Wow, Greg. I feel as though I just attended an advanced placement seminar, and I am so grateful for your help with this book. I have to confess that even as an English major I haven’t read it (my excuse is that my concentration was American Lit). But bringing it to present day politics was a gift. Now I have to watch your videos.
You've made me think about the contradictions or paradoxes Kundera poses, summed up in the image of the sexy woman in a nonsexy hat, and thinking about that brought to mind that the title itself is a contradiction. Lightness seems the bearable state and darkness the unbearable state and the unbearable darkness of being is, I think, where we are in this moment. And creating the illusion of lightness helps us see the possibilities of positive change but is not change itself, thus the author does not or cannot answer the questions for us, only light the way.
Sorry if this appears twice; I thought I posted it but it's not showing up. Anyway, I think Kundera was suggesting that our beingness is too light, that is to say it is insubstantial, when we are not free. And so, as I suggested in my comment below, since we do not at present in this world truly proscribe our own terms of freedom, life is too painful to bear.
I've not read the book, so am not able to comment about your analysis, though I suspect from all your other posts that it is spot on. What interested me was in the biography:
"As a student, Kundera was an ardent Communist—the underlying concept of “we should all share resources so there is no want” is more appealing to young people with artistic tendencies than the zero-sum nastiness of unbridled capitalism—but he soon realized that the Marxist paradise he was promised did not, and could never, exist."
That is EXACTLY what a lot of young people in the 1930s felt, including several friends of my father, and they often paid for their youthful idealism when Joe McCarthy went wild. Many were blacklisted or otherwise persecuted--one of Dad's friends was--for things they had supported in their teens.
McCarthy's influence, more that the actual Cold War, I think, is the force behind the current use of "Communist" as a swear word. It has become totally devoid of actual substance, just a signifier for "person you should not like." MTG and others wield it as if it had content, and thousands (millions?) of people who weren't even BORN during the cold war think it is a valid critique.
Kundera's realization is exactly right--Communism as a pure expression of Marxist ideas didn't work, doesn't work. It depends upon assumptions about human nature that just aren't true, just like the assumption of the "rational actor" of Econ 101 collapses in the messy real world.
Thanks, Susan. I'm sorry about your dad's friend. All that HUAC stuff terrifies me. We did basically what the Communists were doing in the USSR.
And I think you're right, that that's where the power of that word comes from. Certainly it's not its inherent meaning. Most of the people on the right sounding off about Communism have no idea what it is.
Or by surrealistic photography where the bowler hat was deployed since the 1930s. The key definition of surrealism was two alien objects on an alien plain.
The first thing I thought of "a woman in a bowler hat" was Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. Considering the historical time frame that Cabaret takes place in, it might have also been an influence.
So good! I have not read the book nor have I watched the movie. But the title always grabs me and sometimes just pops into my head so maybe in the future? Lots of philosophical talking points here. As to your question of time, my experience has been that time exists in a loop. And until we choose differently, past events will continue to reoccur. Almost like healing a wound or trauma. We can't move past these traumatic events until we heal them and then we can move on to something better. But the hardest part, is that everyone has a choice. So as much as we demonize MAGAts (I do this too!), we cannot move past these fascist tendencies until everyone understands and agrees that it is destructive and demoralizing. And how can they do that when they will not accept the truth of our Nation's history? Living a lie keeps everyone from moving forward. Whoever thought that being "Anti-woke" would be a political movement that so many people would enthusiastically embrace? Thank you for posting your "Media's Touch" interview. Very good interview!
That was absolutely brilliant, Greg. All I remember of the movie is that I was told it was a "dirty movie," and for 1988, I suppose it was. Add to that, that it starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, and I just wasn't onboard, and have never seen it. I've also missed the book but feel as though I've gotten an education about it with this essay. I have come to absolutely LOVE Sunday columns -- they always broaden my horizons.
