Kundera: The unconditional pursuit of meaning in life is a contempt for the vastness of everyday life

The film "Love in Prague" based on Milan Kundera's work "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" (profile picture/picture)

On July 11, 2023, local time, writer Milan Kundera passed away in Paris, France.

Kundera was born on 1 April 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. His whole life seemed to be dancing with pen and paper, joking with the country and the system.

When he first heard the news, he was still a little melancholy, although it was expected, after all, he had reached the age of 94. But there is one less interesting person in this world, a writer who once inspired our thoughts. Scholar Jing Kaixuan said. He has studied Eastern European literature and thought for many years, translated three Kundera's works, and has published in-depth articles on Eastern European literature and thought in several media for more than a decade, many of which are related to Kundera. "My first feeling is that an era is over, and as Kundera said, it's an era of pop leaving, but neither of us is good at saying goodbye."

In 1986, Jing Kaixuan translated "A Party for Farewell". Later, the book came out in French translation, called "Farewell Waltz". In the late 1980s, "The Party for Farewell" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" were introduced into China and were good stories for the translation of Eastern European literature. For more than two decades, Kundera fever prevailed in the Chinese world. Many of his works are waltz-like structures, with several chapters in which the characters move briskly.

After the publication of his first novel, Joke, in 1967, it was a rapid success in the Czech Republic and France. Many thought it was a political novel, and Kundera himself said it was a romance novel. It is about Ludwik and Lucy's emotional entanglement spanning 15 years, and this tragic love story begins like this: Ludvik, a young student, writes a few jokes on a postcard to a friend, so he is expelled from the party and goes to the mine to do hard labor. Fifteen years later, he wanted to take revenge on the people who had rectified him, but found that the other party had long adapted to the new changes of the times.

November 30, 2010, Paris, France, Milan Kundera (back row, center) participated in the 20th anniversary of the publication of French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy's book review "The Rules of the Game" (Visual China/Photo)

Kundera's last novel, Celebrating Meaninglessness, was published in 2013 and the following year a Chinese edition was introduced to China. By then Kundera had completely moved towards doubt, deconstruction, and nothingness. This is a fragmented, insane theatrical work. The four friends of Alan, Ramon, Charles, and Caleban took turns to appear, and they were noisy, busy, and laughing; Time flies by, the dead disappear into nothingness, and those who remain in memory become puppets. In the end, it seems that nothing makes sense. "Pointless, my friend, this is the essence of survival. It is everywhere and forever inseparable from us. Even in places where no one can see it: in times of terror, in times of bloody struggle, in times of great suffering. This often requires the courage to recognize it by its first name under tragic conditions. But not only to recognize it, but also to love it—this meaninglessness, one should learn to love it. Kundera wrote.

Kundera was an exile. But he says he's an ordinary writer. In 1979, he completed "Laughing and Forgot" in France, which is divided into seven chapters against the backdrop of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and writes like a waltz about the lives of different classes of intellectuals in Prague, talking about their love, and their attitudes towards memory and forgetting. After the publication of the book, Kundera had his citizenship repossessed by the Czechoslovak government. In 1981, Kundera became a French citizen.

" The Unbearable Lightness of Life " ( 1984 ) is Kundera's most famous novel , a polyamorous love story of Thomas , Theresa , Franz , and Sabina in the late 1960s , as well as the situation of man in a specific historical era. Some people pursue the sublime, others oppose Keqi.

Kundera's works were banned in Czechoslovakia for a long time. He sided with the government, nor with his writer friends against it. He was ostracized by readers in Czechoslovakia. But after the 1980s, the political character of his novels gradually diminished. He prefers to write about love, about the philosophy of people in love relationships, about people's memories and forgetting. He is a worldwide writer.

Milan Kundera, along with Javier and Ivan Klima, is known as the troika of Czech literature. They have all experienced harsh times, witnessed great changes in history, and are divided due to different concepts of the world and values. Now only Klima is left in the troika. "I think the one who may have mixed feelings the most tonight is Klima, who is also an old man in his nineties." Jing Kaixuan said, "Will he be reminiscing about their lives? They used to be together for a common cause, then parted ways and finally reconciled. Because I believe they will always understand each other. ”

Kundera left the world with great literary value and intellectual legacy. He paid attention to privacy, pursued personal freedom, and opposed Keqi, and had a great influence on the circle of Chinese literary thought.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Life"

"Farewell Waltz"

After the opening of the world, the sweep of globalization, the transformation of the political pattern of various countries, and the impact and secondary impact of unforeseen phenomena such as the global epidemic on human beings, Milan Kundera's novels, their thinking, whispering, and dilemmas, moved to the 2020s, are still not outdated.

