Book Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Ligthness of Being
Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim.
Faber and Faber. 1984.
ISBN 0-571-13539-0 pbk

Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fictional representation of his philosophical ideas. The novel centers on Nietzsche's philosophy of eternal return- that 'this life as we live it at present, and have lived it; we will have to live it again once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in our life must come to us again, and all in same series and sequence, and that the recurrence will recur ad infinitum.' Kundera plays with this idea, offering an alternate interpretation: each of us has only one life to live, and what happens once will never occur again. He calls this idea of living once as lightness, and refers to the concept of eternal return as heaviness" or weight. Kundera makes his characters an embodiment of his own philosophy.

Thomas, the protagonist of the novel is a surgeon, an incorrigible womanizer who is unable to resist his unending stream of meaningless sexual flings. He loves Tereza but cannot ,and will not resist his Freudian instincts. Kundera, like D.H.Lawrence gives a fresh perspective on the duality of soul and body, love and sex. For Lawrence they are one where sex is a mode of spiritual transcendence and body only a medium. For Kundera they are discreet entities where sexual flings are just a way to escape the heaviness of being. Thomas constant infidelities towards his wife, Tereza is only a way to avoid the recurrence of the sexual act with the same person, a way to escape the weight of eternal return. it is Thomas quest for lightness. Kundera puts his philosophy in these words- Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep.

But Kundera questions over and again? is lightness-the lightness of absolute freedom- of a life tied to nothing bearable? Sabina is the only character who achieves the unbearable lightness of being- because she cuts all ties. And she ends up with a lack of past, of future, of context, of meaning.

Does recurrence makes life meaningful, bearable? Kundera things it does. but then recurrence is a burden, a suffering where there is no room for improvement on our previous deeds.we will have to live our decisions forever. Nietzsche calls it the heaviest burden. but then it makes life meaningful and this is exactly every individual wants. it is the heaviest burdens that can free us from nihilism, from the meaninglessness of our existence.

Kundera's philosophy and imbedded narrative makes the novel a very different reading experience. you may find Kunderas philosophy exhilarating but its representation in a fictional narrative is somewhat weak and repulsive. The pages are filled with the protagonists preoccupation with sex, seems like a doctors sugar coated dose to a patient.

The opening may seize you but it doesn't sustain. You will have to go on reading on a lookout for the same capturing lines. Kundera's philosophy is worth the narrative.