I was struck by the thought that “a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.” Does that help to explain the MAGA cult? I have such a passion for Life (and I capitalize it on purpose) that I don’t understand the death wish. Or extremism. Or which is cause or which is effect. Or what this all has to do with lightness. I didn’t realize how deeply you were going to inspire me to ponder the meaning of life today!
Thanks, Earl! I'm not an extremist either, or an ideologue. I'm a pragmatist, and I like to keep the peace. "Give me liberty or give me death" is an extremist position, come to think of it...
Haven’t read the book for ages, knew one of the film crew( deceased) who was absolutely amazing to talk about the film. I hadn’t given it a single thought until reading you’re analysis to present day events. Thanks again for another fascinatingly brilliant piece here Greg, I’m going to do a reading revisit, might even have to watch the movie in honor of an old friend!
Thanks, Patrick. I saw it at the time, and it made no impression because I don't remember it at all, although I think I had the poster. It seems miscast. The actors are not at all what I picture.
So interesting that you would feature this book now; I recently pulled it from one of my boxes post-move, as I unpack and organize my library.
TULOB was the first literary fiction I read after graduating college. So, I had no professors or seminar discussions to help me along with this, one of my top five favorite novels of all time.
I was delighted and intrigued when you quoted Sabina's disgust over "the transformation of music into noise", as I remember that scene in the movie often every time I am forced to endure someone else's imposition of sound onto my ears as yet another way the System is commandeering my senses.
In the movie, Lena Olin's rage over the music being played in the restaurant is so visceral, at least as I remember it, since it has been literally decades since I saw the film. I get it. The rage. The assumption of my personal space, as though it was never mine at all. Just help yourself to whatever of mine you want, especially if it allows you to distract me from how the System is never doing what it promises.
And that is why I get and appreciate Kundera's assessment of Sabina's bowler as a way of taking the oppression of the oppressors and making something of her own with it. Think of the bowler as just another smug, self-satisfied act against someone's personal space, just like the assumption that turning music into noise is the right of whatever merchant is doing so.
Why is this oppression? Because then we have ZERO choice over whether or not we will listen to it. Also, that lack of choice automatically denudes the music of its beauty; it is not being used for its power to move and mend, but to distract and sell, ie, disempower.
And if you recall, the assault on beauty was a big theme in the book. As if beauty, whether of a woman or of the earth, doesn't matter. And yet, it does.
I am not sure I would say that sporting the bowler -- a symbol of being bowled over by dumb men who assume they can do whatever they want with a woman's space, body, country -- is sexy, but it is an act of defiance, and thus power. A woman who will not be diminished by the arrogance of men who assume all that is hers is theirs -- that is what is sexy. (I also think of the bowler as the quintessential prop of Charlie Chaplin's public image, which in an oblique manner reminds me of The Great Dictator, which fits here.)
I also admire Havel, as he was perhaps the most eloquent writer about the nature of democracy and its transcendent nature, which is hard to capture, but always calling us to it.
However, I don't think that TULOB was Kundera's middle finger to Havel.
In fact, I knew nothing about their feud until I read your piece, but with that as context, I would now say that this novel was Kundera's attempt to bridge both points of view: as I recall it from years ago (I read it the year it came out, and I haven't read it since, which is why I pulled it out), Kundera was bringing to the fore questions about what is morality when it is always handed to us from the top down, and so serves someone else's interests from that lofty place? What is freedom anyway, if it is defined for you by someone else? What is the point of life? Is it really any different when the so-called leadership is overtly sadistic from when it is seemingly more benign? Isn't that when we are more docile and easily to manipulate? And isn't our docility what allows us to be manipulated into fascism in the first place?
It is always the same game, which means life is limited. Why? And by what force? This is what Kundera is really pondering. At least, that's what I "heard" when I read it.
It's why the book resonates with me still after all these years; the questions I ask are the same. he even got at the ways in which the rage and pain of the mother means that the daughter will be trapped, hating herself, just like a nation hates itself for not being free, but always being occupied by the legions of men in their bowlers or whatever silly contraption that is au currant, who help themselves to her riches, never allowing her to have enough, much less let her be abundant and rich with freedom to choose, freedom to exist, freedom to resist.
