The Unbearable Lightness of Being I

What had drawn me to Milan Kundera’s bestselling novel, unbeknownst to me when I first glanced through it in the bookshops, was its underlying existentialist nature.

Are our lives burdened by the weight of our chores and our missions, or are we burdened by life because of its very lightness, for it is afterall but a sketch, and we struggle to attach some significance to our existence? Einmal ist keinmal?

At times comical, at times tragic, at times – once too often – lusty, this is, despite its title, a heavyweight. Although only 300 pages long, it took me more than two weeks to finish this book (compared to a few days for Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy!). In its interwoven stories tracing the lives of a few entirely believable characters (including a German Shepherd), it explores some (sometimes very mature) philosophical and political themes amidst an Eastern European historical backdrop. This is not a book for everyone, but if you have the patience, you’ll definitely be rewarded.

Some excerpts:

He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

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?

Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

… living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persist by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.