. Spinning .

Wow. Looks like the last third of the book is going to be the best.  Okay, so I flipped through and scanned to see what was coming up and realized that before we get into the sex, we have to recognize it as a metaphor and understand what’s going on here.

Isn’t making love merely an eternal repetition of the same?  (p. 199)

(Which then would make it something of meaning, at least in Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return)

Not at all. There is always the small part that is unimaginable.  When he saw a woman in her clothes, he could naturally imagine more or less what she would look like naked (his experience as a doctor supplementing his experience as a lover), but between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.

Ah, the "small gap of the unimaginable," is bound to intrigue. There we may find the hyperlink, the individuality of being that each reader writes with his own imagination because it leads to the unknown; unknown, because it is hidden from view and thus dependent upon what experience the reader/user brings with him.  Does he then in fact change that which is hidden into a new ‘history’ for himself?

What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common.  The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Sex being the metaphor, I would think, for the mind, the individual patterns of thinking and experience that makes us ourselves. Does communication then become foreplay? Does it depend upon how much effort one puts into it?

Yeah, this is going to be an interesting part of the book.

Kundera has a novel way of developing his characters. The protagonist of the novel, Tomas, was rather briefly explained in the beginning chapters, mainly through his interaction with other characters such as Tereza and Sabina. What was painted of Tomas then came more strongly through indepth coverage of Tereza and Sabina and their own personal histories.  What Tomas came out looking like was sort of a real jerk who crossed his own boundaries only when he couldn’t have it both ways, i.e., love without commitment.

In this section of the story we are invited to see a side of Tomas that is not influenced by his emotional or physical drives, but more by his own facing of his character as it is questioned by that underlying force of government, a thread that has run throughout the story as a background to the people involved.

I like this:

People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.  (p. 192)

Once again Tomas must choose his direction in order to insure his safety within a shaky regime. When he is once again asked to recant his original article and to take it even further he decides to give up even his lowly clinic job, and for a rather strange reason:

The official with whom Tomas negotiated his resignaiton knew him by name and reputation and tried to talk him into staying on.  Tomas suddenly realized that he was not at all sure he had made the proper choice, but he felt bound to it by then by an unspoken vow of fidelity, so he stood fast.  And that is how he became a window washer.

Fidelity? The one thing that stood as a wall between him and Tereza? For this he is willing to make such a major switch?  But Kundera has given us insight into Tomas as well as human nature that makes this decision even more weighty:

Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one of another lifelong activity.  Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar–in Paris, Prague, or the back of beyond.  An actor is someone who in early childhood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public.  (…) Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail.  (p. 193)

Where does this fit, then, within the theory of "unbearable lightness of being?"  Does the role one takes on come with the burden of fidelity, much as Shakespear’s "to thine own self be true?" Is the burden one of lightness or weight; is the shedding of it one or the other?

I seem to have a knack for reading the right book at the right time, where its relevancy to current events can be easily seen. Although it’s more probable that my memory–which was never good at best–only retains the most recent happenings.

Here we have an official from the Ministry checking in on Tomas two years after he’s lost his job and is working at a small clinic:

There was a short pause, after which the man from the Ministry said in mournful tones, "Then tell me, Doctor, do you really think that Communists should put out their eyes? You, who have given so many people the gift of health?"
"But that’s preposterous!" Tomas cried in self-defense. "Why don’t you read what I wrote?"
"I have read it," said the man from the Ministry in a voice that was meant to sound very sad.
"Well, did I write that Communists ought to put out their eyes?"
"That’s how everyone understood it," said the man from the Ministry, his voice growing sadder and sadder.
"If you’d read the complete version, the way I wrote it originally, you wouldn’t have read that into it. The published version was slightly cut."  (p. 186)

Ah, the fine editorial skills of the media, politicians, and of the political mobs. That’s why we get the wrong information presented when it’s taken out of context or twisted. Who’s actually voted on this tax or that, and when and why changes meaning with the full story.  Or this:

If McCain is elected as President, Sarah Palin will be a heartbeat
away from running our country- and if that doesn’t scare the hell out
of you, it should. There is significant risk of this occurring in his
first term alone, augmented by McCain’s age and history of cancer. 18%
of presidents have died in office. The possibility that Palin could
become president if McCain is elected is very real indeed.

