LITERATURE: The Unbearable Lightness – Winding Down

As I come to within the last eight pages, I slow down, reluctant to let it end. There is no need as in adventure and mystery to rush to the answer at the end; in books such as these, the answers are drawn parallel to the questions and begin with the opening lines.

My thoughts on man’s giving up his value and perception of life as he evolved is somewhat in sync with where Kundera was leading me.

The longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man. (p. 296)

Love may be instinctual, and our insistence on analyzing brain chemistry and sexual arousal and emotional reactions, we may have lost the value of it all.

The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Karenin surrounded Tereza and Tomas with a life based on repetition and he expected the same from them. (p. 298)

In the above, Kundera is reminding us of the theory of recurrence; that if life is only lived once, then it has little weight to it, each decision that plots its course just as good as another, none therefore, of value.

Kundera contrasts human to "lower" animals in their capacity to be happy, pointing to Karenin’s routine.

If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, "Look, I’m sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can’t you come up with something different?

How logical in its simplicity, to use this to illustrate man’s enemy within himself. Kundera has certainly laid the groundwork with small details that are interesting in themselves, but serve the larger image of theme.

And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn
in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot
be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

I’ve read beyond this through the death of Karenin, but I cannot post on it; could barely read it. While I am not a big ‘animal person’ nor am I unfamiliar with the last breath of man or beast, the death of an animal is something that for some reason I’m just not geared to handle well.

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