Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I thought that I should start things off by listing one of my favorite books, by who has now become one of my favorite authors. I first read it in grade 12, as a recommendation by my English teacher, and have read it at least four more times since. What struck me most about this book is how beautifully it’s written. Its context deals with complex existential issues, yet it is done with such lyricism that the ideas are able to flow naturally into the readers minds. There are absolutely no moments of philosophizing overload.
From the back cover:
“In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and 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 a consequence of our private actions, but also in public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.”
Page One:“…the myth of eternal return states that life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.”
Putting it very simply, it basically deals with the problem that because all our lives are inevitably going to meet death, they are all equally meaningless. What purpose can there be if we’re all going to die anyway? (Don’t worry the book is much more inspiring).
I have never encountered a bad review of this book, and this says a lot considering the fastidious breed of literary critics. This is definitely time well spent, and will provide you with a more self-affirming perspective towards life and its meaning.
Immortality
About Immortality:
“It is necessary to understand the dial of life: Up to a certain moment our death seems to distant for us to occupy ourselves with it. It is unseen and invisible. That is the first, happy period of life. But then we suddenly begin to see our death ahead of us and we can no longer stop thinking about it. It is with us…We have a formal suit made for it, we buy a new tie for it, worried that others might select the clothes and tie, and select badly…This is the second period of life, when a person cannot tear his eyes away from death, is followed by still another period, the shortest most mysterious, about which little is known and little is said…At that stage death is so close that looking at it has already become boring. It is again unseen and invisible, in the way objects are when they become to intimately familiar…The third stage of life, is when a person ceases to minister his immortality and no longer considers it a serious matter. Not everyone reaches this furthest limit, but whoever does reach it knows that there, and only there, true freedom can be found.”, Excerpt from text (pp.75-76)
Back Cover:
“Milan Kundera’s sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert’s Emma or Tolstoy’s Anna, Kundera’s Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera’s supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.”
Ingeniously crafted, full of brilliant imagery sprung from Kundera’s characteristic lyrical prose. This book will leave you inspired, and grant you a new appreciation of all life’s simple beauty.
