The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera
Synopsis
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a story of irreconcilable love and infidelities in which Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of twentieth-century 'Being', offering a wide range of brilliant and amusing philosophical speculations. First published in1984, Kundera's masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and was at once hailed by critics as a contemporary classic.
Praise for The Unbearable Lightness of Being
'There are novels that are tragic, or entertaining, and this one is both. There are very few that give a fresh perspective on existence, and force the reader to reassess his own life and attitudes.' - Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times.
Extracts from the novel
(pg. 236)
He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.Let us suppose that this is the case, that somewhere in the world each of us has a partner who once formed part of our body. Tomas's other part is the young woman he dreamed about. The trouble is, man does not find the other part of himself. Instead, he is sent a Tereza in a bulrush basket. But what happens if he nevertheless later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer? The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato's myth?
(pg. 17)
During the day, she tried (though with only partial success) to believe what Tomas told her and to be as cheerful as she had been before. But her jealousy thus tamed by day burst forth all the more savagely in her dreams, each of which ended in a wail he could only silence by waking her.Her dreams recurred like themes and variations or television series. For examples, she repeatedly dreamed of cats jumping at her face and digging their claws into her skin. We need not look far for an interpretation: in Czech slang the word 'cat' means a pretty woman. Tereza saw herself threatened by women, all women. All women were potential mistresses for Tomas, and she feared them all.
(pg. 234)
Tomas thought: Attaching love to sex is one of the most bizarre ideas the Creator ever had.He also thought: One way of saving love from the stupidity of sex would be to set the clockwork in our head in such a way as to excite us at the sight of a swallow.
And with that very sweet thought he started dozing off. But on the very threshold of sleep, in that no-man's-land of muddled concepts, he was suddenly certain he had just discovered the solution to all riddles, the key to all mysteries, a new utopia, a paradise: a world where man is excited by seeing a swallow and Tomas can love Tereza without being disturbed by the aggressive stupidity of sex.
Then he fell asleep.
