The unbearable lightness of life

Einstein kainmar. Not once, not once. ? You can only live once, as if you had never lived at all.

The first time I heard of the book unbearable lightness in life was in the Chinese class of senior one. I have long forgotten the details mentioned by the lovely teacher Xiao Gu, but the title of this book deeply attracted me. What is the unbearable lightness of life? What is the relationship between lightness and heaviness? I was at a loss, and then I didn't start watching it until I graduated from high school. Milan Kundera's card description and the quartet's character relationship are quite obscure to read, and there are a lot of descriptions about sex in the book, which once made me doubt that this book is rubbish. My vision and experience have limited my ability to understand. I want to recall this book and some details. This kind of writing with classical feelings is really unprecedented, and there is no one after it.

Milan Kundera 1929 was born in an artistic family in the Czech Republic. He studied piano and music theory since childhood. On the one hand, his study of classical music was inevitably influenced by Germany, the occupying power of World War II. On the other hand, he has a very strong sense of Czech native land. Throughout his creative track, we have continued the thread from poet, playwright, short story writer to novelist. His first novel, Joke, was published in 1967, and gained a world-class reputation. The Unbearable Lightness of Life is his sixth novel, written in 1984. This is his last novel in the cold war era. After 1975, Kundera immigrated to France and has been writing in French ever since. Now he is 89 years old.

The novel adopts the form of quartet in classical music, with four protagonists whose lives are independent and intertwined. Sabin, a painter, Thomas, a doctor, Theresa, Thomas's wife, and Franz, a scholar, respectively represent four life forms from light to heavy. Facing the historical turmoil around Prague Spring and the kitsch in life, they all made their own understanding and choices. Thomas and his wife died in a car accident shortly after they found true happiness in life, Franz died in a farce full of kitsch, and only Sabine wandered around the world with a proud heart.

The unbearable lightness of life is one of the most important representatives of postmodern literature. It is permeated with the speculative tradition of Chinese and European literature, the taboo and adventure in the extraordinary historical period, the profound thinking on the essence of life, and the writer Kundera's dazzling literary talent. It is precisely because of such writers and works that people can have a more three-dimensional and complex understanding of history and a deeper understanding of life in its background. The style created by Kundera is also highly recognizable, which opens up a new path in technology and has a far-reaching impact on the later literary development.

The background of Unbearable Lightness of Life is the Prague Spring in Czech Republic, when a series of Czech reforms angered the Soviet Union, which sent troops to occupy Prague. In the face of such a fierce historical event, our four main figures are forced to respond and deeply think and reflect on their own life value. In the face of historical contingency, where should human life be placed? How should people know the meaning of their lives and set it down? There is heavy pain, but also a touch of floating.

Thomas is a skilled surgeon and is more open in sexual relations. For him, love and marriage are heavy, because they mean a daily cycle. However, Teresa's appearance dramatically changed his concept. Teresa used to be a waitress in a small town. She once met Thomas. She hates the vulgar environment where she grew up and longs for a dignified cultural life. So she left everything behind and came to Prague to find Thomas. In all aspects of life, she and Thomas are unequal. Her helplessness and adventurous courage aroused Thomas' pity and determined to marry Teresa.

But it is difficult for Thomas to remain loyal after marriage, which makes Teresa very painful. Her pain also troubled Thomas. She didn't know how to keep a balance between his wife and lover, especially Sabine. At this moment, the Soviet army occupied Prague, and after a short protest carnival, the situation became heavy. So Teresa suggested leaving Prague to work in Switzerland, so that Thomas could get rid of those old lovers in Prague.

But Sabine also went to Switzerland early. There, Thomas can still meet his old lover. At the same time, Teresa could not adapt to life in Switzerland, so she returned to occupied Prague alone. Thomas returned to Prague with a heavy sense of responsibility and guilt, but as soon as he fulfilled his duties as a husband, he felt that this heavy responsibility weighed him down. Generally speaking, Thomas is confused between the lightness and heaviness of life and doesn't know how to choose.

Sabin, the painter, is the lightest figure in the whole work. Like Thomas, she has never been tortured by stereotypes and prejudice, nor by metaphysics. After arriving in Switzerland, she has a new lover, Flantz, who is the most important figure in her works. Franz is a scholar and successful in his career, but he is not satisfied with being an armchair intellectual in college. He feels that the real reality lies somewhere outside. He is very eager for adventure and romance. He joined a petition group and marched on the Cambodian border. But in this land of Southeast Asia, a group of white people are confused by language and other inconsistent views. People revel in their courage and give themselves a halo. Of course, this parade ended in failure. In Bangkok, he was robbed by robbers and died in the struggle. We saw Franz with a very heavy goal, but in the end he died like a feather.

Finally, Teresa was completely disappointed with the city life in Prague, and Thomas went to live in the country, where they found the consistency of life. Going to the countryside means cutting off all previous social relations and entering rural life. However, in the pastoral narrative, life is weightless, and the author puts a metaphor in the ending setting, so that they all die in a rainy car accident because of brake failure.

