2006 is between the bearable lightness of the book’s subsequent movie DVD or the unbearable weight of 305 pages.

At least one can fast forward the movie.

Unbearable Lightness... movie trailer