. Spinning .

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.

Interesting, this; as Tomas has operated on a cancer in their beloved dog, Karenin, and brought him home after surgery:

They lifted him onto their bed, where he quickly fell asleep, as did they.
(…) But when he suddenly came to in the middle of the night, he could not control himself. Who can tell what distances he covered on his way back? Who knows what phantoms he battled? And now that he was at home with his dear ones, he felt compelled to share his overwhelming joy, a joy of return and rebirth. (p. 285)

We’ve been told by Kundera that life has no weight, since it can only be lived once, that no matter what choices man makes, it makes no difference in the end, as there is no chance to take both paths to compare. Yet here he has Karenin, a dog, feel an "overwhelming joy, a joy of return and rebirth."

Is it a statement about man’s place on earth, his huge ego that places himself at the top of heap? He does go into this further, bringing up the question of man’s creation of God. Maybe it is a statement of hope, that in the simplicity of being one with nature, driven by instinct, there is the possibility of weight given to life; that in fact, by man’s complication of thought processes we have taken that meaning away.

Just an interesting thought here; Kundera being honest enough to tell us that his characters are not real but of his own creation, perhaps the result of the egg of ego and the sperm of structure, has no problem with killing them all off before the story is done.

But isn’t this what a book should be? The beginning and end of a life or lives, not merely a glimpse. For it takes a while for a character to change, even within the space of 300 pages, for him to face what’s going on and make a choice. We as readers can interpret and judge all we like, each in our own perception, and yet, Kundera is unwilling to give us the final say. No, he tells us, they did not live happily ever after.

It all makes sense; Kundera has written this story to argue whether life has meaning or value; it is only logical to bring life to conclusion.

Franz is with a small group of humanitarians (along with an actress, a singer, and 400 cameramen and newsmen) attempting entry into Cambodia on a mission to help its people during the Vietnamese occupation.

Who was he to jeer at the exhibitionism of the people accompanying the courageous doctors to the border? What could they all do but put on a show? Had they any choice?

Franz was right. I can’t help thinking about the editor in Prague who organized the petition for the amnesty of political prisoners. He knew perfectly well that his petition would not help the prisoners. His true goal was not to free the prisoners; it was to show that people without fear still exist. That, too, was playacting. But he had no other possibility. His choice was not between playacting and action. His choice was between playacting and no action at all. (p. 268)

And so it continues. A cause will always arise, and always have those who, seizing the opportunity of someone else’s despair, insist upon showing the rest of the world that they are the good people as they rise up in vocal alarm, turn, and go back to their own happy homes.

And as I read a few pages on, my thoughts are confirmed:

As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition. (p. 256)

I’m getting into some heavy shit here as Kundera moves into the realm of kitsch. For me, it’s both a revelation of the times in a foreign place (since the novel is contemporary to me) and an exquisite explanation of not only Communism, but of human nature in our desire to paint the world the way we see it.

The senator stopped the car in front of a stadium with an artificial skating rink, and the children jumped out and started running along the expanse of grass surrounding it.  Sitting behind the wheel and gazing dreamily after the four little bounding figures, he said to Sabina, "Just look at them." (…) "Now, that’s what I call happiness."

(…) How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if, the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up?"  (p. 250)

What Kundera leads us to is the Prague of the time, mini revolutions amidst the takeover Russians. What people tell themselves is all right to accept, often bred of survival, yet often, just man’s own way of wanting to believe that things are normal, life is okay. The only way we can do this sometimes is to smile.

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil.  Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man. (p. 246)

C’mon now, we’ve all had these thoughts. Maybe the questioning of beliefs begins in simpler ways, where we’ll wonder where Jesus went potty, put we accept as fact the Miracle of Cana where He turned water into wine, or where He fed hundreds by multiplying two loaves of bread and five fishes (or vice verse, it doesn’t matter, it’s still a mean feat).

Where is the point where faith becomes necessarily faced and questioned? Is this Kundera’s way of telling us his beliefs (which I don’t think it is) or is he asking the reader to open his own mind and consider these questions, even while reading a book of fiction.

In bringing in Yakov Stalin–the son of that Stalin, Joseph–as an example of opposites or extremes becoming instead  alike, I come to a place where I must ponder heavy stuff about the "unbearable lightness":

If rejection and privilege are one and the same, if there is no difference between the sublime and the paltry, if the Son of God [young Stalin] can undergo judgment for shit, then human existence loses its dimensions and becomes unbearably light.  (p. 244)

And I sort of halfway understand it.

With Tomas’ decision come questions not only of a moral value, but of repercussions that trace a line in history:

Another way of formulating the question is, Is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death?
Is there any answer to these questions?  (p. 222)

At which point the reader probably reflects on the war in (fill in blank) or some such life or death event of a more personal nature.  But Kundera pulls us out of our reflection:

And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.

Yeahbut, what if? What if life were a living hypertext and by traversing a mapping of links we could come upon that instant in time where the decision is made and choose another path?

