summarize the “action” of Kundera’s novel within the scope of a review, one must abstract the narrative from its structural context. The effect, whatever the reviewer’s intentions, is to imply that what really matters in the novel is “the story.”

Surely, however, what “really matters” in a novel that calls itself The Unbearable Lightness of Being is its illumination of being. In a brilliant essay in The New York Review of Books entitled “The Novel and Europe,” Kundera suggests that the rise of science—“which, in reducing the world to an object of technical and mathematical investigation,put die Lebenswelt, the world of concrete living, beyond its pale”—has been paralleled by the development of the novel: “Cervantes gave birth to a great European art which is nothing other than the perpetual investigation of the being ignored by science.” The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Heidegger’s diagnosis of “the forgetting of being,” was anticipated, Kundera says, in “four centuries of novel-writing.”

While unhesitatingly affirming the cognitive authority of the novel to “shed light on existence” (he defines the history of the novel as “the sequence of [its] discoveries”), Kundera is, however, equally emphatic in his seemingly contradictory insistence that “The novelis a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses. Reflection within the novel is hypothetical by its very essence.” In practice, though, what does this mean? In what sense is the reader of Kundera’s novel intended to regard its various reflections as “hypothetical”? These questions are not extrinsic to the novel, imported from the classroom; rather, they are the very questions that must arise in any responsible reading of Kundera’s text. It is not merely a matter of extracting the novel’s ideas.

To read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, one must (whatever one makes of his paeans to Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, and the novel as play) take seriously Kundera’s project for the novel as a form. To do so, one is not required to share Kundera’s vision of human life and its place in the universe—not at all; one must, however, share his faith in the novel’s unique capacity to observe “man’s concrete being, his ’living world.’” Those who find such ambitions inappropriate to a work of fiction, or merely pretentious, should not read Kundera’s novel.

If it is impossible here to follow Kundera’s “investigation into existence” throughout the novel, it is at least possible to consider in detail a representative passage before summarizing the “love story” that constitutes the main plot line. The novel’s opening chapter is a brief one, about a page and a half long. Here is Kundera’s first paragraph:The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

This is an extraordinary way to begin a novel. The content is surprising, but this is not all that gives pause: Who is speaking? It seems that the novelist himself—not a character or a “narrator” in the conventional sense of the term—is speaking here, addressing the reader with a compelling directness, yet Kundera never resolves the uncertainty which the reader feels after the first paragraph concerning the status of such reflections. The remainder of the chapter—the answer to the question posed in the first paragraph—is vital to the whole overarching structure of the novel, yet hardly a single review so much as mentions this meditation on the notion of eternal return, let alone outlining its function in the novel and critically engaging the implications that Kundera draws from it.

What does Kundera make of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “mad myth”? He begins with a dazzling dialectical trick:Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.

While the reader is still grappling with the question that concludes the opening paragraph, Kundera makes this stunning assertion—almost by the way.

At first, the reader is unlikely to appreciate what has hit him. The entire tradition of Western literature rests on the assumption that individual decisions, acts of human will, are invested with significance by the irrevocable flow of time. In the world of Western literature, profoundly influenced by Christianity, human beings are both blessed and burdened with an awesome power to choose, to exercise their freedom; it is no accident that Kundera plants references to Anna Karenina in the course of his narrative, for Leo Tolstoy’s novel is among the supreme exemplars of the drama of irrevocable choice that can be traced all the way back to the Iliad of Homer.

Implicitly rejecting this tradition, Kundera maintains that only if events were to recur would they have significance, weight: “If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre.There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.” That which is “ephemeral, in transit”—in other words, “light”—cannot be submitted to moral judgment, Kundera asserts: “In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.” This move accomplished, Kundera gives his argument a final twist. He recounts “a most incredible sensation” that he experienced while leafing through a book about Adolf Hitler. Certain portraits of Hitler, Kundera says, reminded him of his own childhood, and he was touched:This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.

Some readers may feel that it is Kundera’s moral perversity that is revealed here; certainly the passage is characteristic of the deliberately provocative tone of his fiction. In any case, as noted above, this opening chapter is crucial to the novel’s structure. It introduces the metaphorical opposition between “lightness” and “weight” that organizes much of the book, in particular the notion of “the unbearable lightness of being.” The interlocking stories of the novel’s main characters all are presented in terms of the conflict between traditional concepts of moral choice and destiny (“character is fate”) and the radically opposed perspective that Kundera introduces here, summed up only a few pages later in the novel: “Einmal ist keinmal.What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.” Finally, this brief opening chapter of a page and a half establishes the book’s polyphonic structure, its capacity to embrace modes of thought normally regarded as foreign to the novel.

