The unbearable lightness of being

25. August 2008 | From Tino Kressner | Category: Book Review

"It is impossible to verify what decision is right, because there are no comparisons. You experience everything directly, for the first time and without preparation. Like an actor who comes on stage, without ever having rehearsed. But life can be worth if the first rehearsal for life even the life itself? [...] Each student may take the hour through the physics experiments to check whether a scientific hypothesis is correct. The man lives but one life, he has no possibility of the correctness of the hypothesis in an attempt to prove. "

Information on the author Milan Kundera
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Content

Tomas is an excellent brain surgeon in a Prague hospital. He has, after two years of marriage his wife separated, and pay for regular child maintenance. "He had understood that he was not born on the side of whichever woman ever to live, and that he had only a bachelor throughout his own he could." For him sex has nothing to do with love. He enjoys his freedom and a non-binding, sex with many women.

1965 Tomas travels because of a complicated case in a small town, 200 km from Prague, as representative of his head. There, he sees in a Hallenbad Theresa, for which he was immediately interested. She is a waitress in a bar, and will quickly draw attention to Tomas, who with a book at a bar table set. Since it is in the small town of not many people who read them and just "Karenina" reads pleased they finally get a conversation partner, with which they talk about intellectual things may be. After an hour break Tomas already. Teresa sad goodbye from him and returns back into her life back unsatisfied.

After ten days it is cold before Tomas' door of the next few days to take care. Tomas continues with its first series of his one-night stands continues. A week later, she travels back and Tomas consider whether it is the right decision would be her nachzureisen.

Teresa takes the decision for Tomas and call him in the hospital. After a meeting and another night, he surprisingly stated that he is the first time next to a woman wakes up. As "Don Juan" is it the other an important rule to the distance to the women rights. Despite it with Teresa seems to be serious, he continued the sexual relationship with the painter Sabina, mutually respected in their freedom.

Tomas asks Sabina Teresa for a job in Prague to arrange. It starts first in a photo lab and is working quickly with the press photographer high.

Tomas is not really interested in more on politics, but think about the criminal regime of the Stalinists after. He thinks that although these were clueless, but not innocent. He compares this with Oedipus, the debt itself from the eyes ausstach after he realized that he unknowingly slept with his mother and his father was killed. The Stalinists but feel no guilt and live on as if nothing had. "The morale has changed since Oedipus' Regrets Tomas. He summarizes his thoughts in a letter together, which is actually printed.

After some time to marry Tomas and Teresa. She dreams of how they watch, when Tomas has sex with Sabina. One night she suddenly stops and breaks before Tomas emotionally together. They complain about their jealousy and that she could not bear it when he meets with other women or even have sex with them. Tomas implores you to: "Take me to them. Among the other women. I will for you undress and bathe. "Tomas said that the sex with the women only a sporting pleasure is comparable to football.

March 1968 the members of the Warsaw Pact, to the "Prague Spring to exit." Teresa photographed the scene and the film is a foreign correspondent, so that the pictures published.

Sabina travels to Geneva, and then maintains a relationship with the university lecturers Franz, they will take along his lecture tours. Franz is married and ended their marriage but on the basis of moral concerns, to be with Sabina together. Sabina sees itself in its freedom and so confined Franz then leaves. They traveled on to Paris and later the Americas.

Teresa believes that ease the life of Tomas do not anymore and writes him a farewell letter: "For you, life is so easy for me so hard. I go back into the land of the weak. "Together with their dog Karenina she travels back to Prague. Tomas enjoys his newfound freedom briefly, but then follows her. Upon entry into Czechoslovakia will pass him off. His earlier hospital provides him back initially, but his boss insists that he is from his earlier letter on Oedipe distances. Tomas his pride makes him refuse revocation and lose his job. He initially started in another hospital as a normal doctor to work, but then lose because of not distancing also signed this profession and begins to clean windows.

Teresa earns some money as a barmaid added. One day it will be by a sixteen year old boy turned on. He ordered the cognac while serving to minors is prohibited. It pours him only lemonade On. A host of other claims, however, they would have him alcohol also attached. A third party gets involved and supports Teresa. First, out of gratitude, and later to their jealousy, they are off this helper out. But it is suspicious and believes Tomas had sent him to them to test.

