Kundera's Quartet

Skidmore College
Kundera's Quartet (On The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

Author(s): GUY SCARPETTA and John Anzalone
Source: Salmagundi, No. 73, Milan Kundera: Fictive Lightness, Fictive Weight (Winter 1987), pp.
109-118
Published by: Skidmore College
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Kundera
's Quartet
(On The UnbearableLightnessof
Being1)
by GUY SCARPETTA
(Translatedfromthe French by JohnAnzalone)
COMPOSITION
Milan Kundera's novel opens on an abstract reflectioninvolving
certainthemes of Nietzsche and Parmenides; its final part, seemingly
unrelated to the actions and situations of its characters, essentially
concerns the slow death of a dog. Here are indications of an overt
desire to destroy the classical notion of "novelistic development"
(exposition, peripeteia, reboundings, knottingand denouement). In
fact, everythinghappens as if, for Kundera, a sense of musical
composition took on increasing autonomy in the face of plot's
traditionalnecessities. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being there is
no homogeneous, centered plot, but instead a calculated tangle of
semi-independentstory-lines.Musical terms like variation, interval,
counterpointand restatementcome to mind to describe the structural
devices the book employs. For example, Kundera is expertin the art of
variation: the "events" affecting characters seem to depend on
abstract,secret, hauntingthemes. The intersectionsof story-linesare
closely-timedand fleetingsuggestingthe use of interval.Likewise, the
novel seems to have been composed withthe deliberateand generalized
use of counterpoint,favoringthe horizontal developmentof parallel
narratives over their vertical condensation. Finally, as in musical
•Milan Kundera,The UnbearableLightnessof Being (New York: Harperand Row,

1984).
110 GUYSCARPETTA
restatement,an apparentlygratuitousmotif, such as that of Sabina 's

derby,or that of the photographstaken by Tereza during the Soviet
invasionof Czechoslovakia, isolated fromone sequence, can expand to
become the principal motifof another. At the core of the novel, an
emblem points to this compositional choice- it is that of Beethoven's
last quartet,Opus 135, apparentlysummonedas a thematicdevice for
the encounterbetween Tomas and Tereza- for the "muss es sein? es
muss sein," - but which serves in fact as the implicit, metaphoric
referenceto a formalstructuralprincipal.
LIBERTINAGE
The novel places in opposition romanticobsession, which seeks
THE woman in every woman, and can only lead to disappointment,
and the libertineobsession, whose donjuanism aims at the uniqueness
of each woman, her "formula."2This basic line of demarcationin the
novel's narrativefabric is responsible for splittingthe charactersinto
groups. Thus, Tereza represents the romantic partner, Sabina the
licentious one. Franz seems the very soul of licentious ineptitude(his
wife is "the incarnationof his mother") and Sabina imagines him,
duringsex, as "a giant puppy nursingat her breast." But the dividing
line can also run across and divide a single character,such as Tomas,
whose fateis precisely his failureto share himselfbetween licentious
and passionate love. As it happens, this libertinage, raised as a
precariouspossibilityby thetext,and constantlythreatenedby anything
that adheres, in one way or another,is not simply a theme. It also
functionsas the novelisticdevice par excellence, thatof the cold hard
look, thatof a radical non-adherence.It is also the device thatrejects
the illusion of an innocent, homogeneous nature, or of a "good
community,"and immediately targets individual singularities. The
characterof Tomas suggeststhis, in the pride he feels, afteran episode
of debauchery,in "having cut a narrowstripof tissue out of the infinite
fabric of the universe with his imaginary scalpel." In other words,
libertinage is first and foremost a matter of cutting and thus of
language: itjoins to the pleasure principlethe practice of naming. Not
2This desire to findthe "formula" for the uniqueness of every woman, even in the form
of animal metaphors (the giraffe-storkwoman Tomas meets), curiously connects
Kundera to a writersuch as Roger Vailland; see forexample the beginningof The Trout.
Kundera's Quartet 111
just a part of the novel's content,it is one of the very resources of the
writingitself.
ABSTRACTIONS
It is a common, particularlywidespread prejudice to hold in
immediate suspicion ideas and abstractions found anywhere in the
fictionalgenre: the good novelist,we are told, owes it to himselfto be
the least "intellectual" possible (true, most novelistshave no trouble
meeting this criterium. . .). The question is elsewhere. Let us say
instead thatthe real means of appreciationlie firstin the value of the
ideas or abstractionsthe novelist proposes (judged according to a
viewpointinternalto literature)and then in the way they appear and
functionwithinthe fictionalwhole. From this perspective, one must
distinguishbetweenthe roman a these, in which charactersand action
are artificiallysubordinatedto a more or less explicit "idea," and the
integrationof abstraction into the narrative. Such an integration,
moreover,can take place accordingto a varietyof modes: the montage
of a series of philosophical sequences in a dialectic-settingcontext,as
in Sade; the commentaryof a narratorwho is also a character,as in
Proust'sA la recherchedu tempsperdu, or of the main character,as in
Musil's Man withoutQualities, regardingthe action or situationsthe
textportrays;a combinationof these two types of commentary,as in
Dostoevsky; the inclusion of abstractionwithin the dialogue, as in
Faulkner; a reflexivecounterpoint,as in Broch's Sleepwalkers, or a
fusionof intellectualregisterwith lyrical flow,as in Broch's Death of
Virgil.On thisquestionKundera's choice is mostunusual: by a twistof
his text,he seems- perhapsprovocatively?-to accept the canons of the
romana these. He presents"ideas" before "illustrating"them,moves
fromgeneral to specific and fromconcreteto abstract.Yet in another
way he never stops pervertingthe device, by confrontingit with
another,strictlyopposite device: the move froma fictionalor historical
case to the law thatillustratesit. He multipliestheses, has thembranch
out froman original narrativesituation. He intertwinesconcrete and
abstractregisters,even as he maintainsthe broadestpossible separation
between them: a fictional sequence is never the pure example of a
general thesis, nor is a thesis ever the sole lesson to be found in a
specific case; rather,each registerpreserves its autonomywithinthe
score. In short,thingsoccur as if the novelisticimagination(designated
as such even in the exhibition of the methods used to develop
112 GUYSCARPETTA
characters)served him as the test of an always open thoughtprocess,

