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Milan Kundera has died
- diego_moita 3y ago"Unbearable Lightness" is one of those books that changed me as a person. It isn't really too much of a novel because it has a very thin plot with very little drama or tension. It is more like a deep reflection. But it is very good. The book's perspective on human condition is very cynical. My understanding, when I read it, is that by "unbearable lightness" what the author means is that we are absolutely irrelevant and the whole idea of "meaning of life" is just pathetic. Yeah, I know: I sound like an atheistic teenager. But, please, don't get fooled. Kundera wrote a billion times better than me. He deserves to be read, even if I sound childish. If you like Albert Camus you'll love Kundera (and vice-versa).
- miohtama 3y agoI read it in a high school long time ago. It’s a very different novel, although a bit boring one for a modern consumer. But it points out exactly what you say: the insignificance, and may cause the reader to change their perspective a bit.
- narag 3y agoI read it later, in my twenties, it was very entertaining, but I don't really remember anything now. The title is absolutely great.
- brianmcc 3y agoI agree, I cannot recommend it highly enough. I first read it in my early 20s, then late 20s, and again in my 30s. And every single time I find something new in it. I am long overdue my first 40s re-read, which will now of course carry some sadness in doing so. One of the classics, no question. RIP.
- the-smug-one 3y agoI found the experience of the characters to be pretty moving and not irrelevant. Especially the woman who was cheated on repeatedly. Anyway, very fun book in that sooo much is repeated and the symbolicism is very heavy, makes it fun to find the patterns. If you read a lot of his books they all turn out to be pretty similar imho, but it fit my vibes when I was like 18. Another book that's great for re-reading is "The master and Margarita", pretty layered in terms of the different experiences you can have reading it.
- kristiandupont 3y agoThe book is competing with Nick Hornby's High Fidelity for the book I've re-read the most times. I absolutely love it. And, I agree: the plot is barely worth mentioning. In fact, I once started watching the movie and stopped halfway through because it was just so banal and uninteresting. The great stuff is in all the little observations and considerations that aren't really part of the "story".
- wk_end 3y agoOof. You’re really underselling it. It’s more complex than you’re giving it credit for, I think - it’s not just a cynical “nothing means anything” kind of nihilism. Some of the characters hold a philosophy like that, but not all of them, and their ultimate fates don’t exactly suggest that Kundera is endorsing it. The book asks, even in the face of that kind of cynical and over-intellectualized view of the world, why and how do we try to find meaning in our lives regardless? I don’t see how by the end of it - which I’m bringing myself to tears just thinking about - you could believe that Kundera thinks that project is “pathetic”. It’s also, of course, a very political novel in its depiction of life in the Soviet Bloc and of popular movements. It’s a very pointed critique of collectivism.
- agnos 3y ago> The book asks, even in the face of that kind of cynical and over-intellectualized view of the world, why and how do we try to find meaning in our lives regardless? This. I don't get the sense that Kundera himself is advocating for either lightness or weight. The novel asks a question that's as much philosophical as it is psychological, and the beauty lies in the question itself rather than any answers. To quote Kundera: "On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth."
- slibhb 3y ago> The book's perspective on human condition is very cynical. My understanding, when I read it, is that by "unbearable lightness" what the author means is that we are absolutely irrelevant and the whole idea of "meaning of life" is just pathetic. The novel contains various asides where the author says what the book is about and it's not this. Heaviness and lightness are two different attitudes towards life. Lightness is not committing to anything, chasing experience, infidelity, pleasure, and so on. If anything, the novel comes down on the side of heaviness: tenderness, commitment, marriage, having a dog even though it will die, etc.
- 13of40 3y agoI read it thirty years ago when I was overseas in the Army and going through a separation that would end in divorce. I always imagined the unbearable lightness of being was the joy of being separate and free from everyone in the world, with the curse that you were totally alone.
- lazyant 3y agoI read it every ten years or so, starting when I was young. I see myself change because of how I think about the characters or who I sympathize with; seems a different novel every time.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y ago'The Joke' should be mandatory reading. It's especially relevant today.
