LITERATURE: The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Opening Thoughts

Just a couple pages, but it appears that we’re getting into story from this point on so I’ll make a quick comment here. I either just love the impossibility of reading this without giving it serious thought, or it makes sense because I remember thinking this kind of stuff somewhere in a blue haze:

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them; they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature.  This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict.  For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. (p. 4)

Then we are brought into the Parmenides question of opposites and in particular, lightness and darkness. We may negate the shades between, but the real emphasis is placed on which is the desirable, the weight of darkness or the freedom of lightness? If in fact, we are to say that darkness is the burden of weight, and not the light instead.

Fun, huh?

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