one always capable of nuance and new beginnings.It is not of romansa
these thatone should speak, but ratherof interrogativenovels.
THE MATERNAL SPHERE

One of a number of possible subtitles for Kundera's novel, in
opposition to Kafka's well-knownexpression, might be, "attempted
escape fromthe maternalsphere." The case of the fourmain characters
provides illustration. On the masculine side, Franz is the most
dependenton the maternaluniverseand at the same timethe most inept
at libertinage.He is also the most inclined to lyrical illusion, even in
the political sphere. He longs forthe "cortege," forthe "long march,"
for participation in the "march of history." Tomas, who has
deliberately, even willfully (and symptomatically,following his
divorce) broken with the values of the maternal universe, seems
troubledby his role as lather(his relationshipwithhis son is based on
equivocation). He barely escapes the classical oedipal conflict,which
seeks a radical separationbetweensexualityand tenderness.He dreams
of being able to love Tereza "without being burdened by aggressive
sexual foolishness." As for the women, Sabina never stops replaying
symbolically her leaving of the maternal universe, according to a
literallyinterminableprinciple of "betrayal," as if the leaving could
never be definitive,and had to be endlessly begun again. Finally,
Tereza's relationshipto her motheris presentedas peculiarlytraumatic.
Her motherembodies "naturalism," shamelessness, the denial of sin
and the will to proclaim the innocence of the body even in its least
appetizing aspects. Tereza thinks she can find a way out by a
counter-investment in noble values such as music and reading,in her
passionate love for Tomas: "She had come to live with him to escape
the maternal universe where all bodies were the same." But she
remains caught in the trap of narcissism. She does not desire her
partner,but rather"her own body, suddenlyrevealed" throughhim. In
other words, she is basically caught in the maternalgrip; even in her
idealism, her need for dignity,she continues to be no more than the
inverse extension of "her mother's grand, violent, self-destructive
gesture."
It is not surprisingif, in this quartet, relationshipscan only be
based on misunderstanding.Kundera goes so far as to elaborate the
lexicon of Franz and Sabina's basic misunderstanding.Each never
stops asking the other for exactly what the other can not give, and
refuses what is offered.But what is most strikingis surely how the
degree of independencefromthe world of the mothercoincides in each
character with a greater or lesser capacity to resist the grasp of
ideology. So, Tereza, exiled for a time afterthe Soviet invasion, ends
up returningto Czechoslovakia, and Franz, the "mama's boy,"
obstinatelyadheres to communal causes that allow him to blend in
among the masses. It is as if Kundera were suggestingin a negative
way that freedom from political illusion, along with the
non-conformismit supposes, were intrinsicallylinked to a subjective
aptitudeforcuttingthe umbilical cord.
ARCHITECTONICS
The Unbearable Lightnessof Being containsseven major divisions
or parts. These "movements" do not correspondto eitherchanges in
register(as in The Death of Virgil)or to variationsin point of view or
in the instance of enunciation(as in The Sound and the Fury), but to
focal differences.Each part is centered on one or two characters,
caughtfromwithinand commentedon fromwithout.Thus, Parts 1 and
5 focus on Tomas, Parts2, 4, and 7 on Tereza, Parts 3 and 6 on Sabina
and Franz. The architectonicformulawould thus be A- B- C- B- A-
C- B. The process of multiplefocus allows at one and the same time
for: the displacementof discourse time with respect to narrativetime
(The death of Tomas and Tereza, which concludes the book, is
mentionedin Part 3; again, there is neithersuspense nor linear plot,
but a game of combinations that dominates any chronology.); the
exposition of several perceptions of the same event (An erotic
encountercan thus be taken apart according to the differing"vision"
each partner has of it.); and finally the authorization of a set of
thematicvariationsand counterpoints.Moreover, it can be noted that
the architecturalcenterof the novel correspondsto a dream sequence,
Tereza's dream-fantasyabout the Mont-de-Pierre in Prague, which
nothing in the discourse allows us to distinguish from a realist
sequence- as if this indicated the vanishing point "out of the real,"
towardsthe lightestzone thatorganizes structure.3
3Letus recallthata novellikeBroch'sTheIrresponsible is also centeredon a somewhat