18% of the 43 elected presidents means that 8 presidents have died in office, and that in fact is true. But of those 8, 4 were assassinated, 2 died of pneumonia, 1 died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and one died of food poisoning from eating cherries in (likely spoiled) milk on a hot day. Now how does that raise McCain’s chances of dying in office?  How is it relative in any way?  Yet I found this as a headline in a major Facebook (Hate) Group.  I wouldn’t doubt that there’s a group that espouses some twisted version of fact against the other candidates as well.

The point is, something strange happens to a lot of people at campaign time; some kind of chemical gets released in the brain and produces some pretty weird stories and believers.

NOTE: I have purposely avoided providing links to the above quote though it can be easily found, or backup on the facts I’ve stated–which can also easily be confirmed in several sites online. 

Tomas has made a major decision in remaining with Tereza. In making that decision he has chosen a path. Now he faces another major decision, that of retracting a statement against the authorities that will cost him his position at the hospital if he chooses not to do so. These are major choices, ones that require consideration of outcome, though even the smallest choices in life, like going to the gas station before going to the bank hold the possibility of great change.

At this point I reread the back cover, which succinctly lays down the theory of "lightness of being":

In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

And yet we have Tomas making decisions of import, of weight; ones that will change his life forever. He can remain a surgeon, with the government’s shadowed threat of revelation, or he must leave and find a job elsewhere, branded an enemy of the state. Certainly life changing. Only one path can be taken, parallel choices do not exist. One would think that the choice then bears considerable weight by its impact on his life.

It may be difficult to understand the idea that in fact the decision made one way or the other is indeed meaningless, weightless.  But if you consider that only one or the other can exist, the one that is chosen is no more meaningful than the one rejected, as their values were equal before the decision was made, and just as one was chosen and the other was passed, either could have been selected, making the other the ‘unselected’ and so both still have the value of being meaningless.

It’s an interesting principle of life, and it would be eye-opening I’m sure to spend a couple days applying it to all choices faced.  It’s the Principle of Whatever…

Ah, you take a break and the thoughts continue on in hypertext threads to another universe of ideas: applying the principle of weight/lightness that Kundera is giving us.

Using the passages of the book noted in the prior post, let’s examine the theory. One would think that bearing the burden of guilt would be the weight, the responsibility, and that the declaration of innocence (even out of ignorance) would be the lightness and freedom of burden.  But wait–isn’t that the very essence of "the unbearable lightness?"

For those who may shout that "not knowing" frees them from the burden, also, if they have a shred of decency, understand that they do indeed bear responsibility and that’s what their burden is. Maybe it’s just conscience, or maybe it’s something within each of us that doesn’t let us off the hook with ourselves as easily as society might be willing to do. Maybe it’s that ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ that is a self-imposed standard that only each man knows for himself.

And, I think that we also impose a double standard; one for own behavior and one for that of others. Some people are more demanding of others than they are on themselves. Some are more forgiving of others than of themselves. But the unbearable burden is the one we take up and carry when we’re not looking to do so.

I knew that Tomas’ reflections on political responsibility was heading somewhere and so stopped at a point where I can switch direction along with him:

But, he said to himself, whether they knew or didn’t know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn’t know.  Is a fool on the throne relieved of all responsibility merely because he is a fool? (p. 177)

We can see the stirrings of political theory here, and Tomas’ beliefs on politics may be in direct conflict with his personal dealings with relationships. Let’s watch:

Let us concede that a Czech public prosecutor in the early fifties who called for the death of an innocent man was deceived by the Russian secret police and the government of his own country. But now that we all know the accusations to have been absurd and the executed to have been innocent, how can that selfsame public prosecutor defend his purity of heart by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, My conscience is clear! I didn’t know!! I was a believer! Isn’t his "I didn’t know! I was a believer!" at the very root of his irreparable guilt?