The bowler is the ultimate Fuck You to the Earth that always gives to us, but we just rape and pillage it anyway. And THAT is why when Sabina wears it, she is giving the bird right back.
In the context of Havel's and Kundera's disagreement over the supposed valor of resistance, Sabina is more than a woman. She is everything and everyone on this earth that has no choice, but she makes one anyway, however small its impact. It really is an existential question: to fight or not fight (to be or not to be), if in the end nothing really matters, especially since Tomas and Tereza, after expressing their happiness...die in a sudden accident. Again, what is the point to life?
The unbearable lightness of being is the pain of living a life that is insubstantial because it is not free. The lightness is not light, but lack of density, lack of materiality that is given meaning by the one living out that materiality.
I think Kundera was, as you say all the characters, but especially Tomas, who just did whatever the fuck he wanted because he saw the folly of thinking that life has meaning when it is always proscribed by others. Times of dictatorship are just those times when it is more apparent how shunted around like cattle we all are. Kundera was saying it is always the case that we are sheeple, but that sometimes we are more aware of it than at other times.
Fun fact: Sabina, the name, is derived from the Sabines, a Mediterranean (central Italy) tribe overtaken by who else, The Romans, the very progenitors of empire that takes whatever it wants.
And lastly, the cast of the movie is excellent. So worth watching. Lena Olin, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis. But the book is better.
Excellent comment, Whitney. Thanks for sharing all of that. And: funny that the book popped out of your unpacked box.
I agree that this is Kundera's attempt at finding a middle ground. I think it's pretty clear, reading the essays, that Havel was right -- even in the moment. I do find literary feuds interesting.
The Sabine women were all captured and raped by the original Roman settlers, all of whom were men. Impossible that Kundera was not aware of that. Also, as I gathered the excerpts for this piece, I noticed that almost all of the "deep thoughts" in the book, or at least the ones that resonated most with me, are Sabina's.
I am very sensitive to noise, and few things rankle me as much as loud music being blared in a public space, such as a beach. This is why I don't like going. There's always some selfish dipshit blasting crap and it is such a visceral thing for me. One time, when the offending family went into the ocean and left the radio on (!), I thought about taking out the batteries and burying them in the sand, but I was afraid I'd get busted.
The actors in the film are all good, but I think it's miscast. None of them look like what I imagined.
Hey, Greg. Can't speak to the subject of your Sunday Pages. However, I did want to say how well I thought your interview went on The Weekend Show. I did want to say as regards the "border crisis," that Trump was able to invoke Title 42 to close the border due to the pandemic. Biden kept 42 when he assumed the presidency but had to "uninvoke" it once the pandemic was declared over. So what he had left was the laws on the books as regards immigration. So, from all I've read about this issue, my takeaway is no, Biden did not just open the border. Biden followed the law. There's much more to be said about this than I remember, I'm afraid. So, I'll stop here!
Thanks, Lynell. I'm glad to hear that! We recorded it on Friday afternoon, and I kind of forgot about it, and then when it was on and I saw how many people were watching, I had a mild panic attack. But the feedback has been positive.
Tanks Mr o. Piple r no damn bad! Billserle.com
Thanks, Bill!
Wow, Greg. I feel as though I just attended an advanced placement seminar, and I am so grateful for your help with this book. I have to confess that even as an English major I haven’t read it (my excuse is that my concentration was American Lit). But bringing it to present day politics was a gift. Now I have to watch your videos.
Thanks, Katharine!
You've made me think about the contradictions or paradoxes Kundera poses, summed up in the image of the sexy woman in a nonsexy hat, and thinking about that brought to mind that the title itself is a contradiction. Lightness seems the bearable state and darkness the unbearable state and the unbearable darkness of being is, I think, where we are in this moment. And creating the illusion of lightness helps us see the possibilities of positive change but is not change itself, thus the author does not or cannot answer the questions for us, only light the way.
