For Milan Kundera

"Yes, if one seeks infinity,
just close your eyes."
(M. Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being")

On 11 July, the Czech writer Milan Kundera died at the age of 94. I felt deeply sorry for him. 

For the few people who are completely ignorant of who he was, even if many will have mentioned the title of his most famous book perhaps without knowing that it was his, as often happens to works that become icons regardless of who created them, above all the girl Afghan by Steve McCurry, I briefly summarize his story.

 

Born in 1929 in Brno, before Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, he was a lover of literature and music that will accompany him throughout his life. At first an active member of the Communist Party, he then supported the Prague Spring and this forced him to flee his homeland in 1975 to take refuge in France, where he has always lived with his wife Vera. His books were banned and his citizenship was stripped but he was granted French in 1981.

In honor of the homeland that gave him a second chance, Kundera wrote his last works in French.

A shy and elusive person, he appeared a few times at public events or gave interviews: he preferred that his books speak for themselves.

Worldwide success came in 1984 with the publication of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which was also made into a film directed by Philip Kaufman, in 1988, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche.

Certainly one of the most translated novels of contemporary literature.

I bought it on my birthday in 1992, marking the date on every book I bought at that time. Perhaps I gave it to myself as a gift for my eighteenth birthday. 

I was fascinated by it because, at that time, I was thirsty for philosophy and literature, and Kundera is famous for his novels which are also philosophical essays. Some books must be read and shared, especially at that age. I know few people in their twenties who haven't read Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" or Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." Just as, at the age of sixteen, one would read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Bach and "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which seemed like children's books but would be truly understood only with maturity. 

Kundera was one of those authors who had to be read.

The novel is mainly set in Prague in the late 1960s and follows the lives of two loving couples.

The dominant theme is precisely the dichotomy between Lightness and Heaviness, supported by the idea of existence as an Eternal Return theorized by the philosopher Nietzsche. That every second of our life always repeats itself the same is a terrible pain that makes our lives unbearably heavy.

As we read in the first pages of the book:

“But is heaviness really terrible and lightness wonderful?

The heaviest burden oppresses us, bends us, and crushes us to the ground. But in love poetry of all times, the woman longs to be burdened with the burden of the man's body. The heaviest burden is therefore at the same time the image of the most intense vital fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth, the more real and authentic it is.”

Conversely, without this burden, human actions and lives themselves become light, ethereal, and meaningless.

So what do we have to choose in our lives: lightness or heaviness?

This is where the cross story of love between Tomáš and his wife, the young photographer Tereza, starts. Tomáš is a womanizer who has sexual encounters with hundreds of women but only loves his wife because sex and love are two different things for him. They are the emblem of lightness.

Then there are Franz and Sabina, who represent the dreamer and heaviness.

Among the themes of the book, there is also that of love and sex understood as “unbearable lightness”.

 

Milan Kundera

I think it's always better not to tell too much but to leave the solitary pleasure of reading.

There are many marked pages: since I was a boy I have been in the habit of underlining the parts I like in books, which is good because my memory is bad.

However, I would like to focus here on just two pages.

Rereading them now has given me much to think about; they are readings that are lost in time and how we are now is completely different from the persons we were at the time.

Penultimate chapter.

I quote here only some parts of the paragraph.

“We all need someone to watch us. Depending on the type of gaze we want to live under, we could be divided into four categories.

The first category desires the gaze of an infinite number of anonymous eyes: in other words, they desire the gaze of an audience.

[…]

The second category is made up of those who need many eyes known to them to live. [...] They are happier than people in the first category who, when they lose their audience, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the hall of their lives. It happens, at one time or another, to almost everyone.

[…]

Then there is the third category, the category of those who need to be in front of the loved one's eyes. Their condition is as dangerous as that of the first category. Sometimes the eyes of the loved one will close and the room will be dark.

[…]

And finally, there is a fourth category, the rarest, that of those who live under the imaginary gaze of absent people. They are the dreamers.”

This part is very interesting.

For different reasons.

The first is related to the look itself. To the importance given to it by Kundera.

I have always believed, and with the profession of photography this conviction has been growing, that the gaze is as if it were an invisible physical force, with its own specific weight. You can feel if someone is watching you, without knowing it. Not always, but it happens.

It happens to me often.

The eye is not a mere receptor but also a source of “force rays”.

Already the expression “penetrate with the gaze” is an indication of a material dimension of the gaze, which goes beyond the object eye.

“Undress with the eyes”, “caress with the gaze” and so on...

Up to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology in which there is the incarnation of the individual in the world through gaze and perception.

Obviously, with Photography all this is sublimed, the act of the gaze that weighs is made matter by the movement of the lens that extends from the eye into the camera.

And the weight of our gazes is then the photographic images we produce.

As if the magical power of Medusa that petrified anyone who dared to stare at her has become the daily practice of the thousands of photographs that come out of our devices.

Even the camera petrifies.

The second reason for the appeal of this categorization of Kundera is his foresight.

Reading this part after forty years makes an impression because it is written in the present so capable of sharply describing the society in which we live. A society now dependent on social media, smartphones, and live broadcasts that have now reduced their gaze to an abyss of egotism. Without any real exchange, without dialogue between looks.

The idea of perfection centered on appearance reduces our desire for the gaze of others to ravenous bulimia, without that weight that makes communication between the eyes a deeply romantic, emotional, and affective relationship.

Furthermore, as Kundera writes well, the sudden lack of that audience turns off the lights of our existential theaters. Many people now live only in the presence of anonymous gazes, they crave those eyes, and they are succubus.

On the other hand, there are a few dreamers, those who need imaginary gazes, absent people. Today we would call them crazy, they were once the romantics.

Far from the decomposed chatter of reality, the dreamer is closed in his world and his eyes look for people he once loved, who disappeared, or are far away. The weight of the gaze then becomes that of memory, remembrance, and nostalgia. Even letting someone know that you are thinking of them is a form of “looking fixed” on the life of others.

I did not remember this part of Kundera's book and re-reading it made me very happy. He has been able to see for a long time the relationships that are established between people and gazes, and perhaps today they are much more current pages than when they were written.

The last consideration I would like to leave you is about love.

It's near the end of the book, in the last chapter.

“It's a selfless love: Tereza wants nothing from Karenin. She doesn't even want love. She has never asked herself those questions that torture human couples: does she love me? Have you ever loved anyone more than me? Does she love me more than I love her? Perhaps all these questions addressed to love, which measure it, investigate it, examine it, subject it to interrogation, and even manage to destroy it in the bud. Perhaps we are not capable of loving precisely because we desire to be loved, that is to say, we want something (love) from the other instead of approaching him without pretensions and wanting only his simple presence”.

This part I can only understand now.

Since I was a boy I have always been in love with Love. I questioned it, I desired it. It was fire and ropes, passion and possession.

Then, it is said, that with maturity we change, our gaze on the things of life also changes.

Now I believe that love is more like water, many rivers that run wild towards the sea, becoming one essence, limitless and selfless.

All those questions we always ask ourselves, questioning who we love and love itself, I believe, are the source of our unhappiness, insecurities, and depression.

We don't really know how to love because we demand love, but this is not a bargaining chip, a currency.

“... i.e. we want something (love) from the other instead of approaching him without pretensions and wanting only the mere presence of him”.

Entered the third part of my life I hear these words the perfect description of my feelings, and above all, I no longer want to suffer for something that is born to make us feel good, make us happy.

Love flows independently of our will: it is our human pride that makes us believe that we can govern and possess it.

But the water never stays in the hand.

Dedicated to Milan Kundera (1929-2023)

Italian version