The
unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan
Kundera
Again it occurred to him that Tereza was a
child put in a pitch-daubed bulrush basket and sent downstream. He couldn't
very well let a basket with a child in it float down a stormy river! It the
Pharaoh's daughter hasn't snatched the basket carrying little Moses from the
waves, there would have been no Old Testament, no civilization as we now know
it!
How many ancient myths begin with the
rescue of an abandoned child!
If Polybus had not taken in the young
Oedipus, Sophocles would not have written his most beautiful tragedy!
Tomas did not realize at the time that
metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
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 desire limited to one woman).
she realized she had nothing but that miserable ticket,
and the thought brought her nearly to tears. To keep her from crying, she
talked too much and too loudly, and she laughed. And again he took her in his
arms and almost at once and they made love. She entered a mist in which nothing
could be seen and only her scream could be heard.
it was
no sign, no moan, it was a real scream. she screamed so hard that Tomas had to
turn his head away from her face, afraid that her voice so close to his ear
could rupture his eardrum. The scream was not an expression of sensuality,
Sensuality is the total mobilizations of the senses
Her
screams aim to crippling the sense, preventing all seeing and hearing.
unintentional
beauty
another
way of putting it may be beauty by mistake.
before beauty disappears entirely from the earth, it will go on existing from a while
by mistake.
beauty
by mistake
the
final phase in the history of beauty
love is
a battle
and i
plan to go on fighting
love is
a battle
well i
dont feel at all like fighting
and he
left
the true
story behind Beethoven's famous
Muss es
sein? Es muss sein! motif
men who
pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by
a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world.
the obsession of the former is lyrical : what they seek in women in themselves,
their ideal, and since an ideal is by definition something that can never be
found, they are disappointed again and again. The disappointment that propels
them from woman to woman gives their inconstancy a kind of romantic excuse, so
that many sentimental women are touched by their unbridled philandering.
The obsession of the latter is epic, and women see nothing the least bit touching in
it; the man projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him. The inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it. The obsession of the epic womanizer strikes
people are lacking in redemption.
Because
the lyrical womanizer always runs after the same type of woman, we even fail to
notice when he exchanges one mistress from another. His friends perpetually
cause misunderstandings by mixing up his lovers and calling them by the same
name.
In
pursuit of knowledge, epic womanizers and of course Tomas belonged in their
ranks turn away from conventional feminine beauty, of which they quickly tire,
and inevitably end up as curiosity collectors. They are aware of this and
little ashamed of it, and to avoid causing their friends embarrassment, they
refrain from appearing in public with their mistress.
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 to death
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.
Once
more, and with a nostalgia akin to love
several
days later, he was struck by another thought, which i record here as an addendum
to the preceding chapter: Somewhere out in space there was a planet where all
people would be born again. They would be fully aware of the life they had
spent on earth and of all the experience they had amassed here. And perhaps
they was still another planet, where we would all be born a third time with the
experience of our first two lives.
And
perhaps they were yet more and more planets, where mankind would be born one
degree (one life) more mature. That was Tomas version of eternal return.
Of
course we here on earth can only fabricate vague fantasies of what will happen
to man on these other planets. Will he be wiser? Is maturity within man's power?
Can he attain it through repetition?
Only
from the perspective of such a utopia it
is possible to use the concept of pessimism and optimism with full justification : an optimist is someone who things that on planet number five
the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.
one of
Jules Vern's famous novels, a favorite of Thomas's in his childhood, is called
Two Years on holiday, and indeed two year is the maximum.
Sabina
continued to receive letters from her sad village correspondent till the end of
her lift. Many of them would remain unread, because took less and less interest
in her natvie land.
And s
one day she composed a will in which she requested that her dead body be
cremated and its ashes thrown to the winds. Tereza and Tomas had died under the
sign of weight. She wanted to die under the sign of lightness. She would be
lighter than air. As Parmenides would put it, the negative would change into
the positive.
What
remains of Tomas ?
An inscription
reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH
What
remains of Beethoven >
A frown,
an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning "Es muss sein!"
What
remains of Franz?
An
inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG
WANDERINGS.
And so
on and so forth. Before we are forgotten,, we will be turned into kitsch.
Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.
Kitsch
is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and
from German it entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has
obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of
shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word;kitsch excludes
everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Why was
the world idyll so important for Tereza ?
Raised
as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is
an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise : life in Paradise
was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure .
It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not
boredom.
She did
not wish to claim that they could love each other more. Her feeling was rather
that , given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and women is a
priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances ) in
the love between man and dog, the oddity of human history probably unplanned by
the Creator.
Human
times does not turn in a circles; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why
man can not be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition.
Yes,
happiness is the longing for repetition.
Thanks !
My new plan for 2013 is thinking what plan for 2013 :)
Still got some outstanding stuff for the exhibition needa wrap up
And then start to think what else I wanna do
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