by Beverly Mintling
Recently our RVA book club discussed Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This postmodern novel is centered around the Prague Spring of 1968, which was followed by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact members in August 1968. Kundera was then an established Czech writer. Due to his opposition to the Soviet takeover and the censorship that followed, he, like many Czech intellectuals, had their Czech citizenship revoked and became stateless citizens. In 1979 Kundera moved his family to France where he discontinued writing in Czech and became recognized as a French writer. During this transition, he completed The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1982. By 1984 it had been published in French and English.
As a young man, Kundera was given a musical education by his father, a musicologist and a pianist. Before WWII he studied under Pavel Haas, with the hopes of becoming a composer. Using his knowledge of music, he created the four characters in this novel, each with a unique but conflicting view point, helping to shape a narrative using Prague as its central theme. Kundera controls the narrative by constructing seven self-contained chapters, each used as a guidepost for the reader to follow the action or movement. As in a musical score, variations on the theme occur with the blending of voices. Likewise, the story is told through the actions of the four different characters. It is not linear. This can be taxing for the reader. To add to the confusion, we find dissonance as characters blend in a variety of relationships. All four characters are represented, but in different combinations such as: Tomas-Tereza, Tomas-Sabina, Tomas-Tereza-Sabina, Tereza-Sabina, Franz-Sabina, but never Franz with anyone other than Sabina. After The Grand March chapter, the tempo slows, resolution begins, choices have been made, and fewer choices are available as the work becomes smaller.
Our four characters are leaving before we really got to know them. With the use of nonlinear narrative, Kundera is able to tell a story while avoiding psychological realism that characterizes modern novels. Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, and Franz don’t come to us with any detailed information about their appearances, past lives, or any interior thoughts with the possible exception of Tereza. There is no interior monologue in the novel. From a 1986 interview on “The Art of the Novel” Kundera speaks to this. “If I locate my own work outside the so-called psychological novel, that does not mean that I wish to deprive my characters of an interior life. It means only that there are other enigmas, other questions that my novels pursue primarily.”
Even without expansive information about the backgrounds of the four characters, they do all share the political/historical experience of the Prague Spring. ‘Write what you know’ is advice given to students. Kundera knows the history of Prague. Couldn’t that mean Tomas is modeled after him? Kundera says no. “The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.” Life does seem to become a trap for the characters as the choices they make continue to shrink their world until there are few choices left.
Kundera leaves us with some thought-provoking ideas. The novelist is neither a historian nor a prophet: he is an explorer of existence. Personally, I don’t like any of his characters, but I don’t need to. It’s not about them. This is an example of postmodernism that is praised as a masterpiece by some, and criticized as having no moral compass by others. Over the years I find myself coming back to Kundera from time to time. It does leave us with an invitation to explore some existential attitudes.
Beverly Mintling is an active member of the RVAClassic Bookclub in Richmond< Virginia. She has lived and taught in various international schools. You can respond to her by adding comments to this website. or by writing the host: bluemur@verizon.net
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