Milan Kundera Archives - A Geography of Reading

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera presents the same scenes over and over again throughout the narrative. Like waves lapping up onto the shore, these incidents never completely overlap and the repeated introduction of the same events has the effect of giving the reader a more nuanced view of these events and the characters while reinforcing the importance of the scene. Kundera refers to something he calls “symmetrical composition–the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end” and insists “human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.”

Tereza’s photographs of the girls in miniskirts holding flags in the faces of Russian soldiers during the autumn of 1968 are one example of this symmetrical composition. Each time the pictures recur throughout the story the reader gains a greater understanding of the development of Tereza’s character.

At first, the pictures are a triumph for Tereza: “The days she walked through the streets of Prague taking pictures of Russian soldiers and looking danger in the face were the best of her life.” The next time the photographs are mentioned begins with great promise and it casts Tereza as having been part of a movement to “preserve the face of violence for the distant future.” But the very next section dampens the excitement. A magazine editor proclaims Tereza’s pictures beautiful but no longer au courant. Then a photographer tries to give her encouragement by suggesting she shoot cacti as a vehicle for starting a career in fashion photography. The pictures become a symbol of the world’s fleeting interest in her country. For Tereza the pictures meant freedom and standing up to oppression, but for the world they were merely an illustration.

The pictures take on another meaning when Tereza returns to Prague and finds women yielding the same pride with which they had held the flags to fight for umbrella space on a crowded street. Then, while working in the restaurant, Tereza is confronted by the implications of the photographs she took as images from Time begin to be used by the secret police as evidence against fellow citizens. The pictures which had brought her so much pride have become Tereza’s contribution to the persecution of her fellow citizens. She reflects, “[H]ow naïve they had been, thinking they were risking their lives for their country when in fact they were helping the Russian police.”

The pictures also function as an objective correlative by giving the reader access to Tereza’s triumph. The pictures carry the weight of her triumph and the reader is reminded of her strength of character when she took the pictures, but the pictures have are greater flexibility than a typical objective correlative. As the pictures recur throughout the narrative, Tereza’s feelings about (and the reader’s understanding of) them become more complex. They continue to reappear (which is the symmetrical composition part) but they no longer have the same meaning.

Kundera achieves the same effect with stories of Tomas and Tereza visiting and eventually moving to the spa town and also the encounter Tomas has with his son and the editor Tomas accidentally denounced (this latter example is freshened by recounting the event from two different viewpoints). Each time these incidents are recounted or places visited the story changes enough so that the reader gains new insight into the incident and how the characters retrospectively view it. As in life.

I attempted the same effect in my novel, Polska, 1994. By bringing a scene back up, in my case the arrest, in echoes, I can refresh the reader’s memory and provide further insight into how my characters, particularly Magda, are relating to it. This re-framing speaks volumes about the evolution the characters are undergoing and helps the reader feel as though they are evolving along with the character. It is also pleasing to a reader to encounter the same images more than once in a novel. It helps create the illusion of a finite world which could be explained within the confines of a book, and when well done, it does not feel manipulative. I would argue that the changes evoked when images and events recur in this novel keep the items fresh, as repetition can become quickly stale and make the reader wonder whether there is any sense in continuing with the narrative.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, I felt like I was returning to the source. There were so many things I recognized in it from other books and other writers that I wondered if Miller was their originator or if he too got them from someone else. From the “crazy little gesture” of the Polish-Irish-English con artist that smacks of Milan Kundera’s obsession with Agnes in Immortality to the phrase “apropos of nothing at all,” Miller left me wanting to consult some grand, comprehensive encyclopedia of intertextuality to see where these ideas were coming from and who else he had influenced and who had influenced him or how much of it had come out of the atmosphere of collective inspiration.

Miller’s stripped-down language and raw reportage made me feel like I was inside the story and experiencing it with him. After leaving Serge’s flophouse, the narrator describes being at a concert: “It’s as though I had no clothes on and every pore of my body was a window and all the windows open and the light flooding my gizzards.” The narrator goes on like that for almost a page with everyday words twisted into this extraordinary description. As a reader I felt like I was an alien encountering my first concert and I loved it. It was strange but wholly evocative. Miller wasn’t writing about what happened at the concert but rather what it felt like to be at the concert. I wish I could do that.

Earlier in the novel Miller describes a dinner party at Tania’s and the effect is the same although his method is different. The paragraph contains no quotation marks but Miller is clearly capturing snippets of conversation: “Halitosis. Gaudy socks. And croutons in the pea soup, if you please. We always have pea soup Friday nights. Won’t you try a little red wine?” The paragraph goes on and on and continues with, “My next play will involve a pluralistic conception of the universe. Revolving drums with calcium lights.” Miller ties together all these short crisp sentences that are at once related to the scene but unrelated to one another so as a reader I felt like I was trapped inside a cocktail party where all the conversation was distilled and thrown at simultaneously. It is manic and dizzying and I loved it.

Miller also has a way of sketching a character with only a few short images. In reference to Olga he writes, “She weighs almost as much as a camel-backed locomotive; she drips with perspiration, has halitosis, and still wears her Circassian wig that looks like excelsior.” It’s incredible. He could have just said she was fat and had bad breath and an afro, but the way he wrote it engages the reader. The oddness of the Circassian reference threw me off balance a little and made me want to draw more of a mental image of this woman. I felt like I would recognize her anywhere.

Miller’s wild descriptions also mirror the wild bohemian lifestyle he was writing about. Even if he hadn’t written about drinking, I felt intoxicated reading these passages. There is a freedom and wildness in these descriptions that I envy. Miller manages to convey both the sense of what is going on and also the feeling of it all happening.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Tropic of Cancer from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Symmetrical Composition in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Henry Miller: Origins and Originality in Tropic of Cancer