The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ratings346
Average rating3.9
Honestly, I just found the book difficult to follow. There were some meaningful moments and tidbits of cleverly worded sentiments that stood out to me. Which is why I couldn't bring myself to just give up on this. But honestly, understanding the book would have been easier if I knew anything about the soviet period it was set in. As it was, there was just a lot I was skipping over or not understanding because I didn't get the context probably. Maybe this is one I can come back to in a while.
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
A journey to the Odyssey of the human soul, its desires, its vices, all the little voices in our heads that prompts us to be mad and reckless and docile. And we can't help it. Sometimes, this is our only response when the heart decides to take the upper hand against our firm will (not so firm then, is it?)
“She loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”
A journey to the Spring of Prague and a country that wanted her freedom, her justice back. A masterpiece of lost souls wandering in the Golden City. An elegy of obsession and madness.
And a monumental adaptation (1988) by Philip Kauffman, starring the inimitable Daniel Day-Lewis.
“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”
This was an intellectual, magical, and romantic whirlwind of a book. It was well written.
I just put the book down and the best way to describe what I am feeling is confused.
I enjoyed the first half of the book, but as it went on, the fact that the female characters were exclusively male-gaze constructed became incredibly unbearable (lol).
I really enjoyed how Time was weaved in the book and the metatextuality of the eternal return and what not. I think perhaps this was the book's strongest asset, and what can I say, I love a good use of Time.
Got very confused from the shit / kitsch part onwards although that may necessitate a re-read from my side.
Overall, don't know how to feel. I need to digest it more.
Really enjoyed this book. Paticularly Sabina's character - a representation of the ‘lightness' and ephemerality in a world without eternal return.
“The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.”
really loved the discussions on private vs public life. Quite a dense book in terms of ideas so definitely neet to come back to it more but great
“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”
I managed to finish the book, but two things really bothered me throughout. The first thing that really jumped out at me is how pretentious the novel read. Instead of focusing solely on the story itself, Kundera felt a need to make it seem much more philosophical than it really is. Which leads me to my next issue: the main character is a cheating asshole. That's really all there is to it. Though to be fair, I was warned of this in the synopsis on the back cover, and the ending does make up for it slightly. That being said, the story arc was fairly average, if slightly hard to follow at times. Deserves no more than 3 stars in my opinion.
Definitivamente este livro não é para mim. Não consegui encontrar o foco, tive que me obrigar a terminá-lo. Achei-o enfadonho, chato e até, por vezes, mal escrito.
The story and the four main characters in this book are tools for the author to expand on his philosophy about life, in particular the concepts of lightness (the insignificance of our actions, our life has no inherent meaning) and heaviness (life is full of meaningful connections and our actions have weight and lasting impact).
The narrator speaks directly to the reader and at times refers to the characters as such (not treating them as real people as a conventional narrator would). He often “pauses” the story to explain the motivations and perspectives of the characters, and to expand on his questions and ideas on love, existence, freedom and meaning. That's where the charm of the book is for me, and I enjoyed those more than the story itself, although it's hard to separate the two.
The guy who wrote this is probably so insufferable and annoying. Half the book is him making very surface level pseudo-intellectual claims. Most of the time this is very annoying.
It was definitely different from the books I've been reading these past few months.
A kaleidoscope of people, stories, fates, all in the backdrop of Soviet invasion in Czech Republic. Some thigs sound eerily familiar these days. Not in a good way.
Each rereading results in focusing a different lens - in this case, the motifs diminished in favor of the misalignments. Of the characters, it seems it is the men who only manage to make it through the first circle of the implied infinite labyrinth - Sabina moves more fluidly in a linear fashion of betrayals; while Tereza remains relatively unwavering in her attachments.
This book was pretty good especially the last chapter when it's talking about Tomas' dog. I feel like this book would've been better for me but I guess I'm too simple minded to fully understand all his metaphors. I really enjoyed the metaphors I understood and the fact that he throws in some Czech history and it's Russian Communistic control was interesting
“There is no perfection only life.”
“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, “sketch” is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
“Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”
“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”
“Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
This is one of those books which I find difficult to review as while reading this book I experienced a mix of emotions stirring within me.
This was the first time that I was reading Milan Kundera and I had heard of him as someone who's deeply influenced by Franz Kafka. That piqued my interest and I decided to give this book a shot. To begin with, Milan has a very weird and unique style of writing. I found it gripping and fast-paced but at the same time banal and pretentious.
Yes, there are some beautiful metaphors and aphorisms here and there, but overall I didn't quite like his indulgence in philosophical ramblings about lightness and heaviness. It seemed at times like he's overdoing it and I had to bear through some trite paragraphs.
