The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, French: L'Insoutenable Légèreté de l'être) was written by Czech-French writer Milan Kundera in 1984 novel.

The novel is set in Prague and involves a lot of philosophical concepts. "Milan Kundera thus established his status as the world's greatest living writer." ("New York Times")

The Chinese translation of the book was first published by Han Shaogong and Han Gang in 1985. Translated in 1987 and published by Writers Press in 1987. In 2003, Shanghai Translation Publishing House published a re-translated version by Xu Jun, a professor at Nanjing University, and the title was changed to "The Unbearable Lightness of Life". In Taiwan, Crown Publishing House republished the Traditional Chinese version in 2004 based on the latest French translation, translated by Yu Chixiu.

Quotes

1. "If every second of our lives is repeated countless times, we will be like Jesus crucified on the cross, crucified in eternity. This The prospect is terrible. In that world of eternal return, the unbearable burden of responsibility weighs heavily on our every action. This is why Nietzsche said that the concept of eternal return is the heaviest burden."

2. "If eternal return is the heaviest burden, then our life can compete with it in all its glorious lightness. But is heaviness really tragic, and lightness really brilliant?"

“The heaviest burden makes us collapse, sink, and nail us to the ground. But in the love poems of every era, women always long to be pressed under the body of men. Perhaps the heaviest burden The burden is also a symbol of the most fulfilling life. The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth, and the closer it is to reality and reality."

Kundera played his part in the book. Quartet: Thomas, Teresa, Sabina and Franz. An existential theme is told from the perspective of each character. Is it heavy or light? To what extent does politics distort human life? Kundera borrowed Sabina's words to express his own orientation by saying, "I'm not against ***, I'm against kitsch!"

Extended information:

Author

Milan Kundera (Czech: Milan Kundera, April 1, 1929 -) is a famous Czech writer. Born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He went into exile in France in 1975 and became a naturalized French citizen in 1981. In an interview in his later years, he called himself a French writer and believed that his works should be classified as French literature.

Famous works include "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", etc. Before the Velvet Revolution in 1989, his works were banned in Czechoslovakia for a long time. He rarely gives interviews to the media. Although he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times, he has not won the award so far.

Creative process

Kundera started from one or two keywords and basic situations to form the plot of the novel. With the wisdom of a philosopher, he raised human survival situations to a metaphysical level to consider, examine and describe; thus he successfully grasped the two sensitive areas of politics and sex, and initially formed a concept of "humor" and "polyphony" Novel style.

Kundera pays more attention to the basic situation of the characters - "Philosophy is conducted without characters and situations." "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" puts Thomas' question there at the beginning: the lightness of existence in a world where there is no eternal return.

The novel first raises questions to set a prescribed situation for Thomas, that is, the existential coding of lightness and weight; then the philosophical thinking itself has a novelistic quality, and the question itself is the philosophical thinking revealed by the novelist in his work.

An important feature of Kundera's research is his refusal to draw conclusions. He believes that it is Cervantes who makes people know that there is no absolute truth in the world, only a lot of relative problems.

In the book, Kundera proposes a series of survival codes such as lightness, heaviness, spirit, flesh, memory, weakness, dizziness, pastoral, and heaven, etc., and corresponds to the characters one by one, supporting their respective living conditions and showing the relationship between the soul and the world. The duality of the flesh.

Each keyword is a different possible aspect of the character. Possibility is the most positive way to fight against disposability, so this book can be seen as a dismantling of self-righteous "absolutes". Due to the lack of absolute meaning, life has become without support and support, and it does not even have a definite direction like feathers flying in the wind.

Later Influence

The book was adapted into the movie "Love in Prague" in 1988, directed by Philip Kaufman (Philip Kaufman), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Starring Yip Binoche and Lena Olin.

The film adaptation of the book was nominated for the American Academy Award and the American Golden Globe Award, the 1988 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture and Best Director, and the British Academy Award for Best Adaptation Screenplay Award and other awards.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"