Meg

I apologize in advance for all my upcoming Frenglish. I am trying to learn French so I will probably spit out some faulty vocabulary every now and then (i.e. this sad title. Is it something like je suis no fatigue? HOW DO YOU DO AN ACCENT MARK ON A MAC? Christ). 

Anyway, I was just talking to Danielle about college applications and I started to remember all the essays I had to do.  Yuck. I hated doing all of them… except one. One of them I actually liked. It was for NYU (which of course, is the one school that never got back to me at all, at least not yet). The question was something like “choose one work of art, whether it be a painting, a piece of music, a film, or a novel, and explain how it affected your outlook on life.” It took me forever to narrow it down because I love all those art mediums so much, but I thought this was the best one.

For some reason, it is still on my laptop.

Not many people I know have read, or experienced, the novel that I consider a masterpiece of literature, a work of art, by an artist, at his most witty and philosophical best. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is not only beautifully crafted by the Franco-Czech author, but it is possesses an indispensable insight into the human psyche. I’ve read many books but no other book, let alone work of art, has had an influence on me the way Lightness has. There are many underlying stories woven throughout Kundera’s work, like the Prague Spring, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the main character Tomas’ struggle to defend his article condemning the Czech Communists. The true story lies within the characters skillfully invented by Kundera. I realized this was a perfect parallel of life; with so many events, good and bad, occurring in our world and our world seemingly changing every minute, what really matters is people and the relationships you hold. 

I first read The Unbearable Lightness of Being when I was relatively young,  around fifteen years old. I used to wonder how I could have possibly admired such a mature book at such a young age, but once I reread it, it became clear to me how it was possible. Although Lightness contains great details about Tomas’ personal experiences with his wife and his mistresses and explains a few complicated political events, the narrative itself is stripped down to the minimum. I loved Lightness then for the same reason I love it now and the same reason I will love it twenty years from now, and that is because it taught me more about human relationships than anything or anyone else ever has. Kundera makes some of the most brilliant insights about humans and their reactions. He uses antitheses such as “lightness and weight” and “soul and body” to simplify life. He even says “human decisions are terribly simple” (pg. 308). He talks a lot about love, of course, in his famous quote: “He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato’s Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost” (pg. 238). 

The long and the short of it is that Kundera put my priorities straight. He simplifies life on earth while also writing unforgettable philosophical statements about its purpose. Kundera taught me how significant personal identity is and how important it is to exercise free will. “What then will we choose? Weight or lightness?” 

 

I love that book so much I can’t even put it into words (those words don’t come close to telling you how much I love it). 

I need to watch this movie again soon. Really soon. 

Call me a heretic, but I think I love the film as much as I love the book….