The Unbearable Lightness of Being examines the lives of four Czech intellectuals around the time of 1968 and the soviet invasion. It explores existential themes of absurdity, lack of meaning or significance in life (what the book terms as “lightness“), misunderstandings of other people, kitsch in life and politics, abstraction and alienation. The book mainly deal in metaphor of plot or character but has occasional chapters discussing philosophy and unexpected transitions into dreams – this can be jarring when the character wakes up. If anyone likes the films of David Lynch, they probably will enjoy this book!

The theme of lightness – which is caused by lack of an afterlife and lack of an Eternal Return – caught my imagination the most. Considering that all life will probably die or be forgotten eventually, we can be assured our actions will have no huge impact in the big scheme of things (since there is no “big scheme”). And the realization that although things now stand as they are, “things might as well have been otherwise” – in other words, there is no fate.

In opposition to lightness is “weight”, for example the weight of Eternal Return:

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?” The Gay Science, Nietzsche

The book also quotes a motif from Beethoven as an example of weight: “Must it be so? Yes, it must be so, it must be so!”. The characters are often weighing up their actions in terms of their various interpretations and their particular lightness or weight.

Another recurring idea I enjoyed is of the character Sabina’s first adult painting. I can’t be bothered to look for quotes to this is for memory. Sorry! The painting was started when she accidentally dropped paint on a blank canvas and it evolved into an abstract artwork. The painting could easily have been different because of its accidental origin. The meaning of the painting is completely subjective – an “incomprehensible truth”. At the time, the political dogma was only realism in painting was acceptable so the work was lost under a realistic painting of a construction site. The technique she used emulated the result of photography and hid the brush strokes. The painting’s meaning, being a construction and imitation of the truth, is a comprehensible lie. I hardly need add that the painting is a metaphor for life – a comprehensible lie hiding an incomprehensible truth.

Anti Citizen One

PS “Art is the lie that helps us understand the truth.” -Pablo Picasso