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago“The Joke” is absolutely special. I read it many years ago but still remember the feeling it evoked. Like being let into a gust of wind that carries the language
- zajio1am 3y agoNote that there is even a movie version: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065241/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065241/ It was filmed during Prague Spring and banned almost immediately after its release.
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3187189M/The_unbearable_lightness_of_being https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3187189M/The_unbearable_ligh... https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3166372M/The_joke https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3166372M/The_joke
- 2-718-281-828 3y agothere's probably no other book that has been as often bought (and not read) just for the title. especially the german title "die unerträgliche leichtigkeit des seins" is oozing an irresistible attraction on anyone who even remotely tends to self-reflect. it seems to whisper "read me and you'll understand what's going with you and your life".
- bitsinthesky 3y agoRead it!
- bitsinthesky 3y agoOne thing I love most about his books is his contrast of characters' perspectives of situations. He will paint the most symbolic picture of a situation, where every action speaks to that persons history and builds up the experience of X. Then he will rewrite the scene from a different point of view, and conclusively state that, no, actually everything meant Y. And then he will go on an, as a critic, analyze the book right there for you and what it means, in between the story. I love how he uses ideas from Hegel, Nietsche, Beethoven, Bach Stravinsky (all music history), etc. etc. etc. and dives deep into the poetry of one idea. For example in Unbearable, the eternal recurrence. That singular points of experience are as the tree falling in the forest when no one's around, it has no impact. That for an event to have weight it must happen repeatedly, in different contexts, stories, etc, but essentially the same occurrence, over and over again. What does that mean for your life and the patterns of your life? How much I've gone into rabbit holes of some great people exploring Kundera, and how much more beautiful Beethoven is to me now. He's made his Op. 111 one of my favourites.
- idlewords 3y agoThe Unbearable Lightness of Being was a sexually transmitted book, later mercifully replaced on American dating websites by Haruki Murakami, who spared a generation of American men from having to read Kundera.
- jononomo 3y agoYes.
- giraffe_lady 3y agolmao true enough but idk about mercifully. I'd rather read kundera any day he's kind of overblown sometimes but it's better than a 400 page fantasy-justification for author standin having sex with teenagers.
- brenainn 3y agoHuh, didn't consider that until now. I thought all the characters liked jazz and drank Cutty Sark because he thought it was cool.
- isolatedsystem 3y agoSeems a touch uncouth to say it, but 'Dating Without Kundera' has been the little voice in my head that catches me any time I start spouting pseudo-intellectual pop philosophy, in dating or otherwise.
- wk_end 3y agoAssuming that you're the same idlewords who wrote this [0] blog post in 2005: It's funny - as someone seemingly a little bit younger than you, I'm pretty sure your top recommendation, The Master & Margarita, did replace Kundera, at least in my experience. (which - no disrespect to Bulgakov and tongue planted in cheek - is a shame, because Kundera's better!) I like Murakami, but I think he'd make for a poor "sexually-transmitted book". Most women I know would treat a line-up of his work on a shelf as a bit of a red flag, actually. [0] https://idlewords.com/2005/11/dating_without_kundera.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/11/dating_without_kundera.htm
- ssijak 3y agoAm I the only one who disliked "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Sometimes if I just try to find more depth and meaning in a book just because of other people did, I stop to wonder, should I? Book with an uninteresting and shallow plot, with no depth in any way that pushed my thinking in some further direction, with a title I could not connect to anything in a book. Maybe it is just me and that slice of time in my life when I read it did not click. But I vividly remember the place I read it and how I wondered what am I missing haha On a side note, I think some books just click very differently with people. For example I could not for a love of anything in the universe connect such praise Peter Handke got for some of his work to my experience reading it
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoI recommend The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, it’s much better IMO. Not sure why Lightness is more famous, perhaps just the title is more interesting.
- justinator 3y agoNo doubt the (very excellent) film.
- bitsinthesky 3y agoIs the film very excellent? I've been kinda avoiding it out of fear of slopping up the book
- justinator 3y agoDaniel Day Lewis plays a lead and I enjoy his acting in everything he’s been in. The film isn’t anywhere close to the book, but it has a heart of its own. A film from another era of film making than the present.