In writing his book Between Experience and Transcendence, which studies the literary concepts of Eastern European writers in the second half of the 20th century, Jing Kaixuan borrowed a passage from Saiya Berlin's assessment of Herzen as a summary of Kundera's thought. At the end of the telephone interview on the evening of July 12, Jing Kaixuan read this paragraph again——

"He believed that the ultimate goal of life is life itself, and that each hour of each day has its own end, not a means of another day or another experience... He believed in reason, the scientific method, individual action, and truth discovered through experience; Yet he tends to suspect that the creed of universal formulas and laws, of rules governing human affairs, is an irrational and sometimes disastrous attempt to escape the uncertainty and unpredictable diversity of life and escape from the false guarantees of our beautiful fantasies. ”

Milan Kundera (center) and French writer Jean-Pierre Fay (left) in Paris, France, July 3, 1981 (Visual China/Photo)

"Without the steering wheel of history, it is still possible to live"

Southern People Weekly: In the last interview in 2019, you talked a lot about Kundera.

Jing Kaixuan: My own thinking is that his work deals with the issue of modernity. There is a fundamental paradox of modernity, and when man is liberated from religion, he is faced with a huge problem: human beings are both omnipotent and individual insignificant. This is exactly what Kundera's work explores.

In this context, Kundera's work is first and foremost anti-historical, arguing that the purpose of history replaced religious belief as a source of meaning for life, leading to the catastrophe of the 20th century.

For example, Ludwik said in "Joke": In this era, everyone is no longer a person who wanders outside history, nor is he a person who pursues behind history, because he wants to guide history and make history. But ordinary people like Lucy in "Joke" actually have no sense of history, just living for their own trivial endless daily worries. Through their relationship (Ludwik and Lucy), Kundera reveals an important theme of the era: everyday life is broader than history. In his words, it turns out that under the wings of history, there is still a vast wilderness of forgotten daily life. Leaving the steering wheel of history, it is still possible to live.

Southern People Weekly: Why does Kundera have a reflection on historical consciousness?

Jing Kaixuan: Kundera lived through his time and realized that historical consciousness led to a pattern of mutual harm, resulting in a kind of unnecessary cruelty.

So when the owner of "Joke" Lu Dweck later meets new acquaintances, he can't help but imagine the scene when he was interrogated for joking, and he will wonder, will these people raise their hands in favor of his treatment? He thought that none of them would pass such a test, and they would all raise their hands like his former friends and acquaintances.

Kundera is concerned with individuality, the oppression of the individual by institutions. He once discussed Kafka in The Art of the Novel, saying that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a crime seeking punishment, while Kafka's work is a punishment seeking crime.

The Art of the Novel

"Laughing and Forgot"

(This makes a rough distinction between modern literature.) The understanding of modern Russian literature is based on the binary division of good and evil with strong emotions, including Dostoevsky and Pasternak, whose characters are either persecutors or victims. In the Western context, whether it is existential fiction or absurdist drama, their characters are not victims or persecutors, but individuals facing anxious about existence and nothingness. Kafka's fear was that humans would completely lose their true personal contact with the outside world. Camus had an essay entitled "Be neither an executioner nor a victim."

Kundera's characters are both victims and persecutors. In the revelation of human nature, it cannot be said that he has a deeper place, but it is unique, which is a theme that arises in the environment of the times. The Joke and my translation of The Party for Farewell (later translated into the French version as The Farewell Waltz), his first two books reflect on historical consciousness: those who persecuted others were later persecuted by others. Readers in the 1980s enjoyed his work very much, and should have been impressed by his personal and escape from grand narratives.

October 14, 1973, Prague, Czech Republic, Milan Kundera and his wife (Visual China/Photo)

Against Keqi, against the unconditional pursuit of meaning in life, against contempt for worthless moments in life

Southern People Weekly: His later "Living Elsewhere" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" also deeply influenced readers.

Jing Kaixuan: That's the second question I want to talk about him, his sense of opposition to lyricism is mainly manifested in "Living Elsewhere" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Life".

One of Kundera's favorite words is kitsch. It was originally a German word, but now it has entered the middle of Western languages. I've found that many people's articles are still translating it as "kitsch". I am not in favor of using this translation. When we talk about vulgar things, he is precisely what he does not against, he opposes that lyricism, a pseudo-sublime thing. It is clear that Kundera did not like Beethoven, did not like Rachmaninoff, did not like Russian writers, including Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago". He thinks it's all lyrical, it's all strange.

What is Keqi? On a small side, it is to exclude from view everything that is meaningless in existence, such as feces, where the word shit could not appear in print before. In a large way, it is against the mortality of man. Kundera saw Kerch as a curtain covering death, and they shouted Long Live Life in the procession, and Kundera did not like this lyrical attitude.

Of course, he also has to admit that kerch is an inevitable state of our human existence, we always have to find meaning, we always have to have lyrical moments, otherwise we are no different from animals.

"Living Elsewhere"

"Joke"

After moving to France in 1975, he expanded his horizons, no longer focusing on the social state of the Czech Republic itself, but on the survival of humanity as a whole from the perspective of existence, reducing the human quest for meaning to a desire for immortality. Immortal was his last novel to be written in Czech, such as the sisters Agnès and Lola, Goethe and Betina, two groups of ancient and modern characters, whom he called "emotional people". People with such feelings always have a thirst for meaning. Kundera calls this pursuit "the vicious expansion of the soul", which is in fact a keqi, an unconditional pursuit of the meaning of life, a contempt for the worthless moments of life, and a kind of self-deception that obscures the nature of life. It is the opposite of flattering the masses. The Western understanding of kitsch is entertainment, pastime, and Kundera does not hate entertainment, he hates Kerch.

