My Reading Notes

The Unbearable Lightness of Beeing
by
Milan Kundera

Part I

Instinctively I try to avoid interpretation. I prefer to enjoy the art and let the rationalization apart. This aspect of my intellect became specially highlighted during my academic times (for those who don’t know, I came originally from the History department, before try some incursions in other areas). I always saw as somewhat ridiculous all the theories looking for an explanation for a given act of some powerful person. For me, and some of my colleagues, sometimes an act it’s just what it is, lacking a specific reason, being committed apparently (from the point of view of the actor) randomly.

I started this reading decided to stick to my minimal interpretation perspective, but I had to open an exception just in the first couple pages. Why the hell Milan Kundera starts writing about the myth of eternal return? Why does he uses so often in does initial pages the three key words of the title of the book? Delighted as I was thinking about his logics, I failed to get to a conclusion of my own.  But I would definitely love to hear from my fellow readers about this.
About these initial pages I wrote down a few notes:

1. How true is it that once a painful stage of one person’s life is over, so often it becomes involved in some kind of nostalgia. The individuality of the moment left behind softens our judgment of the past.
2. In a point I disagree with the author. And that’s when he mentions that the non-recurrence acts as an open door for acts that will become unpunished forever, again, due to the softening of judgment with the action of time. I mean… right now, if condemnable acts are not practiced more often it’s because the potential actors fear the short term consequences. Not because they are refrained by what the collective memory will think about them in a hundred years.

Oh! And by the way, I absolutely loved Tomas theory of the three:

“Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart”

“Tomas came to this conclusion: making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desired limited to a woman).”

One of the most inspiring reflections I took from this book so far. It says a lot about the eternal war of sexes. Often I look for the general rules of nature to explain human behavior. And I see the hand of Mother Nature in the way our human males and females. As in any other mammal species, human males try to copulate with a maximum number of females, in order to perpetuate their line. It’s all about quantity. The must girls you get, the must chances you’ve to see the blood of your blood running around here in two hundred years.  Well, the problem is the girls have another perspective. Their idea of well-being to the species is all about quality and selection. So, for them, the best boy you get, the must chances you’ve to give birth to a winner two legged animal, designed to play its role on perpetuation of the species. Now add a bunch of socially acquired behaviors and the strange appearing of a factor so called “love” in the members of our species and we will have an explosive cocktail.  Well… just my five cents about this.

By the Chapter 9 I found a puzzling explanation about the words “compassion” and “pity”.  And it’s puzzling because apparently reveals a serious hole in the linguistic knowledge of Kundera.  I still want to believe that I read it wrong, but already repeated the reading a few times and there it is…

“Another word with approximately the same meaning, «pity» (…) connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer”

What the hell… but this is the word used in Latin based languages to describe a feeling towards the divine. Beeing condescending with God? With Christ? Really, don’t get it.

By the Chapter 14 Kundera makes an incursion in the logic of his initial lines. And that happens when Tomas notice that now that Tereza left him, he thinks about the seven years they spend together with a positive tone that he never felt before. 

A last note for the Chapter 17, where the reader will find an interesting reflection about the role of fortuitous events in our lives. There, it becomes clear how a series of six assorted and random events put together Tomas and Tereza. Which made me think the number of equally assorted and random events, sometimes micro events, work in the shadows to stop other Tomas and Terezas of this world to become together.