Sorry if this appears twice; I thought I posted it but it's not showing up. Anyway, I think Kundera was suggesting that our beingness is too light, that is to say it is insubstantial, when we are not free. And so, as I suggested in my comment below, since we do not at present in this world truly proscribe our own terms of freedom, life is too painful to bear.
I agree.
Good point! I love the title, even though it's weird, probably because it's a paradox. There's a lot to think about with this one, for sure.
Stunning, Greg! Thanks.
I've not read the book, so am not able to comment about your analysis, though I suspect from all your other posts that it is spot on. What interested me was in the biography:
"As a student, Kundera was an ardent Communist—the underlying concept of “we should all share resources so there is no want” is more appealing to young people with artistic tendencies than the zero-sum nastiness of unbridled capitalism—but he soon realized that the Marxist paradise he was promised did not, and could never, exist."
That is EXACTLY what a lot of young people in the 1930s felt, including several friends of my father, and they often paid for their youthful idealism when Joe McCarthy went wild. Many were blacklisted or otherwise persecuted--one of Dad's friends was--for things they had supported in their teens.
McCarthy's influence, more that the actual Cold War, I think, is the force behind the current use of "Communist" as a swear word. It has become totally devoid of actual substance, just a signifier for "person you should not like." MTG and others wield it as if it had content, and thousands (millions?) of people who weren't even BORN during the cold war think it is a valid critique.
Kundera's realization is exactly right--Communism as a pure expression of Marxist ideas didn't work, doesn't work. It depends upon assumptions about human nature that just aren't true, just like the assumption of the "rational actor" of Econ 101 collapses in the messy real world.
I will have to put that book on my TBR list.
Thanks, Susan. I'm sorry about your dad's friend. All that HUAC stuff terrifies me. We did basically what the Communists were doing in the USSR.
And I think you're right, that that's where the power of that word comes from. Certainly it's not its inherent meaning. Most of the people on the right sounding off about Communism have no idea what it is.
Not only worth the read but worth the contemplation. You always justify and reward the subscription.
I wonder if Kundera bowler hat was influenced by Burgess and Kubrick.
Or by surrealistic photography where the bowler hat was deployed since the 1930s. The key definition of surrealism was two alien objects on an alien plain.
[clock melting gif]
The first thing I thought of "a woman in a bowler hat" was Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. Considering the historical time frame that Cabaret takes place in, it might have also been an influence.
Good call, Steve. That must have been based on the nightlife in Weimar Germany, one would imagine. I'm sure he saw it somewhere.
Thanks, Chris! I hadn't thought about Clockwork Orange. I did think of Magritte.
Dude, this is so good!
Thank you, Sally!
So good! I have not read the book nor have I watched the movie. But the title always grabs me and sometimes just pops into my head so maybe in the future? Lots of philosophical talking points here. As to your question of time, my experience has been that time exists in a loop. And until we choose differently, past events will continue to reoccur. Almost like healing a wound or trauma. We can't move past these traumatic events until we heal them and then we can move on to something better. But the hardest part, is that everyone has a choice. So as much as we demonize MAGAts (I do this too!), we cannot move past these fascist tendencies until everyone understands and agrees that it is destructive and demoralizing. And how can they do that when they will not accept the truth of our Nation's history? Living a lie keeps everyone from moving forward. Whoever thought that being "Anti-woke" would be a political movement that so many people would enthusiastically embrace? Thank you for posting your "Media's Touch" interview. Very good interview!
Well said!
Thanks, Gail. I'm glad you liked the interview.
I remember Claudia Black talking about that, that trauma doesn't know time. The body clocks time differently.
That was absolutely brilliant, Greg. All I remember of the movie is that I was told it was a "dirty movie," and for 1988, I suppose it was. Add to that, that it starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, and I just wasn't onboard, and have never seen it. I've also missed the book but feel as though I've gotten an education about it with this essay. I have come to absolutely LOVE Sunday columns -- they always broaden my horizons.
