Book List: Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

What do you say about Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being?  Per my earlier post, I finished it in tears while eating a Subway sandwich, and like my ultimate experience with it, the book is both heart-rending and completely absurd.

1. Sabina… has there ever been a more beautiful mistress?  I propose not.  The scene with the seductress posing in front of her lover in a bowler hat might be among the sexiest and saddest in literature.
2. Dogs… if you are like me, you love dogs and animals more than most people.  The last chapters justify this love philosophically, religiously, and zealously.  I no longer feel the need to apologize when I pick my chihuahua as the one person I’d take to a deserted island.  They are the last bastions untainted by original sin.
3. Love… doesn’t fair well here.  But does it in life either?
4. History… I adore Kundera’s sophisticated perspective on revolution and politics in this book.  So often Eastern European authors (or western authors writing on the subject of Eastern European countries) take a pro or con stance on Communism and Russian occupation of countries.  This work, like Russian Dreambook (reviewed earlier), takes a more nuanced stance in the form of Franz, perhaps the most compelling character in the novel.
5. Roads not taken… perhaps the most alarming, obvious point of the book is the oft-repeated motif that we will never know if our life choices are “good” or “bad” because we only live our lives once.  How many unborn children could we have had should we have met the woman of our dreams on a passing subway card?  How many husbands have we passed without so much as a glance?  I’m often struck by the exciting/horrible possibility that a thousand alternate lives constantly swarm around me, and Kundera’s writing does nothing to allay this fear.  So I dwelt a bit on it and wrote the following…

A Love Song for My Never-Was

By: SPL

1. I write love songs for the never-was, who is better than the has-been—that itchy wool coat I wore for thousands of years, summer heat and all.
2. The love song I write starts with the word “if,” the conditional—which is code for the negative, for the never-was.  There are other times to use the word “is.”
3. I write love songs for the never-was, who is far superior to the present-is—though the present-is is also a never-was.  Dilapidated, half-built house of heart he has.
4. The love song I write is written in eggshell notes that I need to break, whip my insides into froth and want, foaming with hurt.  But you are my never-was, so these are things I’ve never done.
5. I write love songs for the never-was, whose imaginary kiss alights my lips at night, a soft moan that is my own since you and I never were.