dreamlike,Kafka-inspired sequence,and withsimilarintent.
114 GUYSCARPETTA
THE SHIT VARIATIONS

One of Kundera's many mini-tales is devoted to Stalin's son.
Convinced of his matchlessdestiny,at once son of the living God, and
cursed forit, he was unable to bear the derisionof his co-prisonersin a
German prison camp, over the shithe leftin the latrineafterusing it.
He chose instead to commit suicide by throwinghimself on the
electrifiedbarbed wire. "Stalin's son," notes Kundera "gave his life for
shit;" this was "the only metaphysical death amidst the universal
stupidityof the war." Kundera allows us to see thatshitis the verysign
of a metaphysical question, whose implications in theological and
gnostic traditionshe is not afraid to explore: thatof the body and the
soul, of the upper and lower,thatof a humanitycreated "in the image
of God" but needing to shit every day. How does one reconcile shit
with the religious or secular ideologies for which man is essentially
good and innocent,those ideologies of the "categorical agreementwith
being," of which the author speaks elsewhere? What Kundera's
"variations" on thisthemesuggestis thatshitcan only be thoughtof in
métonymierelationto original sin, to the indelible stain of the species.
Here is yet anotherway of dividingthe characters:thereare those
who, aware of the connectionbetween shit and stain, reject shit and
consider only "noble" values, like Tereza and Stalin's son. Stalin's son
finds the evocation of his own shit an intolerable affront;Tereza's
lyrical illusion during her first amorous encounter with Tomas is
disturbed by the irrepressible gurgling of her stomach. Here a
sometimes scatalogical irony4 is at work in the devaluation of
idealization or of the obsession with purity.On the other hand, there
are those who reject altogether the idea of original sin. They
rehabilitate shit and wallow in it; they believe in the body's
fundamentalinnocence, in nature; for them nudity is normal. Such
characters,like Tereza's mother,whose "naturalism" leads her to burp
and fartin public, are no less ridiculous than the others,only slightly
more abject. But these two positions are essentially symmetricaland
complementary:the firstaccepts sin but rejectsshit,the second accepts
shitbut rejects sin. These are two masks forthe same repression.The
thirdattitudeis libertine:it involvesacceptingboth shitand the idea of
4On shit as an ironic factorin Kundera: R.'s "intestines in revolt" during a politically
dangerous situation in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,and, of course, Helena's
diarrhea, during her failed suicide attempt,when she confuses poison and a laxative in
The Joke.
sin, and maintaining upperand lowerin theirrespective, hierarchical