Tough call; I would think the horror at the tragedy, at the grave mistake would be enough to cause guilt-like response. Is there guilt for not having seen through the lies that led him to his action? I would grant him the benefit of the doubt. Tomas, looking again to the example of Oedipus, does not:

It was in this connection that Tomas recalled the tale of Oedipus: Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent.  Unable to stand the sight of the misfortunes he had wrought by "not knowing," he put out his eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes.

When Tomas heard Communists shouting in defense of their inner purity, he said to himself, As a result of your "not knowing," this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt? How can you stand the sight of what you’ve done?

So Tomas has branded them as guilty; ignorance no excuse for action. Yes, I suppose I can justify the outrage, the blame-laying, and yet, there are degrees of guilt that should lessen the pain from the known and committed; the venial versus the mortal sin of the Catholic mind.

Finally back to reading and I come upon a passage that reminds me so much of the upcoming presidential election:

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise.  They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people.  Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.  (p. 176)

This echos my thinking on government and administrations.  No official takes public office with the intent to do wrong by the people. All aspiring politicians go forth with the belief that they’re doing the right thing; all strive for the same goals yet differ in their priorities and methods.  And each base their solutions upon experience and perception, on their faith in what they believe to be true:

Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists: You’re the ones responsible for our country’s misfortunes (it had grown poor and desolate), for its loss of independence (it had fallen into the hands of the Russians), for its judicial murders!

Aside from the occasional wacko, i.e., Hitler, Hussein, leaders have extended their efforts not only for personal success but for the general welfare of the people.  Wars are not taken lightly; they are usually entered into aggressively or reluctantly, for gain or for defense, and sacrifice is not always found to have been estimated accurately when the results are in. To continue:

And the accused responded: We didn’t know! We were deceived! We were true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent!

In the end, the dispute narrowed down to a single question: Did they really not know or were they merely making believe?

So it comes down to the matter of truth, and whether ignorance is an excuse. Tomas, in contemplating this takes into consideration the matter of Oedipus (which he is reading) and even in looking back into time he is asking the unanswered question of ethics and morals that beset behavior today.

This helps me to understand the values of tolerance; that forgiveness is not necessarily a sign of being naive.

As with Marquez, Kundera is focusing on human nature and interaction in this novel of love and betrayal. Even the war in the background is a part of the theme, as battle is the cause or reaction to action borne of love or betrayal of allegiance. The characters are living by their need to be loved, and all are betrayed by their own misinterpretations.

Prior to reading the book, I pondered the title: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  What could it mean? Several thoughts came to mind but this seemed most likely: the ultimate freedom from grounding, from responsibility, from attachments both mental and emotional that made life ‘light’ and yet empty.

Tomas, learning from a marriage and divorce, feels he is a man who needs to be free of the ties of love, to never spend a night in bed with a woman, and yet he makes changes to admit Tereza into his life.  He cannot give up his mistresses, for that would be a betrayal of self; to avoid a betrayal of Tereza he must believe in the clear separation of love and sex.  Sabina is of similar mind, needing only enough of a stable love force that is under her control. With her single status, she chooses men who like Tomas want no more from her than she’s willing to give, or who like Franz and later Tomas, are married and thus not a threat.  Her need to betray, something tied to her father, is done second-hand, by her partners’ betrayal of their marriage vows. 

Franz does well after his divorce from Marie Claude, revved up for a life with Sabina. When Sabina dumps him, he still believes himself better off with a small apartment and a young female student as a lover. But there is something wistful about his return to his ex-wife’s home to realize that she has not missed him at all. He is feeling a bit of that weight of weightlessness.

Tereza has put up with Tomas’ infidelity for many years, followed or led him through many countries to remain by his side.  She comes with baggage of insecurity bred into her by her mother, and her love for Tomas is genuine and forgiving, though she likely betrays herself by accepting his lifestyle because she truly has never accepted it.  In her depression, she feels that she should accept his lifestyle as her own and makes the move by visiting and having sex with a man she has met at the diner.

But then, while she is not betraying Tomas, or believes she is not because she is simply adopting his attitude, isn’t she still betraying herself?

Just as Sabrina’s decision to leave Franz brought her a freedom and lightness that proved a burden more unbearable than the weight of a relationship, Tereza’s attitude towards infidelity changes her dreams and her perception of freedom.