- ajkjk 3y agoCan't agree, but also, > with a title I could not connect to anything in a book You.. might have skipped all the interesting parts, then? The book is not about the story; the author overtly says near the start that he's inventing the story to illustrate an idea, the idea of 'lightness' vs 'heaviness' and how, he says, it governs our lives.
- projektfu 3y agoThere seems to be a thread of clever philosophical mischief in Czech writing (that gets read in English at least). Perhaps "The Good Soldier Švejk" is a common influence.
- ghotli 3y agoAt one point in my younger years I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez, and Invisible Cities by Calvino all back to back. These books changed me for the better at the time and I think about scenes from each in my daily life all in about the same sort of way. Beautiful imagery, pointed human condition takeaways. Got under my skin and stayed there. Unbearable Lightness had such a quality in the writing that stuck with me wherein he would twist a scene into something else in the span of a paragraph or two. There's a scene wherein Tereza goes to the top of a hill that comes to mind. The entire opening of the book was at the time unlike anything else I had read. Makes me want to go re-read that era of my life again and explore more of each of those author's works.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Ialdaboth 3y agoSorry for the tangent, but reading your message reminded me of early-2000s literally websites dedicated modernist/magic realism/interstitial fiction, like The Modern Word. Now that's an internet I miss.
- nine_k 3y agoWhile I value The Unbearable Lightness (and it's more widely known because of the movie), I think that it's Immortality where Kundera is the deepest, the most inventive, the most subtle. (It's also written in a way that makes it really hard to turn into a movie, and the book explicitly mentions it in passing.)
- chrisweekly 3y agoRIP to an amazing writer and thinker. For some reason the one line that stuck in my memory after all these years (having devoured his oeuvre in my early 20's, more than 20 years ago), is this: > "Vertigo is something other than the fear of falling... it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves." (Forgive the paraphrasing, it's from memory.)
- daanlo 3y agoSuch a great quote. Thanks for reminding me :)
- simongray 3y ago"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" takes place during the Prague Spring, which I found interesting enough in itself to read it.
- nonameiguess 3y agoIt's funny to see the current grayed-out, lowest rated comment about this being a sexually transmitted book. I'll admit I barely remember it at this point and it mostly stands out to me because my best friend and I hung out at a bookstore pretty regularly after school senior year and a girl who worked there, who graduated a year ahead of us, gave me this book and put a note in it saying I seemed like an emotionally sensitive person who would understand it. I'm reasonably sure she just thought I was physically attractive and was hitting on me, because the reality is I was an emotionally vacant person far more into math than people, but it was amusing nonetheless. Definitely a popular pick for 90s girls. My wife claims Snow Crash constitutes the same phenomenon from her perspective. The reason she first read it is that every high match on every dating site she had in the 2005-2010 era was a dude that mentioned this book on his profile somewhere. Not intending to shit on Kundera. Reading this book didn't change me because I was 18 and about to spend the next decade going through a ton of transformative life experiences that would change me far more than reading anything at all possibly could, but I still remember it being a well-written, thought-provoking book.
- qingcharles 3y agoRegardless of the excellent content, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" stands as my favourite book title of all time.
- cubefox 3y agoUp there The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick - Peter Handke Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
- kugutsumen 3y agoThis is sad... I read all of his books. I'll miss him
- jononomo 3y agoI read The Unbearable Lightness of Being when I was about 21 and I remember thinking it was utterly boring and pointless. I just didn't get it. Maybe I was too young?
- justinator 3y agoUnbearable Lightness is brilliant. There was a plot point (and such a small part of the book) about how the government uses public life - belonging to a political party, having certain friends - against the individual to get what they want. And if they don't: they try to destroy the person's live. At the same point, the government is also changing history by taking people out of photographs, etc. Topical(?), even for today.
- jjgreen 3y agoA detailed tribute by Pierre Assouline (in French) https://larepubliquedeslivres.com/pour-saluer-milan-kundera/ https://larepubliquedeslivres.com/pour-saluer-milan-kundera/
- datadeft 3y agoSuch a great author. 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' is a fantastic read.