"They were the Biggie and Tupac of the Czech literary scene. " Priceless.
Thanks!
I was struck by the thought that “a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.” Does that help to explain the MAGA cult? I have such a passion for Life (and I capitalize it on purpose) that I don’t understand the death wish. Or extremism. Or which is cause or which is effect. Or what this all has to do with lightness. I didn’t realize how deeply you were going to inspire me to ponder the meaning of life today!
Thanks, Earl! I'm not an extremist either, or an ideologue. I'm a pragmatist, and I like to keep the peace. "Give me liberty or give me death" is an extremist position, come to think of it...
Haven’t read the book for ages, knew one of the film crew( deceased) who was absolutely amazing to talk about the film. I hadn’t given it a single thought until reading you’re analysis to present day events. Thanks again for another fascinatingly brilliant piece here Greg, I’m going to do a reading revisit, might even have to watch the movie in honor of an old friend!
Thanks, Patrick. I saw it at the time, and it made no impression because I don't remember it at all, although I think I had the poster. It seems miscast. The actors are not at all what I picture.
So interesting that you would feature this book now; I recently pulled it from one of my boxes post-move, as I unpack and organize my library.
TULOB was the first literary fiction I read after graduating college. So, I had no professors or seminar discussions to help me along with this, one of my top five favorite novels of all time.
I was delighted and intrigued when you quoted Sabina's disgust over "the transformation of music into noise", as I remember that scene in the movie often every time I am forced to endure someone else's imposition of sound onto my ears as yet another way the System is commandeering my senses.
In the movie, Lena Olin's rage over the music being played in the restaurant is so visceral, at least as I remember it, since it has been literally decades since I saw the film. I get it. The rage. The assumption of my personal space, as though it was never mine at all. Just help yourself to whatever of mine you want, especially if it allows you to distract me from how the System is never doing what it promises.
And that is why I get and appreciate Kundera's assessment of Sabina's bowler as a way of taking the oppression of the oppressors and making something of her own with it. Think of the bowler as just another smug, self-satisfied act against someone's personal space, just like the assumption that turning music into noise is the right of whatever merchant is doing so.
Why is this oppression? Because then we have ZERO choice over whether or not we will listen to it. Also, that lack of choice automatically denudes the music of its beauty; it is not being used for its power to move and mend, but to distract and sell, ie, disempower.
And if you recall, the assault on beauty was a big theme in the book. As if beauty, whether of a woman or of the earth, doesn't matter. And yet, it does.
I am not sure I would say that sporting the bowler -- a symbol of being bowled over by dumb men who assume they can do whatever they want with a woman's space, body, country -- is sexy, but it is an act of defiance, and thus power. A woman who will not be diminished by the arrogance of men who assume all that is hers is theirs -- that is what is sexy. (I also think of the bowler as the quintessential prop of Charlie Chaplin's public image, which in an oblique manner reminds me of The Great Dictator, which fits here.)
I also admire Havel, as he was perhaps the most eloquent writer about the nature of democracy and its transcendent nature, which is hard to capture, but always calling us to it.
However, I don't think that TULOB was Kundera's middle finger to Havel.
In fact, I knew nothing about their feud until I read your piece, but with that as context, I would now say that this novel was Kundera's attempt to bridge both points of view: as I recall it from years ago (I read it the year it came out, and I haven't read it since, which is why I pulled it out), Kundera was bringing to the fore questions about what is morality when it is always handed to us from the top down, and so serves someone else's interests from that lofty place? What is freedom anyway, if it is defined for you by someone else? What is the point of life? Is it really any different when the so-called leadership is overtly sadistic from when it is seemingly more benign? Isn't that when we are more docile and easily to manipulate? And isn't our docility what allows us to be manipulated into fascism in the first place?
