Milan Kundera - Essay Example

Literature Review: Milan Kundera Introduction This research paper discusses inconstancy of Milan Kundera, famous modern Czech writer. His path from the Communist Party bystander to a severe critic of this regime is studied on the examples of his novels “The Joke” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. Therefore the research paper is outlined as follows: A) Introduction B) General discussion: 1) Interest in Milan Kundera; 2) “The Joke”: self-analysis as a self salvation; 3) “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”: severe criticism and sarcasm as a vision of reality. C) Conclusion Interest in Milan Kundera Milan Kundera is a famous modern Czech writer. An international interest to him can be explained by the spirit of freedom of his novels. Kundera’s attention to political and historical context of Czechoslovakia was presented through self-reflections of the writer in his novels. Deep philosophical sense, psychological analyzes of the self are masterfully presented in his novels. Kundera shows himself both as a talented historian and psychologist. In well-structured, enchanting manner Kundera entraps his readers in the worlds of his novels. His creative works is a sign of ideological struggle of Czech intellectuals in the age of Stalinism. Kundera was a Communist himself when this ideology was born, but very soon he was expulsed from the Party and his career was threatened because of his innocent joke. From that moment Kundera in his novels used jokes, irony and sarcasm in order to show how innocent trifle can ruin lives. This research paper is focused on his two novels “The Joke” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. On the examples of these two works a transformation of Kundera from a scrutinizer of the past to a sarcastic mocker of the past is shown. Dualistic manner of Kundera’s writing is shown as a basis for his novels. Thus the writer talks about the past and the present; he shows realistic and nonrealistic main characters; depicts the gap between heroes’ beliefs and realities etc. His manner of writing is bipolar; in such a way Kundera supposedly wants to show the ambiguity of human lives. This ambiguity was well-discerned on the example of the age of Stalinism. People had to think and act in one way in their daily life, but in their conscious, hearts and souls they lived other lives. Destructive force of Stalinism is shown on the examples of Kundera’s main characters of these two main novels. Ludvik, Helena, Mirek, Tamina and others were destructed by the huge ‘Communist slaughter’. In order to assess their essence, analyze their past, these characters wander between self-analysis and revenge, between accusing them and the history of their lost lives. In these tragic turbulences echoes a destiny of Kundera. Therefore while reading these two novels it is possible to reveal the curtain of mysterious genius of Kundera. His manner of narration is coherent and consecutive in “The Joke”, but is split in seven different chapters in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. Ten years’ gap between creations of these two novels reflected in stricter criticism of Stalinism. In “The Joke” the author claims that in order to deal with destructive consequences of the past, it is necessary to scrutinize the past. In the latter book there is no need for detailed analysis of the past, because a reverse attitude to such issues as laughter, sex, loves, shows the writer as an impatient and sarcastic, violent and furious critic of the Stalinist age. “The Joke”: self-analysis as a self salvation The title of the book “The Joke” shows perfectly a hidden deep sense of this profound novel. Philosophical background of this novel is a depiction of an individual loneliness and despair though these emotional states from without may seem to be ridiculous. Because of joke all the life of the main hero went in a lousy way (Lodge, p. 160). Of course, such kind of trifle isn’t enough to lead to a personal tragedy. Thus Kundera considers under the concept ‘joke’ not written funny trifle made by Ludvik, but history of Stalinism in general. In a way Czechoslovakia had lost its uniqueness and joined countries of ‘Stalinist incubator’, Ludvik lost his individuality and transformed from a potentially successful social activist into depressed nihilist. “The Joke” by Milan Kundera published in 1967 is a perfect example of imagination and allegory. Kundera shows himself as a perfect narrator and a social mocker. Realistic writer’s skills are evident in this novel. Thus characters presented in this book are exact exemplification of typical Czech citizens and atmosphere reflected in this book brings readers closer to the truths of being of those years. Kundera shows dualistic writing manner while depicting both typical characters that lived in Czechoslovakia during 60s and simultaneously giving a brief overview of Czechoslovak society. The plot of the novel is as follows: in 1965 the scientist Ludvik Jahn gets acquainted with Helena, “the wife of the man who had him expelled from the APrty in the early 1950s” (Lodge, p. 160). Driven by seduction of revenge, Ludvik makes an attempt to take away Helena from his enemy, but instead of revenge Ludvik helps his enemy to get rid of his wife. Helena is a victim of these intrigues. She falls in love with Ludvik, but finally makes an attempt of suicide. The story is told through a web of four narratives: Ludviks, Helenas, and two others (that of a religious visionary in the process of losing his faith, and of Ludviks loving school friend in a bosom, who witnesses his great love). In this original approach the author makes his readers to see the same events and characters from