A Recommendation

Reading a novel or story by Milan Kundera is not like reading anything else: he has a languid style which slides imperceptibly from narrative to essay and back again. His books are full of delicate caged moments set side by side with off-hand philosophy. He’s never made me laugh or cry, but sometimes when I read him I have to put him down and close my eyes and just swim in his words for a while.

Here are a few of his words taken out of context, which will hopefully encourage you to read him in full.

From Slowness:

Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? Have they vanished along with the footpaths, with grasslands and clearings, with nature? There is a Czech proverb that describes their easy indolence by a metaphor: “They are gazing at God’s windows.” A person gazing at God’s windows is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has tired into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for the activity he lacks.

From The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

A year or two after emigrating, she happened to be in Paris on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of her country. A protest march had been scheduled, and she felt driven to take part. Fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism. She liked the slogans, but to her surprise she found herself unable to shout along with them. She lasted only a few minutes in the parade. When she told her French friends about it, they were amazed. “You mean you don’t want to fight the occupation of your country?” She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand. Embarrassed, she changed the subject.

From Immortality:

Agnes had long been imagining the following test: you would be asked whether after death you wished to be reawakened to life. If you truly loved someone, you would agree to come back to life only on the condition that you’d be united with your beloved. Life’s value is conditional and justified only by the fact that it enables you to live your love. The one you love means more to you than God’s creation, more than life itself. This is of course a decisive blasphemy towards the Creator’s computer, which considers itself the apex of all things and the source of all meaning. But the majority of mankind has never known love and of those people who believe they have known it, only a few would successfully pass the test conceived by Agnes; they would grasp at the promise of renewed life without asking for any condition; they would give preference to life over love and fall voluntarily back into the Creator’s web.