- karaterobot 3y agoHe was such an interesting and humane writer. My favorite quote from him, which I think is from one of his essay collections: > It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth. Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue— perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
- alexpetralia 3y agoThis is such a wonderful quote.
- greenhearth 3y agoHis fiction was great, but his non-fiction is astounding. I liked, not loved "The Unbearable Likeness," which probably needs a re-reading at this point. But his masterpiece I think is "Testaments Betrayed," in which he examines the art of the novel. The habit for re-reading novels I picked up because of his explanation of the nature of the novel in this book. This man was a giant of humanities and European culture embodied. He was a global treasure and a source of some much needed intellectual goodness. Once they go, they don't come back, and we are stuck with monsters and idiots.
- socatacos 3y agoI discovered this book after seeing the ending to a friends episode https://youtu.be/qx4b0WmAy8s https://youtu.be/qx4b0WmAy8s The philosophy in the book went over my head, but I enjoyed learning about the Prague Spring.
- stormdennis 3y agoSometime in the 90s, probably, an unflattering portrait of the late Brendan Behan was unveiled in Dublin and was soon christened The unbearable likeness of Behan.
- gridder 3y agoGoodbye MK! I wouldn’t have started reading again without your masterpieces, and I wouldn’t become so passionate about psychology neither. You won’t be forgotten.
- xrd 3y agoI feel comfort in that others were so profoundly impacted by this book. I've carried that feeling for a long time, because I haven't read the book in a very long time. I hold two things at once when I think of the book: awe of the experience of reading the book and extreme doubt that my feelings were valid. It's great to read these comments from others who loved it too and reexamine that profound experience with this book. Of course I had to read the book again, here: https://archive.org/details/isbn_0060912529 https://archive.org/details/isbn_0060912529 This is such a complicated book. On the first page, there is a statement about the unimportance of a war between African nations that "altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment." The word "blacks" was triggering to me, it felt insensitive to speak of the death of a mass of people as insignificant, and then refer to those people as "blacks" (I'm adding that it feels like that stops at recognizing much more about them than the color of their skin). Though of course Kundera never used the term "blacks" himself, that was the translator: "Nemusíme je brát na vědomí stejně jako válku mezi dvěma africkými státy ve čtrnáctém století, která nezměnila nic na tváři světa, přestože v ni zahynulo v nevýslovných mukách tři sta tisíc černochů" (https://adoc.pub/kundera-milan-nesnesitelna-lehkost-byti.html https://adoc.pub/kundera-milan-nesnesitelna-lehkost-byti.htm...) Google translates this entire passage with the word "blacks" as well, but the individual word černochů as "black people." He also talks about Hitler, being touched by his portraits, and recalling that his family members perished in Hitler's gas chambers. That's a subtle discussion that would be dangerous today! But, the entire passage is his wrestling with what is significant and what's important, and how death and permanence changes our relationships to all that. Profound.
- watwut 3y agoThere might be some nuance in English between "blacks" and "black people", but in Czech, černoch is a word for ... both. As in, I am kind of confused about what he done or not done here. Also, Kundera grew up in a communist setup - was praised by then then kicked, accepted again and kicked again. And possibly (as in is suspect of) gave someone to STB. I guarantee you that whatever you see as danger of saying something is nothing compared to actual real danger back then.
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- nth_degree 3y agoI read Unbearable Lightness in high school and it changed my life. I read it again a few years later in hope of changing it back, but it instead gave me a fresh perspective. I read literature all the time, but that one will always stick out as being exactly the right book to consult at several points in my life.
- eindiran 3y agoMy washing machine broke the other day and I had to stop by a laundromat. Someone had left a copy of "Slowness" on the table there, so I spent the time doing my laundry reading it. Hadn't even heard of it before, but it is definitely my favorite Kundera novel. A short but incredible read. Sad to see he is no longer with us.
- androidbishop 3y agoNot only are his novels absolutely beautiful masterpieces, but he also wrote a collection of essays in The Curtain and The Art of the Novel that are fascinating insights into art and writing that I highly recommend.
- mshaler 3y ago"Dogs living in cyclical time" changed my life profoundly and for that I am immensely grateful