different points of view. Varieties of styles are perfectly unified and create a perfect fulfilling whole. Modernistic reminiscences used by Kundera when Ludvik turns back to his innocent joke that was assessed by the Communist Party as an indignant one and led to his expulsion from the university, party and military service among politically undesirable. Thus the author shows purposelessness of an individual’s life in the Communist period. Moreover, this life was split in two: admitting the party and realizing party’s inhumanity. The main character Ludvik is a dissident intellectual whose emotions were scattered off by hatred. Ludvik is a viewer of injustice of 50s; his skeptical views blame history in violence and injustice. The joke that was destructive for his destiny belonged not to him, but to the whole history. Kundera widens horizons of history consideration and detaches an individual from drastic processes and consequences of communist history. Complicated views and discussions of Kundera were strictly criticized and one chapter devoted to the role of folk music in modern society of this novel is missed. Kundera’s tendency to dualistic literary approach can be also traced in realistic and nonrealistic main characters of the novel; the gap between heroes’ beliefs and realities. Thus, Helena words, which reiterate several times throughout the novel: “I dont want my life to split down the middle, I want it to remain whole from beginning to end” (Kundera, The Joke, p. 25), exemplify this “ideological” hatred to adjusting one’s life to new circumstances. Ludvik’s considerations on destiny are as follows: “Ones destiny is often complete long before death; the moment of its end need not coincide with the moment of death” (Kundera, The Joke, p. 292). Kundera’s considerations wander between the past and the present. The author scoffs at human unwillingness to analyze their past; being frightened by scrutinizing the past, an individual ‘is sentenced to death’. For example, Helena makes an attempt of suicide and consequently leaves the city with a man to whom she is indifferent. Kostka after commitment of a mortal sin looses his contact with God. Jaroslav is stricken by heart attack that detaches him from his favorite occupation, – playing with his music band. Unlike these main characters, Ludvik was strong enough to pay a proper consideration for his past and was able to scatter off his utopian beliefs in the Party. His life was split in two: before and after penalty battalion. As far as we can see, Kundera strives for division and consideration of history in segments though he masterfully unites them. He considers the past from the present perspectives. Kundera applies a principle of inversion to Ludvik’s life: a silly joke–individual tragedy–disillusionment in Marxist utopia–transition of friends into enemies. There are four steps of Ludvik’s life development; four main characters and we can claim that at this point appears quaternary writing manner of Kundera. Nevertheless Kundera underlines duality of motifs read in the novel: in accordance with Ludvík: “And . . . the main bond with which Ive wanted to tie myself with the past which hypnotized me was revenge” (Kundera, The Joke, p. 270). Thus a connection of the past and the present is discussed by the main character. This turbulent emotional state of Ludvik can be transferred by the Czech word lítost. Kundera uses this word in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.” Kundera tries to interpret this word as follows: “…a feeling as infinite as an open accordion, a feeling that is the synthesis of many others: grief, sympathy, remorse, and an indefinable longing. . . ; a definite, precise, and sharp as a well-honed cutting edge” (Kundera, The Joke, p. 130). Kundera claims that this word can’t be translated in any other language exactly but he underlines that it is impossible to understand human soul without knowing this word. A weird semantics of this word has been studied for years by many linguists; a combination of two different states of rage and grief fits Kundera’s approach to considerations of an individual perfectly as he considers self-pity as aggression (Steiner, p. 201). Therefore Ludvik’s story is described in terms of lítost. He is wounded by ‘social downward’ and his offence is reborn into desire of revenge. Negative feelings of Ludvik can be compared with a web which entraps potential victims. Helena is entrapped in her love affair with Ludvik, whose hatred is embodied through sadistic sexual encounters. In spite of revenge his negative emotions destroy the lives of bystanders. His appeal to the past through lítost is not the best way out for him. All actions of Ludvik are reflected in distorting mirror; jokes and irony transform his deeds into something reverse. Ludvik assesses his life with a slow-motion fall into a bottomless gap: “I felt myself falling . . . down into depths of years, the depths of centuries, fathomless depths (where love is love and pain is pain), and I told myself with astonishment that my only home was this very descent, the searching, longing fall, and I abandoned myself to it, feeling its sweet vertigo” (Kundera, The Joke, p. 291). Ludvik’s personal tragedy can be seen in his suppressed by Marxist-Leninist utopia individuality. Endless meetings in the first part of his life led to dualistic attitude to people: those who raise hands for or against him. This reverse vision prevents Ludvik from equal attitude to people; there’s no need to divide people in classes, it is better to treat each of them as a unique individual. Kundera’s depiction of the main characters can be explained by his life during the era of Stalinism. Kunderas biography can be seen in “The Joke”. The