Such reflections, meditations, and arguments are as integral to the novel as the stories with which they are interwoven, and while it is not possible to discuss them all, or even most of them, one must at least acknowledge their existence, ranging from reflections on the word “compassion” and its cognates and on Ludwig van Beethoven’s last quartet (part 1) to “A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words” (part 3), from an essay on kitsch (part 6) to a disquisition on man’s treatment of animals (part 7)—not an exhaustive list.

Indeed, the characters themselves are schematically presented—explicitly so. “It would be senseless for the author to try to convince the reader that his characters once actually lived,” Kundera writes, beginning the first chapter of part 2. Yet, by the grace of fiction, his characters live in the reader’s mind—particularly Tomas and Tereza, the novel’s principal pair.

Tomas, a surgeon, divorced, a Don Juan of the type familiar in Kundera’s fiction, meets Tereza in a small town, where they talk for an hour or so before his train leaves for Prague. Ten days after that first casual meeting, Tereza (much to Tomas’ surprise) visits him in Prague. They make love; she stays for a week, sick with flu, and then returns to her provincial town. After a time, she comes back to Prague and to Tomas, who rents a room for her: They are lovers, but he does not want to give up his independent life-style.

Tereza is “heavy”: Her love for Tomas is exclusive, a kind of absolute. Tomas is “light,” incorrigibly promiscuous. Although he eventually marries Tereza, and although he is well aware of the suffering which his infidelities cause her, he continues to be unfaithful to her. At the same time, he sacrifices much for her. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, he falls out of favor with the government and is relegated to a provincial clinic. Even there, however, the political pressures are relentless, and he ceases to practice medicine at all. Finally, he and Tereza end up in the country, where they buy a small cottage from a farmer who is moving to town; Tomas drives a pickup truck for the local collective farm. He is driving that truck when he and Tereza are killed in an accident while traveling to a nearby town, where they occasionally go to dance and spend the night in the run-down hotel.

Kundera’s telling of the story is richer than this summary suggests (not to mention the relation of their story to the novel’s other plot lines). The reader learns of Tomas’ and Tereza’s death before the halfway point of the book (there are shifts in chronology throughout, and several times the same incident is related from two different points of view); the effect of this revelation, which is presented matter-of-factly, is to give their death a force that it would have lacked had it occurred at the end of the novel. At the same time, this device gives added resonance to that which follows, for the reader sees it all in the light of Tomas and Tereza’s end.

This is particularly true of the novel’s closing passage, which tells of Tomas and Tereza’s first trip to the town on the road to which, after repeated visits, they will meet their death. On this first night there, after dancing with friends from the collective farm, they go up to their room in the hotel; the last paragraph of the novel describes the scene:Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Tereza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.

This passage has an odd, almost whimsical beauty; it is a reminder that, along with his well-advertised affinity with the Enlightenment spirit of Diderot, Kundera also has an affinity with Franz Kafka and with the Czech Surrealist poets. The tenderness of this concluding paragraph—surprising, perhaps unearned, but nevertheless welcome—brings to mind Kundera’s injunction against taking any one of the novel’s many voices as unequivocally that of the author.

*Prague

*Prague. Capital city of Czechoslovakia and home of Tomas, a successful surgeon and one of the novel’s two protagonists, and the primary setting. At the beginning of the narrative Tomas welcomes a young waitress named Tereza, whom he met in a small provincial town some months before, into his flat on the presumption that she has moved to Prague to find work. Later he realizes that she has actually come to Prague to pursue a romantic relationship with him and that finding a job there is a mere pretense to gain access into his life. Although Prague promises greater financial and cultural opportunities for Tereza than her provincial home, her main goal is to win the love of Tomas.

In Tereza’s mind, location is inconsequential—she must live with Tomas, and feels that her love for him will flourish no matter where it may take them. By the time she reaches Prague it has already taken her from her home and family, but Tereza is unmoved by the loss. A fatalist to the end, she believes from the first time she sees Tomas that he is her destiny. She sacrifices everything she knows in order to be a part of his life.