This is a kind of summary of his times, and although it may be one-sided, I think it is a profound one-sidedness.

Milan Kundera, Paris, France, August 2, 1984 (Visual China/Photo)

"Che

bottom

Celebrating a light life"

Jing Kaixuan: Kundera believes that Czech modernity is the result of the Russian soul, which raises emotions to the height of value. Brodsky and Kundera had an argument, arguing that Russian reality was brought about by Western reason, not by Russian sentiments. The rationality brought by the West is the conceit of reason as we understand it today, believing that we human beings can design the most beautiful era and society, so that we can reach the ultimate beautiful paradise through the linear determinism of history.

In the West, the two mainstream trends of thought, rationality and romance, appeared after the disenchantment of religion, and all relied on human subjective thinking to solve problems. If religion is an Archimedean fulcrum, it is outside this world; Later, the fulcrum was transferred to human beings themselves, and human beings were the highest measure and purpose. The constant oscillation between irrationality and rationality creates the dilemma of modernity.

Isaiah Berlin once pointed out that there is a "gyration effect", rational historical determinism and the cult of emotional personality, which appeared simultaneously in Russia. In the final analysis, rationality and irrationality are both subjective human thinking, in fact, they are thoughts without transcendence. Therefore, when they go to extremes, they will bring a nothingness of value.

Southern People Weekly: What is the composition of the nothingness that Kundera finally goes towards?

Jing Kaixuan: Kundera has a basic view that life is uncertain, and both Romantics and Rationalists will fix life, and even fix their views on life. In "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", Sabina finally calls the unbearable lightness in human life, light is meaningless, life is meaningless. But there is also a melancholy in this novel, in which Kundera also argues that kerch is an inevitable state of human existence. But by his later works, especially his last book, Celebrating Meaninglessness, was actually a radical celebration of a light life.

"Immortal"

"Celebrating Meaninglessness"

Southern People Weekly: So he dislikes Russian literature?

Jing Kaixuan: He dislikes Russian literature, but in fact he dislikes the heaviness of Russian literature. He thought that this heavy thing actually carried a terrible evil.

Southern People Weekly: What is this evil?

Jing Kaixuan: There is something dark in the heart of Dostoevsky's characters. Kundera believes that Russia has not experienced the Renaissance, no one has been liberated, and there are strong religious sentiments behind Russian literature, especially the messianic complex, to save the world, but Kundera does not.

Kundera has a reflection on collective consciousness and is an individualist. The Polish poet Milosz was the opposite of his view, and Milosz wanted to reconstruct the basic values of the world.

Jing Kaixuan (Niu Huaxin/Photo)

"The vision of a human being, not the vision of a country and a nation"

Southern People Weekly: Javier also wanted to reconstruct.

Jing Kaixuan: Yes, they finally returned to the concept of religion. Milosz places great emphasis on the relationship between people and groups. Kundera's protagonists have very independent personalities, always defending themselves and being out of step with society, and the characters he satirizes are integrated into the group.

Arendt, for example, emphasized public life, and even believed that freedom was a life action that could only be expressed in the public sphere, which was actually an ancient Roman view of freedom. Kundera emphasized private freedom. In Kundera's view, the emphasis on public freedom is the emphasis on the idea of collectivism that obliterates individual existence. So he did not participate in the protests of his writers' friends in the Czech Republic at that time. The Czechs were disgusted with him and thought that everything he wrote was written for foreigners. In fact, his foothold is a human vision, not a national vision.

The relationship between public liberty and individual liberty has not been resolved between these writers, and it is worth further consideration. A person who devoted himself to public life would of course think Kundera was too selfish, but his achievements were eventually recognized by Czech readers, and after the Czech transformation, he was awarded the Czech National Prize for Literature, and finally even restored his nationality.

In fact, after the Czech transformation, Kundera quietly went back a few times, but he refused to appear in public. He appreciated Flaubert's idea that writers should disappear behind their own work, and that people remember their work, not the writer. So Kundera neither kept a diary nor gave interviews. He looks at the world with a helpless, desperate attitude, and Celebrating Meaninglessness is his last work. Since he pushes the meaninglessness of life to the extreme, I personally do not agree with his view, I just appreciate his deconstruction of grand narratives in specific times.

But when it comes to whether the world has meaning or not, whether life has meaning, that is what we humans have been arguing about, this cannot be proved by reason, according to Wittgenstein, this is a metaphysical thing, about which can only be silent. (laughs)

The controversy between Kundera and Brodsky, and the controversy with Havel, I think is still what we have to face today. This problem is actually brought about by modernity, not specific to any one country. The division of our world today can be traced back to this, that is, does humanity have an ultimate purpose, is history something to be determined? All of these are questions that we humans still think about today.

The significance mainly lies in the inspiration that writers bring us. Does life have meaning? If there is no meaning, then how should life be treated?

Southern People Weekly reporter Zhang Yuxin