Theme song: https://soundcloud.com/aimlowmusic/yndi-halda-song-for-starlitThe unbearable lightness of being starts with a bang, arguing about Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. And then the question of Parmeinides, Is the world really divided into pairs of opposites? Positive and negative? Weight and lightness?
Narrated in a third party`s voice, Kundera himself, even expressing that all those fictional characters are not people and how silly it would be out of an author to try and convince people of this concept, instead they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.
Hearing the rumblings of one`s own stomach during a moment of love, lacking the will to abandon the path of betrayals, raising a fist with the crowd in the Grand March, displaying wits before hidden microphones, all of those situations have been experienced by him.
So all of those fictional characters are his own unrealized possibilities.
And so deeper in the story he begins his own concepts as Tomas`s version of eternal return, that somewhere in the wide universe people will be born again on a far away planet, and a third time on another and so on. And for every time we are born with our previous experiences, where mankind will be born one degree more mature, expanding our horizon until the achievement of Utopia perhaps?
The novel is not the author`s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. But enough. Let us return to Tomas.
The story begins with the image that Tomas is born from: Tomas gazing from a window looking across the courtyard, not knowing what to do.
Tomas is a somewhat successful surgeon, meets Tereza at that time waitress because of six improbable fortuities (I looked that one up!) and they lived happily ever after with three dogs ,a cat and a white fence.
Sorry, that didn`t happened, that would have been awefull!!
Tomas is a bit of a womanizer, but sweet Tereza with Anna Karenina in her arms, having a fever, even walking through the door carrying a half dead crow in a blanket, her hands shaking, her nightmares, insecurities and Vertigo has a *blink blink* effect.
The brain appears to posses a special area which we might call Poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. From the time he met Tereza, no woman had the rights to leave on that part of his brain.
Kundera, you eloquent show off! I prefer the *blink blink*.
Sabina, one of Tomas`s mistresses is a woman longing to betray: betray her own a betrayal. A painter. A free spirit.
Meeting Franz, a married professor. A strong man with a weakness of being good to those around him.
Now now, the telling of Sabina and franz`s encounters is told mainly in the way of the differences between people, in how simple words, events and places are perceived in their minds based on their past as separate human beings with different experiences.
An example: THE BEAUTY OF NEW YORK
Franz said, "Beauty in the European sense has always has a premeditated quality to it. We`ve always has an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That`s what enabled western man to spend decades building a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance piazza. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It`s unintentional. It rose independent of human design ..."
Sabina said, "Unintentional beauty. Yes. Another way of putting it might be 'beauty by mistake.' before beauty disappears from earth, it will go on existing for a while by mistake. 'Beauty by mistake' -the final phase in the history of beauty"
Though as a painter, Sabina herself made her first painting 'By mistake'. That is to be considered hypocritical, correct?
I`m not sure. For a reason, a reader lost all his judgmental tendencies at the first page, so I can`t tell!
Some brilliant Philosophical/Existentialism reflections and concepts, like Kitsch and Stalin`s son, the bowler`s hat, the mirror on the floor and of course the unbearable lightness of being.
The story of Oedipus and Beethoven`s "Es Muss Sien." that floated with most of the story of Tomas and Tereza like a lantern through their journey.
Prague and Geneva.
Russian invasion, Communists, long pauses and secret police. A fun upbeat happy historical era really.
Now excuse me while I go watch the movie!!
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