One of the things which I detested the most about this book is the author's portrayal of women and the language that he has used throughout his book. The blatant objectification of women and the way he has described the women characters in this book is utterly disappointing and at times, miserably disgusting. This bothered me the most while reading the book.
Narration and storytelling wise, I would say the book doesn't do that great. Throughout the book, we see his characters struggling between the extremities of “heaviness” and “lightness” of being.
Thomas with his selfish promiscuous adventures and infidelities. Franz with his need to seek validation from the imaginary Sabina in his head. Tereza with her insecurities and jealousy. Sabina with his need to be free from everything and all attachments. The characters are suffering and having their own struggles swinging from one end to another. But at the same time, the characters do nothing in their power to change their situation and their moral ambiguity adds to their woes. As a reader, it makes the book unbearably tedious to read.
The theme of the book is too depressing and melancholic and the last chapter hits the final nail in the coffin. But I guess that's how most existential books are.
I found this book tolerable. Well, it does have some bits and pieces where it excels in terms of prose and its aphorisms but overall, I guess I could have skimmed through it and that'd have been a better choice. If you enjoy reading bleak existential philosophy, you perhaps might enjoy this book. However, there are much better existential fiction books out there. Personally, I found the Unbearable Lightness of Being, an unbearably dreary read!
It's hard to rate this book. It's so well written, and was able to keep my interest, and the author made these characters so well. It follows a few characters whose lives are either intertwined or tangential, and how their lives were impacted by each other and by Cold War Era European Soviet occupation. It's a philosophical character-driven story that was very well written.
"Comprendimos desde hace mucho tiempo que ya no era posible subvertir al mundo, ni remodelarlo, ni detener su pobre huida hacia adelante. Sólo había una resistencia posible: no tomarlo en serio"
A quien le guste Kundera le será imposible no leer esta novela corta con un poco de nostalgia, en la que casi con certeza será su última obra.
Publicada a sus 84 años (desconozco si fue escrita antes), no puedo dejar de verla como auto-referencial. Su invitación a celebrar la insignificancia, como oposición a la solemnidad, tiene como trasfondo el cuestionamiento del sentido de la vida, que quizás el propio Kundera se encuentre analizando en el ocaso de su propia vida. Y para celebrar la insignificancia, claro, hace falta humor, que al autor no le falta.
Como siempre, en el camino Kundera deja grandes relfexiones y diálogos, como la división que traza entre la gente que pide disculpas y la que insulta al chocarse con otra; las reflexiones sobre el significado del ombligo como portador de sensualidad; y la back-story de Kalinin, quien da nombre a Kaliningrado.
I will be coming back to this book many times in the future. And one day I'll try to review it as well
Kundera has a way of deconstructing the smallest of gestures and unwrapping their symbolic significance into entire sections - sometimes this feels profound, like his thoughts on kitsch, and sometimes it feels unbearably slow. Sometimes, and maybe this is because I don't see the symbolism fully, it feels kind of overdone.
I'd recommend the book overall, but it requires some patience.
Oh yes, life is so poetic, Milan. Tereza was indeed wrong to hold Tomas' infedility against him—it is her fault that he was too scared to leave someone who loved him unconditionally and asked so little in return. Yuck.
It's a good book and well written. I understand why it's so many people's favourite, however, it's not mine. I enjoyed it, it gave me a lot of thoughts to ponder, but it didn't really make me feel. I loved Teresa, she's my favourite character, just wanted to give her hug, but I could not identify with Tomas for a second, Sabina is cool, I guess Franz is okay, I like their story anyway. I enjoyed the narrator's musings, critiquing the work with references and parallelism, the analysis of Oedipus and Beethoven's Es Muss Sein stand out, but I prefer to do my own analysis. Like the author wrote the story and explained to you what to understand from each sentence, and even though it feels like the book is pushing me to think, it felt more like the book is telling me what to think, which is problem when you don't really agree with the thoughts. And after you're done with the book, there's nothing else to muse about, because the author already told you every analysis you could have, which is why I'm having a hard time writing this review. Like what else is there to say, when the analysis is already part of the book.
All in all, I really liked the book, glad I finally read it, it's just a different style from the kind of books I usually fall in love with.
Review 2019-12-21:
I picked this book up again, four and a half years later, while looking for a novel I thought might provide some insight into human heartache. It's a novel about the intersecting sex lives of ~6 people (and a dog, but there is no sex on that front!), set against a backdrop of the Soviet occupation of Czech. It's an amazing read, told by multiple narrators, where seemingly irrelevant details in one story become central themes of another. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a contemporary classic, and anyone who hasn't read it is doing themselves a great disservice.
Review 2015-06-14:
I don't know what to say about this book. I loved it, but I'm not sure why, nor really what I just finished reading. But yeah, I really liked it.