Well I imagined this would be a quirky little comedy from the title. It’s anything but… There’s a 1988 film of the same name which appears to be pornographic (I haven’t seen it), perhaps because the demands of the film medium demand that everything is visually explicit… There are certainly a lot of sexual encounters in the book but they are distantly observed, rather than intimately slavered over… So what exactly is The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
ULOB could be called a philosophical novel. Nietzsche is quoted in the first sentence, and there are quite a few references to theologians and religious concepts, mainly Christian. The opening presents a cosmological discussion, proposing that every event may be eternally repeated throughout the universe, and how that endless multiplication would feel in terms of an oppressive over-significance: this is apparently the gravitation against which the protagonists are going to struggle, attempting to put lightness and randomness into their lives in order to give themselves space to breathe.
It’s worth stating that being a novel of ideas doesn’t mean that the characters spend their time debating their world views with each other. It’s very focused on what they do, why they do it and how they feel about themselves and other people - so very genuinely a novel. All references to Parmenides or Nietzsche are by the author, not by his fictions. We are able to see how their attitudes work out in action, in their ways of life.
So it is best to read ULOB as an ethical and relational tension between freedom and commitment rather than an abstruse speculation about the nature of time and space. As such it is very relevant to modern life, at least in the West. Here freedom is seen as being unconstrained by the demands and expectations of others, so that we can pursue our personal dreams, control our own destiny and, in the words of Walt Disney, “Be anything we wanna be.” Commitment to other people or groups or institutions has I think come to be seen as constraint and as inauthentic, forcing stereotypes upon us, taking our way of life from external rather than personal factors, betraying the impulses of our own wonderful selves. For some, this seems to extend even to areas of fact: reality should be what I decide it is, that’s my truth, no matter how bonkers it looks to anybody else.
So there grows up a Western drive to cut ourselves loose from any form of restraint, especially perhaps in the area of personal relationships. This is Kundera’s lightness, to be detached, not answerable to anybody, to be unfetteredly individual.
But there are downsides to this declaration of personal independence. Pursue it to the uttermost and you end up with no family, no enduring friendships, no social cohesion, loneliness, isolation, disconnection, shallowness… Our relationships become the gravitation dragging us down, willingly or unwillingly, to what some may regard as inauthenticity but others see as fulfilment through loving relationships with others. Compassion – surely a quality the world has desperate need for – is identified early on as a key part of gravity: this glue that attaches us to the inner lives of others is above all going to pull us down into commitment to them.
The tension between freedom and commitment is a particularly important area of debate for Christians because we are promised freedom through following Christ: “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed,” John 8:36, or “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” 2 Corinthians 3:17, among other examples. On the other hand, we are told that this freedom is only available through total commitment: “If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross.” How can we be free through sacrificing everything and taking up a cross? How resolve the paradox by which freedom and constraint are both demanded by our humanity?
So I think it is natural to Kundera to refer to theologians in pursuit of his agenda. His preliminary speculations about a multiverse are only a secular way of describing the heft of significance given to the cosmos by the scrutiny of God: every event in the Christian universe is played out before this overwhelmingly vast audience of one and awaits a weighty verdict… Unfortunately often Kundera toys with his theologians, picking obscure examples who are not in the mainstream, then extracting quotations from them with no contextuality to anchor them. It’s a little bit glib and may seem intended to direct us away from finding any answers from that quarter.
What really interests him, the meat of ULOB, is seeing how this tension works out in actual human relationships. Tomas is a serial womaniser. He wants personal gratification from his encounters but he does not want any kind of relationship with his many partners. He seeks out those who are happy with that deal and avoids women who expect anything more from him. This is “lightness” – disconnection from others, freedom to pursue his desires as his own personal absolute.
Some of this is driven by the pain of a failed marriage. He has a son by this marriage and, as a seeker of “lightness” he rejects and avoids his son.* Reproduction, and therefore family ties, are part of the gravity which seeks to drag him down and must be rejected at all costs. There is a strong connection here to contemporary debates about the nature of marriage and the value of various alternative sexualities: these debates rarely give much countenance to a reproductive account of sex, which we share with every living organism bar a few amoebas and which is still the main means by which all our fellow citizens arrive on the planet… There is presumably a connection to the falling birth rates in most “advanced” countries. Isn’t this because people are seeing less value in family and reproductive ties, and more in their pleasures, their finances and their careers?