Kundera’s choice of Prague as the novel’s main setting provides him with a landscape for commentary on the challenges of everyday life in a Soviet satellite nation during the final years of the Cold War. According to the narrator, the people of postwar Prague have an “inferiority complex” because, unlike other European cities, theirs was almost completely spared the physical ravages of World War II. Most of Prague’s historical architecture remained intact, and Prague was not forced to restore them after the war. Ironically, whereas most European cities enjoyed a renaissance as they rebuilt, Prague grew stylistically and spiritually stagnant. In this sense, the Soviet occupation seemed the fitting capstone to a process of moral and aesthetic bankruptcy that had been developing for decades.

*Zurich

*Zurich. Swiss city to which Tomas and Tereza flee after the Soviets invade Czechoslovakia. An intellectual who has gone on record as a critic of communism, Tomas fears reprisals in Czechoslovakia. In Zurich, a colleague finds a position for him as a surgeon in a large, prestigious clinic. However, Tereza feels estranged by the anonymity of the cosmopolitan Swiss city. As her relationship with Tomas strengthens, she gradually convinces him that the sense of freedom they both feel outside the Iron Curtain is merely illusory and that their isolation from their native culture and way of life will damage them far more than the threats of communist ideologues. She urges him to return with her to Prague.

Although he becomes emotionally committed to Tereza, Tomas has a history of womanizing. In Prague, Tomas has sexual encounters with several women, and Tereza assumes that moving to a strange foreign city will end his affairs. However, Tomas manages illicit affairs in Zurich as well. When Tereza realizes that simply moving away from Czechoslovakia will not stop her lover’s infidelities, the idea of living in a place where she is isolated from her friends and family and is dependent on Tomas for emotional support loses its appeal.

By the middle of the novel Tomas and Tereza return to Prague, having found that Western Europe holds little of the happiness and fulfillment it once promised. Despite holding a wealth of professional and cultural opportunities for both Tomas and Tereza, Zurich paradoxically affords neither a strong sense of personal growth or freedom.

Collective farm

Collective farm. Spartan collective farm in the Czechoslovakian countryside in which the final chapters of the novel are set. Because of his record of opposition to communist totalitarianism, Tomas is not permitted to resume work in Prague as a physician. After three years of working there as a window washer, he tires of living in the city that has rejected him. He and Tereza eventually take jobs on a collective farm, where they resign themselves to a simple existence herding cattle.

A few years later, both Tomas and Tereza are killed in an automobile accident. However, their demise is not characterized as tragic. Their decision to capitulate to a complacent, nameless existence on the collective farm rather than remain in Prague and actively resist Soviet oppression suggests that, at least figuratively speaking, Tomas and Tereza “died” long before any accident claimed their lives. However both were content to do so, seeing their personal commitment to each other as far more significant than any obligations to a state no longer sympathetic to the needs, dreams, or desires of its individual citizens.

The History of Czechoslovakia

The region that later became Czechoslovakia was originally comprised of separate areas within the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the conclusion of World War I. The Czech population lived in Bohemia and Moravia, regions under Austrian control, while the Slovak people inhabited Slovakia, which was part of Hungary. Despite having distinct interests, concerns, and levels of industrialization, these two regions declared their independence as the Republic of Czechoslovakia after World War I. They experienced a brief period of democracy in the interwar years; however, in 1938, Adolf Hitler invaded the nascent nation, taking control of Prague.

Following the defeat of Germany, Czechoslovakia was reestablished, but it came under the influence of the Soviet Union. In 1948, the Communists took power, establishing a government reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the Communist Party controlled all facets of life, including government, arts, education, and culture.

The Prague Spring, 1968

In the 1960s, leaders like Alexander Dubcek sought to implement modest political reforms. In this environment of easing oppression, writers and artists began advocating for more extensive and rapid reforms. In June 1967, Milan Kundera addressed the Fourth Czechoslovak Writers Congress, calling for open dialogue and an end to censorship and repression. Many who voiced their opinions at this congress faced repercussions.

Despite these reprisals, the momentum for reform did not wane. In January 1968, Dubcek became the party's secretary and strived to create a more humane form of socialism in Czechoslovakia. However, this movement was not well-received by the Warsaw Pact countries, especially the Soviet Union, which was wary of any significant changes in its satellite states.