The man raised his rifle.
Tereza felt her courage slipping away. Her weakness drove her to despair, but she could do nothing to counteract it. "But it wasn’t my choice," she said.
He immediately lowered the barrel of his rifle and said in a gentle voice, "If it wasn’t your choice, we can’t do it.  We haven’t the right."  (p. 150)

Early in their relationship, Tereza’s dreams reflected her despair over Tomas’ infidelities; indeed, the man who aimed the weapon was Tomas, and the others with her were all women and naked. In this dream, years later into their relationship, Tereza is the only female among four victims, there are three more men who are the executioners, and Tomas is left at the bottom of a hill she has ascended to get to this place–where, oh yeah, she gets to remain dressed.

But the important change is this: "But it wasn’t my choice," she said.

In the dream, Tereza originally claims that it is her choice to be executed, though it appears more out of letting down Tomas than her own clear choice. And when it comes down to the moment before her own execution–after the other three male victims have been shot–she stands up for herself. This is a switch in control of the relationship; Tereza daring to defy Tomas’ wishes.  But even as she returns home to him (in the dream), she is afraid to face him.

It is the control of the relationship that is the lightness or weightiness that is at question here for Tereza. The burden she claims to carry which weighs on her, that is, the knowledge of his infidelity and attitude towards love and lovemaking, may in fact be the opposite; the freedom of not having to make that decision. Yet she is about to test that theory as she flirts with the notion of indiscretions of her own.

There was a very interesting look into Sabina’s life after her decision to leave Franz, and we can see how perception is tangential to our choices of course or path. Kundera leaves Sabina after making a stunning announcement about Tomas and Tereza, and returns us to their lives.

Tereza is still dealing with Tomas’ definition of love and has learned a way of acceptance without full admittance of her feelings towards his wandering. She still seems to direct her focus internally, feeling it is because of something she lacks, perhaps, that cannot bring Tomas totally into alignment with her own definition of love. Her concept of body and soul may be one way of rationalizing the difference.

Then what was the relationship between Tereza and her body? Had her body the right to call itself Tereza?  And if not, then what did the name refer to?  Merely something incorporeal, intangible?
(These are questions that had been going through Tereza’s head since she was a child. Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.  They are the 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 limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.)  (p. 139)

Who has not at some point in his life, perhaps on a day grey with rain and boredom, looked at his hand, splayed his fingers, completely in awe as he makes them respond to secret commands of his mind? Has not wondered that he is looking at his "outside" from somewhere within his "inside." 

"Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers." Yes, these are the only ones that are important to consider; all the others are mere riddles, I would think, in comparison.  "(…) it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities," Kundera tells us. Yes, for that is how we go beyond the known into the arena where the unexplored is open to discovery and interpretation. 

I do like the way Kundera has his characters think.

For some reason I find myself misplacing Tomas, Franz, and Sabina in time. While it’s approximately taking place in the late 60s, I get the feeling from the emotional state of the characters that it takes place in an earlier era, perhaps decades prior.

Kundera’s writing reminds me a bit of Marquez in the focus of relationships in conflict against a background of a more major conflict of war.  As Marquez, he makes the war a defining force and yet it does not become an active part of the story aside from how it affects the characters and their physical place just beyond it.

But what gets me more out of touch with the characters is that while they are of my own era, I do not relate to them at all, particularly in their relationships of love.  Perhaps it’s the European versus American lifestyle and setting.  Perhaps it is Kundera’s choice of words.

That night, she made love to him with greater frenzy than ever before, aroused by the realization that this was the last time.  Making love, she was far, far away.  Once more she heard the golden horn of betrayal beckoning her in the distance, and she knew she would not hold out.  She sensed an expanse of freedom before her, and the boundlessness of it excited her.  She made mad, unrestrained love to Franz as she never had before.  (p. 116)

Sabina’s response to Franz’s leaving of his wife represents a burden to her that she is unwilling to carry. In her decision to betray him, she may indeed be betraying herself, making sure that she does not attain that state of contentment and stability she seems to both want and despise. 