Anyway, Tomas seems to find no shortage of female partners for his way of life and continues blithely unconcerned about the impact on the birth rate – until Tereza comes along. She feels strongly attracted to him because he took notice of her as she went about her rather dismal waitressing job: she takes a train to Prague and knocks on his door. Her instinct is very different to his: she makes it clear that she is dependent on him, that she needs him, and he responds, often grudgingly, to this dependence. There’s that old, deep-rooted gravity sucking at him again. He doesn’t seem to feel able to let her down or make her miserable, and so drifts, through acquiescence, into a commitment of sorts to her.
Not that Tomas is prepared to let go of his adventures yet. But he has to use subterfuges, he is aware that she feels betrayed by his promiscuity and starts to lead a double life that is uncomfortable for both of them.
Kundera doesn’t seem to want to portray a world of male philanderers versus faithful females so he brings in a female philanderer. Sabina is one of Tomas’ regular mistresses and enjoys no commitment sex with him and others. It’s a reverse of the same pattern as Tomas, where the woman only wants gratification and the man, a later lover called Franz, wants commitment. Sabina only gets really excited about Franz when their relationship is about to end and she sees the door to freedom opening before her. She ends up in California, which I suspect in Kundera’s mind represents the ultimate in high lightness / low gravity cultures.
There are ups and downs along the way for Tomas and Tereza. Tomas gets a good job in Zurich: Tereza follows. Tereza finds Sabina is there: she retreats back to Prague. Tomas then leaves his well paid job and returns to Prague: gravity is winning out. But their timing is unfortunate: they are engulfed in the Soviet invasion of 1968.
At this point Kundera takes great pains to show that all relationships and all human life are poisoned by tyranny. All social interactions become inauthentic in the context of pervasive lies and propaganda, truth is suppressed and everybody is required to spy on everyone else by the new masters. Tomas is a suspect because he has lived in the West, in Zurich: he can no longer get a job commensurate with his medical skills and they end up living on a farm in the countryside. It is hinted that an “accident” arranged by the authorities is to follow. But it also suggested that, after years of reluctance, Tomas finally comes to feel that the way of commitment may be best for him and Tereza after all – that faithfulness can bear rewards as well as privations. It’s very low key, comment on this review and tell me if you think I’m right.
But back to that central paradox, the nub of ULOB. Freedom and commitment: are they opposites? How can we possibly be free if we are tied to other people? But how can we possibly live a fulfilled life if we are cut off from others?
I’d like to propose that freedom and commitment aren’t always hostile to one another. If we want to play Beethoven, we have to put in many hours of practice at our instrument. Only by subduing ourselves to discipline do we become free to express sublime music. Only by endless training does an ice skater gain the full freedom of the ice. Only by being better subdued to the laws of aerodynamics does a bird enjoy the freedom of the skies. We are free to make choices about what to do with our lives. When we have made those choices though, we have narrowed down our options. We gain a new freedom only when we so invest in the option we have chosen that we achieve a mastery of it and are able to flourish and to fly in it.
Nor does avoiding commitments always make us less free. Having a home to live in involves a whole lot of input from us, cleaning, furnishing, paying bills and rent, that implies a curtailment of our freedom. There may be times when we wish we hadn’t taken on all those responsibilities. But to be homeless, to have nowhere to live, seems an even greater curtailment. To embrace the freedom of having somewhere to live demands that we make those commitments without which that freedom is unobtainable. A person who wants to be free of all ties is not free to enjoy family life or much more than the shallowest of friendships because those experiences are meaningless without commitment.
A Christian perspective on human relationships might say that, since God is love, we are made to love and to be loved. If that is so, then to detach ourselves from others is to deny our true nature and miss our destiny. Christians assert that humans are so bad at loving that when Love came and walked among us, we rejected Him and put Him to death: that we desperately need to start again. We can be freed to love and be loved, because Love Incarnate will help us, at the price of total commitment, on both sides.
If we respond to the challenge of the cross then we will no longer be free to do a number of things, especially those that involve treating others badly. But we will have freedoms that are not accessible to those who won’t commit: the freedom to belong to God’s family, to be God’s child, to leave anxieties in God’s hands, to enjoy His presence, to fly with the wings of His Spirit, to love and to be loved.
I think it’s worth it. I’ve got a poem about it on my blog. It’s called Law and Liberty and it’s about 20 poems down from the top on https://colingibsonpoems.blogspot.com/
* This son ends up becoming a firm believer. Perhaps from a Freudian point of view he is merely trying to compensate for a lost father. But that would lead also to an opposite conclusion, that atheists are merely trying to reject their father figure, as per the Oedipus complex...