Teresa still can not live with their jealousy and persuades Tomas with her over the country. They sell their possessions and goods and to acquire for a small house with a garden. He drives trucks and she is careful with her dog Karenin cows.

Teresa Karenin about whether she loves better than Tomas. Your love for your dog is selfless, free from expectations and jealousy. She loves him just as he is. When he starts to limp and the doctors determine that he is suffering from cancer, you can put him Tomas.

Tomas renkt a servant's shoulder again and goes to celebrate the day with Teresa and the other from the village into the nearest town to celebrate. On the way back they come from the wet road and its brakes fail. Both die.

Historical classification

The book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" begins in the mid-60s and played in Prague. On 5 January, Alexander Dubcek to the party leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party elected. With an extensive reform program, it aims at in spring 1968, the liberalization and democratization of his country. The censorship is lifted and the trade unions and cultural organizations receive more autonomy. Dubcek promoted "socialism with a human face" and wants to show that individual freedoms are possible under Communism. On the night of 20 to 21 August 1968 back troops from five Warsaw Pact countries into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) a. Thus, as the "Prague Spring" reform designated violent attempts ended. Alexander Dubcek is with the entire Politburo and arrested in the Soviet Union brought. These must be in the "Moscow Protocol" the withdrawal of the reforms promise. Dubcek is then in April 1969 in favor of a loyal successor moscow discontinued.

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Assessment

Milan Kundera linked in his book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" sent the real history of his country to the Prague Spring with a fictional life history. He mixes dramatic narratives with their own psychological and philosophical considerations. The narrative alternates between this and personal auktorialen narrator.

The focus is on the unhappy love between Tomas and Teresa. They willingly leaves her unsatisfying life in a small town and comes to her great love in the big city after Prague. He loves his freedom and the women. Permanent she Tomas conditions and has a great desire to modify it. She wants him for himself alone, and with no other women share. This conflict will ask for the meaning of loyalty to freedom in a relationship. If you are ready for a relationship between a part of his personal liberty to sacrifice? And how far should these restrictions go? Kundera suggests its own ideas within the novel the reader to think about relationships.

The sample of life is life itself for a human being there is no way a decision initially to test or to prove what is the right one. "It is impossible to verify what decision is right, because there are no comparisons. You experience everything for the first time immediately and without preparation. "This view contains an incredible liberation in itself. Because it does not matter what decision we make, there is no way to prove that the other decision would have been better. The conclusion could be that the burden of "what if?" Issue we can put with a lightness and any decision to accept our lives.

Tomas While it has learned with this easy to go through life, Teresa is always the question of how different their lives might look like. She is on constant search for recognition and love by Tomas. Only when they used it for a living in the countryside could talk, she recognizes that her love for dogs is probably better, because they loved him so as he is. It notes with this love to be happier, because they also can never be disappointed. Not least because such knowledge generated Kundera with his book, a world success. So does the work of a practical guidance for a relationship to be. It shows how unhappy you can do are: High expectations, sacrifice for others, desire to change the partner, anger over decisions. Kundera has with Teresa and Tomas gravity and ease of life personified. He wonders now what way is the right one, but there is no solution to this question.

With an almost depressive attitude Kundera describes the problem of every relationship in which two adult people meet: "As long as people are still young and the score of her life until the first bars arrived, they can jointly compose and exchange motives ( ...) and meet them but if they are older, the composition is more or less completed, and every word, every object is in the composition of the individual something else. "

The historical events in the country is forcing the couple to make decisions that influence the development, but less on the outcome. Kundera reported by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia, from the end of the Prague Spring and the return to Stalinist regime. He does this assessment and will remain free as his main actor Tomas apolitical. Even as this because of the Oedipus comparison his entire career is destroyed, complains he is not about his job as a lower window cleaners.

With the hyper-intellectual observations about life and love always Kundera interrupts the dramatic progress of the story. An empathy-the life story of the main players was very difficult for me because I keep on thinking and philosophy has been suggested. I searched for evidence and contradictions in my own relationships or those of friends and I wanted to always held from the actual reading. The book inspired me to think and debate and will thus be read by me value.