It is always the same game, which means life is limited. Why? And by what force? This is what Kundera is really pondering. At least, that's what I "heard" when I read it.
It's why the book resonates with me still after all these years; the questions I ask are the same. he even got at the ways in which the rage and pain of the mother means that the daughter will be trapped, hating herself, just like a nation hates itself for not being free, but always being occupied by the legions of men in their bowlers or whatever silly contraption that is au currant, who help themselves to her riches, never allowing her to have enough, much less let her be abundant and rich with freedom to choose, freedom to exist, freedom to resist.
The bowler is the ultimate Fuck You to the Earth that always gives to us, but we just rape and pillage it anyway. And THAT is why when Sabina wears it, she is giving the bird right back.
In the context of Havel's and Kundera's disagreement over the supposed valor of resistance, Sabina is more than a woman. She is everything and everyone on this earth that has no choice, but she makes one anyway, however small its impact. It really is an existential question: to fight or not fight (to be or not to be), if in the end nothing really matters, especially since Tomas and Tereza, after expressing their happiness...die in a sudden accident. Again, what is the point to life?
The unbearable lightness of being is the pain of living a life that is insubstantial because it is not free. The lightness is not light, but lack of density, lack of materiality that is given meaning by the one living out that materiality.
I think Kundera was, as you say all the characters, but especially Tomas, who just did whatever the fuck he wanted because he saw the folly of thinking that life has meaning when it is always proscribed by others. Times of dictatorship are just those times when it is more apparent how shunted around like cattle we all are. Kundera was saying it is always the case that we are sheeple, but that sometimes we are more aware of it than at other times.
Fun fact: Sabina, the name, is derived from the Sabines, a Mediterranean (central Italy) tribe overtaken by who else, The Romans, the very progenitors of empire that takes whatever it wants.
And lastly, the cast of the movie is excellent. So worth watching. Lena Olin, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis. But the book is better.
xx
Excellent comment, Whitney. Thanks for sharing all of that. And: funny that the book popped out of your unpacked box.
I agree that this is Kundera's attempt at finding a middle ground. I think it's pretty clear, reading the essays, that Havel was right -- even in the moment. I do find literary feuds interesting.
The Sabine women were all captured and raped by the original Roman settlers, all of whom were men. Impossible that Kundera was not aware of that. Also, as I gathered the excerpts for this piece, I noticed that almost all of the "deep thoughts" in the book, or at least the ones that resonated most with me, are Sabina's.
I am very sensitive to noise, and few things rankle me as much as loud music being blared in a public space, such as a beach. This is why I don't like going. There's always some selfish dipshit blasting crap and it is such a visceral thing for me. One time, when the offending family went into the ocean and left the radio on (!), I thought about taking out the batteries and burying them in the sand, but I was afraid I'd get busted.
The actors in the film are all good, but I think it's miscast. None of them look like what I imagined.
Finally: the bowler hat is sexy.
Next time, bury the batteries. Thanks again for reviewing this book! x
Hey, Greg. Can't speak to the subject of your Sunday Pages. However, I did want to say how well I thought your interview went on The Weekend Show. I did want to say as regards the "border crisis," that Trump was able to invoke Title 42 to close the border due to the pandemic. Biden kept 42 when he assumed the presidency but had to "uninvoke" it once the pandemic was declared over. So what he had left was the laws on the books as regards immigration. So, from all I've read about this issue, my takeaway is no, Biden did not just open the border. Biden followed the law. There's much more to be said about this than I remember, I'm afraid. So, I'll stop here!
Thanks, Lynell. I'm glad to hear that! We recorded it on Friday afternoon, and I kind of forgot about it, and then when it was on and I saw how many people were watching, I had a mild panic attack. But the feedback has been positive.
Biden follows laws, Trump separates families.
Wow Greg. I have to read this article again. Amazing insights. Thank you.
Thanks, Helen!
This is such powerful beautiful writing and so often you open a new world for me. Thank you.
Thanks so much, Mary!