Do we live for drama?? Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being
As my professional graphics indicate, this post attempts to determine whether Milan Kundera is right, whether the lightness of human existence is really as unpleasant as it seems.
To begin, let’s try to understand what Kundera means by lightness.
He starts his work by describing Nietzsche’s notion of eternal return, or the weightlessness of lives that happen only once. We can understand this idea by considering the French Revolution. If the Revolution were to recur again and again, history would be less favorable to Robespierre. But because his existence was finite, the bloody revolution can be reduced to words and theories. Experiences and lives are made bearable by the “mitigating circumstances of their transitory nature” (4). To put it simply, if something can only happen once, it’s not that deep. The adage “this too shall pass” comes to mind.
Kundera asks us if we are lucky to live this weightless existence. Is this lightness really so divine? He uses his novel to tell us no.
His story follows the relationship between Tomas and Tereza, and the lives of their tangential lovers in late 20th Century Czechoslovakia. The story takes place against the backdrop of the Prague Spring, a grassroots movement for human rights and greater freedom, and the resulting Soviet invasion. Tomas’s politics take him from surgeon to truck driver. Tereza photographs the injustices of the Czech experience.
Tomas works to build a light existence. He divorces his wife and stops seeing his child, alienating himself from his parents in the process. He assembles a roster of mistresses, ensuring that he never nears love. Yet, with all this effort to cultivate lightness, Tomas is enamored with Tereza after spending just one hour with her. When she leaves him, he relishes in the “sweet lightness of being” for just a matter of days before deciding to chase her (29). Teresa too, is drawn back to Tomas each time she tries to leave him. Kundera concludes that humans reject the idea that love can be weightless.
Tomas and Tereza’s heaviness is but one type. Kundera believes that there are four types of heaviness that we lust after. He describes them in terms of eyes. Tomas and Tereza need to be constantly watched by the person they love. Others need an infinite number of anonymous eyes to watch them. This is the plight of the performer. Yet others seek to be watched by many known eyes. These are the social butterflies and extroverts. Finally, there are those that need to be seen by imaginary viewers that they believe to be present. These people craft eyes that simply do not care, or do not exist. Kundera’s characters fall neatly into these four categories.
Thus, somehow, we all hate lightness and need eyes grounding us. Yet, is this lightness really so unbearable?
Many of my decisions and passions would seem to lust after lightness. I chose to spend a year away from my home university, craving the freedoms of a new environment and leaving the burden of responsibilities and jobs in New York. I spend as much time outdoors as I can because I feel the happiest when my phone is useless and all I see around me are snow-capped peaks or calm waters.
My answer is quite different now. This period of quarantine has brought me to be the apex of lightness, leaving me almost entirely unhinged from the everyday human fabric.
I really want to say that there is no good to the banality of the everyday. It seems noble to glorify in lightness. That all I need is a great book. But I can’t say this.
Here’s my answer.
My father and I rode our rusting bikes through our neighborhood the other day, coming across a three-man band playing in front of a shuttered café. People stood in their doorways and leaned out of balconies, listening but not daring to enter the common space. As the late afternoon sun bore down and “Sweet Caroline” tore through the empty air, I was reminded of what was so missing in our quarantined life. We are missing that physical sensation of being tied to other people, of being grounded in the human narrative. A FaceTime or Zoom call just cannot replace that sensation of shared joy, commiseration, of listening to great music on a beautiful day. Kundera’s notion of eyes captures this need for physicality. We need someone to be watching and interacting with our story to make it real and meaningful, to ground it in something other than our own minds. Sequestering the everyday to the home, renders this experience obsolete.
For all my attempts at lightness, Kundera has cornered me. Perhaps this blog makes it too obvious, but I think I need the eyes of the public…