But Kundera has set up his characters to clearly show that their experience and needs give them very different views of their time together.  This, then, is not too surprising:

Franz sobbed as he lay on top of her; he was certain he understood: Sabina had been quiet all through dinner and said not a word about his decision, but this was her answer.  She had made a clear show of her joy, her passion, her consent, her desire to live with him forever. (p. 117)

This seems to be the complicated love affair of an era in which people were not as honest in their feelings as the 60s seemed to have encouraged. It is the silent admiration, the steady pursuit of Marquez’s lovers that I see in the affair of Franz and Sabina.  I picture Franz with a goatee; Sabina with the off-shouldered blouse and bare feet. The name Sabina has ties for me that are buried in the long ago past. 

Perhaps it is me, as reader, writing a different story.

As Kundera brings us into the heads of Sabina and Franz to show us how experience brought to a new scenario affects the perception of the viewer, we come to an interesting philosophical question on truth:

What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.  (p. 112)

But Franz is enjoying the lies and hiding that comes along with his affair with Sabina.  For Sabina, the idea of truth comes only when alone; the secrecy of the affair keeps it "truthful" because it is not given nor hidden from the public.

Franz, on the other hand, was certain that the division of life into private and public spheres is the source of all lies: a person is one thing in private and something quite different in public.  For Franz, living in truth meant breaking down the barriers between the private and the public.  (p. 112)

Despite this, Franz finds that he can no longer hide his love of Sabina, and tells his wife about his affair. 

Barthes’ theory of the reader "writing" the book takes into account not only experience that persuades perception but I would think that it covers as well the historical time in which the words are read.  This particular passage, relating Sabina’s fear and discomfort about parades, struck a chord in light of the current political campaigning:

A protest march had been scheduled, and she felt driven to take part, Fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism.  She liked the slogans, but to her surprise she found herself unable to shout along with them.

When she told her French friends about it they were amazed.  "You mean you don’t want to fight the occupation of your country?"  She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison."  (p. 100)

For me, this took on the meaning of mob mentality, and that the difference of point of view is often founded in good intention but that the intent is lost in the passion of voice it is often given.

Kundera makes clear his metaphor of musical composition for a lifetime, and several times he has reinforced the image if not outright making it a clear statement.

My own inclination is to often call all creative forces "art" and so as a metaphor for the way one composes his life would be to also call it writing the pages, or painting the picture. Kundera, by using the art of music, manages to bring in movement as he brings the characters of Sabina and Franz into their separate experience with parades.

And so as long as he lived in Paris, he took part in every possible demonstration.  How nice it was to celebrate something, demand something, protest against something; to be out in the open, to be with others. (…) The march from revolution to revolution, from struggle to struggle, ever onward. (p. 99)

Kundera here uses the march and its essential accompaniment of music to focus changes of more than character, to approach changes of a place–a country and its society–writing its historical composition. Kundera then goes on to state what he seems to think of the metaphor or writing for life:

Franz felt his book life to be unreal.  He yearned for real life, for the touch of people walking side by side with him, for their shouts.  It never occurred to him that what he considered unreal (the work he did in the solitude of the office or library) was in fact his real life, whereas the parades he imagined to be reality were nothing but theater, dance, carnival–in other words, a dream. (p. 100)

What is Kundera saying, exactly? Even as he makes the case for the movement and physical reality of the crowds, he places Franz in a position of not realizing that his reality was in truth his solitary office and library life. The parades Kundera calls, a dream; why?  Because they are transitory? Because they are bolder and more exciting than the reality? Is a concert more or less real than a novel?

I realize that as a hypertext enthusiast and writer I look for these things in other areas of life, but I don’t think that it can be denied that the past produces the present and so some form of primitive thinking in traditional text does form the basis of thought that allowed hypertext to burst forth once Al Gore took the initiative in creating the internet.

Kundera:

But if we betray B., for whom we betrayed A., it does not necessarily follow that we have placated A.  The life of a divorcee-painter did not in the least resemble the life of the parents she had betrayed.  The first betrayal is irreparable.  It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal. (p. 92)

But in hypertext, we can form loops that return us to these points of betrayal–or change, choice, etc.–and from that point, decide upon a new tactic to choose another unknown path, still significantly different from the original choice.