author’s wanderings between lyricism and totalitarianism can be explained by similarities of Ludvik’s and Kundera’s biographies: Kundera joined the Party in 1948 and was expelled in two years after a joke, a parody of a poem by Vítězslav Nezval, the poet who glorified ideals of Communism. Unlike his main character, Kundera didn’t fall into depression and continued his creative career successfully though didn’t disdain to write about Communistic heroes. Kundera wrote both verse and prose. In lyrics Kundera –the poet reflected his emotions and wanted to reflect his inner world. In prose he used to consider and analyze facts. Kundera was greatly concerned about Stalinism. He disdained mechanisms of that regime, which entrapped people through lyricism into its iron wires. Nevertheless Kundera didn’t suggest turning away from drastic consequences of Stalinism; he suggested giving a proper consideration to it and exploring it from within. Kundera’s mockery of Stalinism lyricism can be explained in the following way: the awakening of Kundera coincided with crisis of Stalinism (1956). Therefore Kundera turned into the one of the strictest critics of totalitarianism in Czechoslovak. Similar to his hero, Ludvik, Kundera scrutinized his past through a distorting mirror and reflected his lyrics activity of Stalinist period in his novels ironically. Irony and jokes are close to Kundera. His dualistic nature is reflected in jokes too. He shows that every joke has its hidden sense. Kundera creates an ironic dialogue of his two life halves: poetic and prosaic. “The Joke” is a reverse reflection of Kundera’s early poetry: affection for his native place, his friends and childhood, his ideas on love etc. “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”: severe criticism and sarcasm as a vision of reality In the novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” (1978) Kundera appeals to Czechoslovak history again. Like in his novel “The Joke”, the title of this novel reveals the curtain of hidden motives of Kundera. The writer discusses historical facts with irony. In this novel seven stories are presented. The author is Adam who is constantly taken back from Eden (at first the socialist utopia and then “Prague Spring” of 1968). Like Camus, Kundera depicts his heroes on a political background and develops a mixture of personal and political issues (Steiner, p. 201). Two leitmotivs that are evident from the title of the novel can be seen: laughter and forgetting. The latter leitmotif can be exemplified as follows: the comrade Clementis who with all his heart put his own cap upon Gottwalds head in a dank weather on the cold day of party proclamation in 1948 and Clementis was hanged in four years and ‘vanished’ from all photos of that memorable day. Forgetting prevails in official circles. In order to recoup one’s losses, correct governmental ‘forgetting’, people struggle for lost letters recovery, photos, documents etc in order to fill in emptiness in hearts and souls. Thus an emigrant native of Prague Tamina in one of the novel’s chapters tries to restore in her memory her husband. She puts all her efforts to give rebirth to his appearance, face, memorize pet names which he used to call her tenderly, “…but all her efforts only went to show that her husbands image had disappeared for good” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part III). Another character from this novel, Miek, claims that “…the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against oblivions” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part III). Mirek restores in his memory devotion to the Party and underlines that unrealized love and happiness led to Party worshipping. Those people who were unhappy and accumulated all inner energy, outburst it in their devotion to the Party: “What seemed to be political fanaticism was only an excuse, a parable, a manifesto of fidelity, a coded plaint of unrequited love” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part III). Totalitarianism froze individuals and made ‘vegetables’ from them. Laughter as a leitmotif of this novel was also masterfully depicted by Kundera though his heavy heart didn’t let him realize all his potential skillfulness. Irony and paradoxes and not simple jokes and anecdotes evoke laughter. Humor of Kundera is dualistic: he considers it on two planes of psychological and sexual. Thus in the story “Mother” the main character visits his mother and comes across a group sex of a husband, his wife and another woman. In “The Border” a hostess inspires her guests (couples) “…to find happiness in a corner by themselves” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part VII). Therefore Kundera considers sex as a sad and gloomy, unnecessary and odd social phenomenon and laughter is considered as a cruelty. This book is finished by the images of nudists whose “…naked genitals staring duly, sadly, listlessly at the yellow sand” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part VII). Kundera makes fun of personal liberation propagated in the Western world. It’s not a freedom for him. The proclaimed personal freedoms of the West are no liberation. The character from this story, Jan, though still is a child, considers the photo of a naked woman and knows what it means “…to be bored with the female body” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part VII). Sexual desire is also expressed in monologue of an autobiographical character of Kundera, when he dreams about sex with a young woman: “…I felt a violent desire to make love to her. Or to be more exact, a violent desire to rape her. To throw myself on her and take possession of her with all her intolerably exciting contradictions, her impeccable