In this quartet, only Sabine survived. She fell into rootless drifting, and the last time we read about her residence was in America. This may be a place where eastern European intellectuals are most likely to be exiled.

As far as literariness is concerned, there are many reasons why The Unbearable Lightness of Life has been so highly praised in the literary world. There are only three:

1. The problem that the novel deals with is extremely important. Kundera touched on the essential proposition of life, discussed the dialectical relationship between the lightness of life and the importance of life, and revealed that no matter what attitude you choose towards life, you will encounter your own problems in absurd situations. There are no standard answers and no routines in life. Kundera developed Nietzsche's theory of eternal cycle of life and pushed it forward. Choosing such a theme undoubtedly requires great thinking depth and courage.

2. The narrative style is avant-garde. Kundera gave up the characterization in traditional novels, because any modern reader can understand that the characters in the novel are fictional, without any thinking, and he does not need to prove that these characters are real. Therefore, the characters in his works are abstract and flat, and Kundera is more concerned with building their thoughts than describing their appearance, clothes and movements. In addition to their love and desire, their speculative process also promoted the plot development of the novel. Therefore, these four characters have strong intellectual attributes. In addition, this novel does not adopt the structure of traditional novels, but borrows the quartet structure of classical music, and uses four characters to express different levels of life from light to heavy.

The last point is the deep thinking about kitsch. Vulgarity is characterized by mediocrity and easy to appeal to feelings. People's hearts have already produced a set of reactions to specific situations like machine reflection. This stable, unchangeable and clear relationship is the mechanism of kitsch. Kundera condemns kitsch, which is the laziness of thinking, and laziness of thinking will seek those definite meanings, thus adding weight to his life. Vulgar characters not only belittle themselves, but also don't think independently. They only seek certain meanings, and with these meanings, they can get lofty feelings and achieve the effect of self-touching and hypnosis. Kitsch is like a beautiful mask that the world puts on itself. Kundera inherited the kitsch thinking in the German-speaking art tradition and developed it into an important literary matrix. Now people have to think of this novel as long as they mention the word kitsch.

1. Kundera lamented the end of western civilization in the face of violence. This is a great farewell. But in fact, on the whole European stage, this military action is not as heavy as he said. On the contrary, it is so light that other countries have not reacted much. This light and heavy dialectics constantly stimulated him, and finally made him write such an immortal work.

2. In the world of eternal circulation, every move is extremely important, which will bring irreparable influence to yourself, others and the world, and the heavy responsibility brought by it is unbearable for anyone. And if once life disappears, it disappears, and there is no reincarnation at all, then what happens only once is meaningless.

Sabin's life is constantly leaving and betraying. In Sabin's view, beauty is an abandoned world, and what everyone likes cannot be good. She betrayed her relatives, spouse, love and hometown, but when all this left, she had nothing to betray. Therefore, in her, she deeply felt the emptiness of the meaning of life and the unbearable lightness of life.

4. These four characters are a quartet. Like some quartets of Beethoven or Haydn, the book is divided into seven chapters, corresponding to the seven movements of the quartet. Although their life stories are like sounds in music, music as an art is a collection of sounds. So there is no real protagonist, and all four people are protagonists. As often happens in composition, it is the most basic theme motivation that controls this kind of music and makes it last: kitsch.

Vulgarity is characterized by mediocrity and often appeals to feelings. People's hearts have already produced a set of reactions to specific situations like machine reflection. Noble emotions will be noble in a well-known way, despicable in a well-known way, and pleasant in a well-known way. This stable, unchangeable and clear relationship is the mechanism of kitsch.

6. Kundera is the kind of god-like author. His writing task is to show and expose the content hidden under the surface, but this content is not some kind of truth, but more likely to be the absurdity of birth and the structural contradiction of social order.

In the world of eternal reincarnation, every move bears an unbearable responsibility, which is why Nietzsche said that the concept of the eternal wheel is the heaviest burden.

The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth, and the more real it is. On the contrary, when the burden is completely gone, people will become lighter than air, will float, will be far away from the earth and life on the ground, people will only be a semi-real existence, and people's sports will become free and meaningless.

If the first rehearsal of life is life itself, what value will life have?

The difference between self-learners and students lies not in the breadth of knowledge, but in the difference of vitality and self-confidence.

How many ancient myths began with the story that abandoned children were rescued.

On the surface, it is an obvious lie, but behind it is a hidden truth.

Everything that must happen, everything that is expected and repeated every day, is silent. Only accidental coincidence can speak, and people try to interpret some meaning from it, just as gypsies make predictions by the shape of coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

According to the law of beauty, man is composing the music of life until the moment of deep despair comes, but he knows nothing about it.

The same thing inspires different meanings every time, but this meaning echoes all the previous meanings, and every new experience will be more harmonious and richer.

Betrayal is to get rid of your original position and throw yourself into the unknown.

Beauty will exist for a while before it disappears completely from the world, but it is born of mistakes.

Life is vigorous, adventurous and brave to face the threat of death.

Love begins from the moment when a woman prints a sentence on our poetic memory.

Vulgarity is a transit point between existence and forgetting.