The paradox of our time
A major paradox of our time came to light during the Nato summit that ended in Vilnius, Lithuania earlier this week: a proxy war does not constitute a real war. Even if people die for real in a proxy war, you cannot document them in your official book of accounts, lest they become real. The issue came to the fore when Western leaders shadowing President Volodymyr Zelensky's war had to remind him that they were not Amazon who would simply deliver weapons upon receiving orders. The issue became even more evident when the Nato summit proclaimed that a country engaged in an active war with Russia would not be accepted as a member, much to the ire of the Ukrainian president. Nato's "one for all, all for one" motto would make a conflict with one of its allies a conflict with all. The postponed membership of Ukraine allowed sanity to prevail. Nobody wants a conflict in Europe to escalate into a new World War.
The Great War in 1914 was one such decisive moment in history. For Milan Kundera, who passed away this week, the "misunderstood" usage of the word "world" in World War I has unwittingly trapped every local event in a common global situation. The Czech author asserted in a rare interview (I say rare because Kundera never relished discussing his writing) that "the adjective 'world' expresses all the more eloquently the sense of horror before the fact that, henceforward, nothing that occurs on the planet will be a merely local matter, that all catastrophes concern the entire world, and that consequently, we are more and more determined by external conditions, by situations no one can escape, and which, more and more, make us resemble one another" (Salmagundi, 1987).
Milan Kundera's work repeatedly returns to this paradox. As a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Prague in the 1950s, he became aware of this paradox. He lost faith in their idealistic vision of a perfect society. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, he became critical of the authoritarian Communist regime. His work got banned, and he was eventually driven from his native Czechoslovakia. Kundera settled in France in 1975. He enjoyed his newfound identity as a French novelist with a form of lightness that is both bearable and unbearable, rather than letting the memories of his exile weigh him down.
"Do I consider my life in France as a replacement, a substitute life, and not a real life? Do I say to myself: 'Your real life is in Czechoslovakia, among your old countrymen'? … Or do I accept my life in France – here where I really am – as my real life and try to live it fully? I chose France," he said, "I wonder if our notion of home isn't, in the end, an illusion, a myth. I wonder if we are not victims of that myth. I wonder if our ideas of having roots – d'être enraciné – is simply a fiction we cling to."
The Great War in 1914 was one such decisive moment in history. For Milan Kundera, who passed away this week, the "misunderstood" usage of the word "world" in World War I has unwittingly trapped every local event in a common global situation. The Czech author asserted in a rare interview (I say rare because Kundera never relished discussing his writing) that "the adjective 'world' expresses all the more eloquently the sense of horror before the fact that, henceforward, nothing that occurs on the planet will be a merely local matter, that all catastrophes concern the entire world, and that consequently, we are more and more determined by external conditions, by situations no one can escape, and which, more and more, make us resemble one another"
The binary of fact and fiction is one of the many opposites that he explored in his writings. By drawing the opposites closer together till they are interchangeable or indistinguishable, Kundera was able to avoid the line between them. We cannot distinguish fact from fiction, proxy from reality. He accomplishes this by revealing a world of excess: a world that simultaneously promises endless human possibilities and produces vast emptiness. Readers are left with the feeling that nothing is genuine. For instance, he says by playing music loud, people are becoming deaf, and because people are deaf, they now need loud music.
This example is from his literary masterpiece The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The novel is full of romantic adventures that put fidelity to the test. He uses his libertine protagonist Tomas, a married surgeon with many mistresses to explore some weighty philosophical issues. There are seven chapters in the book. The chapters with the titles "Lightness and Weight" and "Body and Soul" are chapters 1 and 5, respectively. The third chapter, "Words Misunderstood," is what gives the titles their mirror image. The book's seven chapters represent the seven days of the week, or rather the seven stages of life that Shakespeare describes in As You Like It. The sixth chapter builds up the anticipation of a Grand March before settling on Karenin's last smile. Kundera's humorous nature can be seen in the way he nicknames the dog Karenin after Tolstoy's tragedy Anna Karenina, and implies it as a source of eternal happiness. As the female heroine of the narrative comes to the dog for solace, we learn that dog time is cyclical as opposed to human time.
The novel begins with a reverie. Leafing through a book on Hitler, the narrator recalls his family members who died during the Holocaust. While the burden of death is heavy, its recollection is relatively light. He ponders if the concept of the eternal return of the German philosopher Nietzsche is right, events will have to recur again and again infinitely. Does it mean the Holocaust or the French Revolution will return? He makes light of the "weighty" historical events, and turns to Greek philosopher Parmenides to celebrate lightness. People who value the lightness of being acknowledge that life has some limitations and no true purpose. They thrive on fleeting beauty and freedom.
In his novel, Kundera examines this conundrum by creating an ensemble of characters who are on a mission. "What possibilities remain for man in a world where the external determinants have become so overpowering that internal impulses no longer carry weight? ... That life is a trap."
In one of his oft-quoted lines, Kundera pronounces, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. 'I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. The unbearable lightness of being."
I take a look at a picture of the Nato summit, where President Zelensky is shown standing by himself while the others mix and mingle. I think of the paradox. I think of the thousand words this image captures. The great war that weighs on us and the unfathomable lightness of being with which that lonely being stands in a crowd. And we owe it to the great Milan Kundera to remind us of the paradoxes of life.
Rest in peace, Kundera!
Dr Shamsad Mortuza is a professor of English at Dhaka University.