outfits, her rebellious insides, her reason and her fear, her pride and her misery” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part VII). On the example of sexual experiences and desires of other heroes, Kundera shows that under his consideration a soulless sex is the best way of spirit of freedom. Thus Marketa dreams that her husband is headless: “The minute she severed the head from his body, she felt the new and intoxicated touch of freedom. The anonymity of their bodies was sudden paradise, paradise regained” (Kundera, The Book of Laughter, part II). Kundera underlines that suppression of Communist regime concerned intimate sphere of human lives and now a time for liberation has come; the time to reach ‘angelic’ simplicity of sexual enjoyment. Nevertheless it is necessary to underline that angels are perceived by Kundera as malicious little children, who celebrate political murders in the streets of Prague by dancing; they dance in circles and then rise up in the sky. If some of them are separated from these circles, then there is a life-long “fall into the void of a world resounding with the terrifying laughter of the angels that covers my every word with its din” (Allred, p. 128). In these lines we can see idyllist images of Communist party: once you’re expulsed from it you’d probably never join it. Therefore in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” Kundera’s manner is not ironic, but sarcastic; the themes of sex and cruelty reflect his transformation from an attentive scrutinizer of the past (like he was in “The Joke”) to a gloomy and depressed sarcastic mocker (Lodge, p. 158). Such transformation can be explained by transformations of political and historical background: a turn from idyll into a nightmare. With the help of metaphors (angels, children, laughter, forgetting), Kundera tries to describe a drastic transformation of the Communist utopia into a destructive totalitarianism and ‘political slaughterhouse’. Consequently, Kundera appeals to social realism in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. Kundera is as realistic as he never was. A new turn of his career is initiated from this novel. An angelic laughter meaning a diabolic mockery, tragic personal reminiscences and realistic brutish descriptions of sexual relations entraps readers into iron wires of masterful web of tension. A free manner of narration (seven chapters, different stories, characters, memories, philosophical essays etc) allows us to compare this book with music of Beethoven; polyphony and variation outlines a number of questions. In spite of variability of plots and characters, the theme of struggle against forgetting by those who were involuntarily sent from the country can be seen in all the chapters. Laughter also penetrates into every chapter in different forms: “…angelic, optimistic, collective laughter, expressing a simple joy being alive, is a sign of mindless destruction of individuality” (Allred, p. 130). Evil, rebellious laughter reviles against the ideal of divine perfection. Conclusion On the example of two novels by Milan Kundera “The Joke” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” transformation of the writer from an active believer of destructive ideology into its a severe critic is considered. Kundera’s liberation from oppressions and constraints of the Communist regime is a long-term and painful process reflected in his novels in detail. In order to free himself from iron web of socialism, Kundera through his characters showed a way of liberation: from a scrutinized analysis of the past to self-purification of destructive ideals. In “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”, like in “The Joke”, Kundera appeals to his young years of Communism ideals he believed in. Now he analyzes the outcomes of communist revolution and explains it as a “deed which has got out of hand, it has escaped from under the control of its creators” (Eckstein, p. 32). He claims that young revolutionaries were in a constant pursuit of communist ideals and, like a ‘rolling stone’ these ideals were impossible to reach. This novel is connected with Kundera’s personal experiences and historical events, though it is not a documentary or autobiography of the author. To the greatest extent it’s a manifestation of food for considerations about the past. An interveawing of “The Joke” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” can be seen on similarity of books’ characters: Ludvik and Mirek. Mirek, like Ludvik wants to scrutinize his past but his attempts are interrupted by the secret police. Another similar feature is Kundera’s appeal to lítost. In the latter book the writer named the whole chapter in such a way. His novels are revelation of social tragedy of years of socialism. Encapsulation of individuals, a governmental manner to treat all alike has nipped development of individuality in a bud. These two novels are about different types of idyllist illusion. Through literary devices, such as metaphors, signs, images, revelation of socialistic destructive force is perfectly described by Milan Kundera. Works cited 1. Lodge, D. After Bakhtin: essays on fiction and criticism. Routledge, 1990. 2. Steiner, P. The Deserts of Bohemia: Czech Fiction and Its Social Context. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 3. Allred, A. “The Arts of the Novel: Heidegger and Kundera on the Forgetting of Being.” Philosophy Today, 49 (2) (2005):127+. 4. Eckstein, B. J. The Language of Fiction in a World of Pain: Reading Politics as Paradox. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. 5. Kundera, M. The Joke. Harper Perennial, 1993. 6. Kundera, M. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Harper Perennial, 1999. Read More