The Soviet Invasion, August 1968

As a result, in August 1968, forces from the U.S.S.R. and other Eastern Bloc nations invaded Czechoslovakia. The occupation led to Dubcek's removal and the cessation of the reform movement. The Soviets established a new Czechoslovakian regime characterized by harshness and repression. Writers, including Kundera, lost their jobs and were banned from public speaking or publishing their work. For approximately seven years, Kundera was not permitted to travel to the West.

Conditions in Czechoslovakia largely remained unchanged until 1989, despite the growing reform movement in the Soviet Union under President Mikhail Gorbachev. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 triggered significant changes in Czechoslovakia as well. Eventually, democracy was restored in Czechoslovakia, but not without challenges. In the early 1990s, Slovakia, the country's eastern region, sought greater autonomy, with many Slovakians advocating for full independence. At the same time, Czech nationalists also desired their own sovereign state. Although President Havel was strongly against the division, the country's populace voted in 1992 for candidates supporting the split. Consequently, in January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into two independent nations, now known as the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Narrator

One of the most intriguing techniques employed by Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being is his use of a narrator. At the book's outset, readers are introduced to a reflection on the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and the ancient Greek thinker Parmenides. It soon becomes evident that a distinct narrative voice is conducting this reflection, a voice that both shapes and engages with the story while maintaining a certain detachment: "Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler's concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?" Many readers might infer that the narrator is Kundera himself. Later in the narrative, the narrator reveals to the reader that he has "been thinking about Tomas for many years," suggesting that it is the author-as-narrator who has brought Tomas into fictional existence. Similarly, the narrator shares that Tereza originated as a sensation in his stomach.

However, while it might be tempting to assume that the "I" in the narrative is Kundera, it's also plausible to view the narrator as another character within the story, somehow intertwined with Kundera yet distinct from him. This narrative strategy is not unprecedented; Geoffrey Chaucer employs it in The Canterbury Tales, the renowned fourteenth-century work, by crafting a persona for himself as one of the pilgrims.

Why would an author choose to employ such a technique? Kundera's narrator establishes the philosophical framework of the novel. Being separate from the story, the narrator can offer commentary on each character beyond the characters' awareness. This separation grants the reader access to exclusive insights shared with the narrator, fostering trust in the narrator's credibility.

Another reason Kundera might opt to create a narrator is to consistently remind readers that they are engaging with fiction, not reality. The author's intrusions, like those made by the narrator, emphasize the fictional nature of the story while making the author feel more present to the reader. It creates the sense of a direct conversation between the author and the reader.

Upon closer inspection, the second purpose further complicates the narrator's role. While it might appear that the author is conversing with the reader, what's actually occurring is the reader's interaction with black marks on paper, marks that the writer put down years earlier. Despite how much the words resemble spoken language, they remain meticulously crafted remnants of a human creator. When readers are made to recognize the inherent artificiality of fiction, the narrator inevitably becomes a character in his own right. Even if his reflections on the characters and human existence align with Kundera's thoughts, by choosing to insert himself into the book, Kundera has fashioned a fictional persona tasked with narrating the story to the best of his ability.

Setting

The Unbearable Lightness of Being unfolds in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s. Kundera's personal experiences during the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion add a profound depth to the narrative. The setting serves several key purposes. As a love story, The Unbearable Lightness of Being contrasts the romantic entanglements of its four main characters against the backdrop of the Russian invasion, highlighting the stark differences between love and hate. Furthermore, the setting enables Kundera to explore the impact of a totalitarian regime on the creation of art, and by extension, on the creation of life itself.

In "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Kundera employs a mix of narrative styles similar to those in "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting." However, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" leans more towards a conventional novel format. For instance, the plot and character development generally follow traditional patterns, even though the story deviates from a linear timeline. A notable divergence occurs when Kundera reveals, about two-thirds into the novel, that Tomas and Tereza died in an accident due to brake failure on Tomas's truck. This revelation casts the two characters in a gentler light as the story progresses.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being tackles the same social issues as The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, exploring life under Czechoslovakian communism, and arrives at similar general insights. However, The Unbearable Lightness of Being adopts a slightly different narrative style, emphasizing a smaller group of characters and tracking their journeys throughout the novel. The story centers around three main Czech characters: Tomas, Tereza, and Sabina. All three leave the country following the 1968 Russian invasion, although Tomas and Tereza eventually return. Tomas, a prominent surgeon who is mostly apolitical, becomes a target of the secret police due to an article he wrote about Oedipus Rex during the liberal Dubcek regime. His refusal to retract the article leads to a gradual decline in his career, as he moves from being a surgeon to a physician in a rural clinic, then to a window washer, and finally to a truck driver on a collective farm.