Then we are returned to the second theme of the novel, that of weight or value of life:

Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. (…) History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow. (p. 223)

There were a few–not many–times that this book switched from third person to first, and maybe it can all be considered first but then, I’d have to go back and assure myself that Kundera’s narrator was always on the scene, and I do not believe that he was.  Several times I went to post about it but it was always slipped in there, hiding within pages and pages of story, coming out only for a brief moment in which he acknowledges himself as a watcher, and teller therefore, of the tale.  Then suddenly without warning (again) Kundera comes out full blown:

And once more I see him the way he appeared to me at the very beginning of the novel: standing at the window and staring across the courtyard at the walls opposite. (p. 221)

Did I miss something? My prior impression of the switch to first was just as a friend or acquaintance, even a stranger who is repeating what he’s heard of Tomas.  But Kundera here has made his position clear; Tomas and the rest are characters in a novel, and it looks like he’s just met them too.

This is the image from which he was born. As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; 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.
But isn’t it true than an author can write only about himself?

Okay, now we know what’s going on here. As his character faces up to a situation wherein he refuses to sign a petition that he claims he doesn’t care if it gets him in trouble, when thinking of Tereza, he chooses to protect her and not take the risk.  Then, within days, he forgets why he chose not to sign. What are we to make of this? Is there a struggle between the nature of author and that of his character that puts Kundera in such a reflective mood?

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them.  Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. Is it that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about.

I love it! Kundera is telling us that a writer draws upon experience and his own set of values, but in the writing–as in the vicariousness of reading–the bars are lifted and all bets are off. The writer is free to open door #2 and #3, which is what his mother taught him he must never do. Hell, he can even touch the stove when it’s hot!

It’s funny, but I just mentioned in an email this morning to a friend who kindly offered to read one of my latest stories, that a story that’s currently in the submission process is one I feel kind of funny about because it’s closest of any of my writing to my own life experiences. And yet, Kundera relieves me of my guilt:

The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

Yes, and all the possibilities of opportunities and choices that we can imagine–rather than rely upon–to tell a story that becomes just that; a story. And with that wonderful little passage, while Kundera takes us aside and admits his participation, he goes back to the business of story:

But enough. Let us return to Tomas.

Going back to the notion of life having weight based on its recurrence versus its lightness as events occurring only once, I find something in Tomas’ reaction to meeting his grown son whom he has never spoken with since the boy’s early childhood.

Now that they were looking each other in the eye, Tomas noticed that when concentrating the boy slightly raised the left side of his upper lip.  It was an expression he saw on his own face whenever he peered into the mirror to determine whether it was clean-shaven. Discovering it on the face of another made him uneasy.

When parents live with their children through childhood, they grow accustomed to the kind of similarity; it seems trivial to them or, if they stop and thing about it, amusing. But Tomas was talking to his son for the first time in his life! He was not used to sitting face to face with his own asymmetrical mouth!

Imagine having an arm amputated and implanted on someone else. Imagine that person sitting opposite you and gesticulating with it in your face! (…) Even though it was your own personal, beloved arm, you would be horrified at the possibility of its touching you! (p. 216)

Rather a long passage, but it was necessary to quote as Kundera brings us into the moment that goes beyond the political purpose of the meeting to touch upon the more human emotional response. While I see Kundera’s exploration of Tomas’ reaction that ranges from curiosity to trepidation, I am struck by the notion of life repeating itself in the act of procreation. While Tomas still feels no particular parental instincts that would change his life, Kundera instead focuses on the idea of repetition. In particular, he uses the image of Tomas seeing his face every morning in the mirror as he shaves. The mirror as a metaphor seems appropriate to the theory, as does the face to face meeting with his son, another mirror image of himself. This would appear to give his life "weight" and yet the thought upsets him. Perhaps he has not yet recognized the more unbearable lightness as contrast?

There is also what would seem to be an inconsistency in the idea of choice and its impact on the future here:

(…) Tomas suddenly saw that what was really at stake in the scene they were playing was not the amnesty of political prisoners; it was his relationship with his son.  If he signed, their fates would be united and Tomas would be more or less obliged to befriend him; if he failed to sign, their relations would remain null as before, though now not so much by his own will as by the will of his son, who would renounce his father for his cowardice.

He was in a situation of a chess player who cannot avoid checkmate and is forced to resign.  Whether he signed the petition or not made not the slightest difference. It would alter nothing in his own life or in the lives of the political prisoners. (p. 216)

The second paragraph would appear to be in conflict with the prior, arguing the impact of the signing of the paper on his life.  Or, there’s another way of looking at it; while outwardly there would be evidence of change as defined in the first paragraph, to Tomas, even an association with his son would mean no more to him than his son’s rejection of him. This would then negate the value of choice and may in fact come back to that "lightness of being" –though Tomas does not see it yet, even if the reader may.