1960s: Czechoslovakia is a committed member of the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance that comprises the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries.

Today: The Czech Republic has become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance that includes the United States and Western European countries.

1960s: Starting in 1962, the Czechoslovakian government begins taking steps toward reform, loosening restrictions on its citizens. In 1968, during the period known as the Prague Spring, various writers and artists publicly oppose totalitarianism. However, within a few months, Soviet tanks invade Czechoslovakia, forcing the country back under Soviet control, marking a time of intense repression.

Today: Following a phase of economic reform, the Czech Republic applies for European Union membership in 1996, anticipating acceptance by 2004. Concurrently, the nation maintains strong connections with some former Warsaw Pact countries. In June 2002, the Social Democratic Party, led by Vladimir Spidla, wins the general election.

1960s: Czechoslovakian writers and artists are required to submit their work to state censors, adhering to the "social realism" aesthetic. Non-conforming works are prohibited. Despite this, an underground community of writers and artists continues to create high-quality work, though it cannot be published or displayed in Czechoslovakia. Many are forced to leave their homes and endure severe oppression in their country.

Today: Works by dissident Czech writers are now available in Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel, a prominent dissident writer who spent four years imprisoned under the previous regime, is elected president of the Czech Republic in 1993. Numerous exiled Czech writers can now return to their homeland for visits.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with its conventional style, harks back to many novels of the nineteenth century. A fitting comparison would be Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1873-1877), which is notably referenced in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Tereza is reading Anna Karenina when she first encounters Tomas, they name their dog Karenin, and the final section of the novel is titled "Karenin's Smile."

The film adaptation of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was released in 1988, directed by Philip Kaufman. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Tomas, Juliette Binoche as Tereza, and Lena Olin as Sabina. The movie achieved box office success, thanks largely to its intense sensuality and Olin's standout performance. It remains faithful to the novel's essence and captures the mood of the Prague Spring and its consequences effectively. However, some of the novel's unique narrative techniques are lost due to the film's linear timeline and the lack of direct commentary from the author. Despite these limitations, it is still a film worth watching.

The film adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being was released in 1988. Directed by Phillip Kaufman, the movie features performances by Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche. It is available on DVD through Home Vision Entertainment.

In 1988, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was also produced as an audiocassette by Books on Tape, located in Newport Beach, CA. The narration is provided by Christopher Hurt.

Sources

Banerjee, Maria Nemcová, Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera, Grove Press, 1990, p. 206.

Bayley, John, Review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in London Review of Books, Vol. 6, No. 10, June 7-20, 1984, pp. 18-19.

DePietro, Thomas, "Weighting for Kundera," in Commonweal, May 18, 1984, pp. 297-300.

Doctorow, E. L., Review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in New York Times Book Review, April 29, 1984, p. 1.

Gray, Paul, "Songs of Exile and Return," in Time, April 16, 1984, p. 77.

Hawtree, Christopher, "Bottom Rung," in Spectator, June 23, 1984, pp. 29-30.

Howard, Maureen, "Fiction in Review," in Yale Review, Vol. 74, No. 2, January 1985, pp. xxi—xxiii.

Kinyon, Kamila, "The Panopticon Gaze in Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being," in Critique, Vol. 42, No. 3, Spring 2001, pp. 243-51.

Le Grand, Eva, Kundera; or, the Memory of Desire, translated by Lin Burman, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999, p. 3.

Lesser, Wendy, "The Character as Victim," in Hudson Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, Autumn 1984, pp. 468-82.

O'Brien, John, Milan Kundera and Feminism: Dangerous Intersections, St. Martin's Press, 1995, p. 116.

Further Reading

Brink, André, The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino, New York University Press, 1998.
Brink’s book offers in-depth chapter analyses of a selection of novels organized chronologically. The section on The Unbearable Lightness of Being employs reader-response criticism to "explore the gaps."

Misurella, Fred, Understanding Milan Kundera: Public Events, Private Affairs, University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
Misurella’s book serves as an excellent and accessible introduction for students interested in delving deeper into Kundera’s work.

Petro, Peter, ed., Critical Essays on Milan Kundera, G. K. Hall, 1999.
This outstanding collection of academic essays and interviews with Kundera is a valuable resource for those analyzing Kundera’s writings.