places. In it
short, involvesacknowledging thatthe consciousnessof a
stain is necessary,if only for the sake of transgressing that
consciousness, forexamplein theerotic.Tomasand Sabina's eroticism
does notexcludeanality;Tomasfindsthata woman'sass is themost
"moving"partofherbody,and is intensely arousedbytheprotruding
anusofone ofhispartners. Sabina,duringa discretelyfetishistic
scene
(she has spicedup her nakednesswith an incongruous derby), an
has
orgasm while imagining herself in
shitting frontof herlover.Forthese
characterswho are as far from puritanismas they are from
pansexualism,fromidealism as fromnaturalism,sexual pleasure
presupposesthesenseof sin.
EYE ON HISTORY
The characters in The UnbearableLightnessofBeinglivethrough
graveand tragichistoricalsituations, foremost amongthemtheSoviet
invasionof Czechoslovakiaand "normalization"at the handsof the
police. Buttheeyethenovelcastson thesesituations is neverdirectly
political. Political scrutinyaims at the masses, at collective
phenomena,at commonmeasuresand denominators; whereasthe
novelistic scrutinyplumbstheuniquenessof each case, and through it
preciselythatwhichescapes politicalreason. To quote Musil, the
novelist'sgaze participatesin the "vivisector's"art. What does
Kundera'snovelbringintoview? That "rationality," "analyses,"or
"judgments"countforverylittlein the decisionsmade by subjects
facedwithsuch situations;thatthehistoryof an individualis firsta
fieldof possibilitiesand virtualities(heretoo, we can thinkof Musil
and his "probableman") in whichaccidentsand the mostirrational
subjectivepostures play a sometimesdeterminingrole in the
achievement of a destiny(exiledin Zurich,ifTomasfinallydecidesto
return to Prague,it is in orderto be faithful
to a metaphor. . .). How
does thenovelistic eyepresent"normalized"Czechoslovakia?Less as
a universeof oppression,excitingour indignation, as woulda purely
militant vision,thanas a grotesqueworldwhere"totalitarian kitsch"
reigns,a riggedworldin whichcommon,everyday logicfounders. It is
a universewhere,forexample,thethousands ofphotostakenin Prague
in 1968 to witnessthe militarily imposedSovietorderend up being
usedbythatveryorderto identify thosewhoopposetheregime;where
itis uselessto oppose"truth"to officiallies, so longas truthitselfcan
116 GUYSCARPETTA
be manipulated,or turnedaside to contributeto repression;a universe,

in short, where there is no longer any logical link between an act's
intentionsand its effects.
fromthe standpointof an "estheticlook at the
It is quite interesting
world" to determinethe way Kundera uses the notion of kitschin his
novel. The termis common in centralEurope, models of kitschbeing
visible in the Vienna Ring as well as in the castles of Louis of Bavaria,
and generally refers to the triumph of stylistic artifice, to "the
sentimentaland deceptiveembellishmentof life."5For HermannBroch,
forexample, kitschembodied the "evil" principlein artand was linked
to the separation of artisticvalues and the other political, moral or
religious values of social life, thatis, to the modernperiod's inability,
since romanticism,to conceive of art otherthanas an autonomousand
despiritualizedsphere.6Now, Kundera extends and exportsthe term.
For him, kitsch is not simply an esthetic category, but also "an
attitude,a world view," that of institutionalizedlying, of the divorce
between social life and its official representations,of the distance
between announced optimism and the distress of daily life, that of
communism.What is most strikingis thatthe extensionof a "stylistic"
notion into the political realm produces an effectof truthin depth,
revealingan essential dimensionof communism,one, precisely,thatno
purely "ideological" discourse had ever before really allowed us to
grasp.
DISSIDENCE?
Perhaps what is most importantis this: the "cold gaze of the true
libertine"7thatKundera also applies to political behavior toleratesno
taboos, not even those demanded by the militant'sversionof the "good
fight" against the totalitarianorder. Anticonformist,acute, clinical,
cruel, this "cold gaze" extracts ambiguous truths,truthsthat are
embarrassingfor all camps, truthsthatcan not "serve." One of these
"truths" is that in the West there is a way of demonstratingagainst
totalitarianismthat rests upon the same subjective attitude (the
5MilanKundera,"l'Espritcentre-européen," no. 78.

Art-Press,
6See HermannBroch,"Quelques Remarquesà proposdu Kitsch,"and "le Mal dans le
systèmedes valeurs de l'art," in Créationlittéraireet Connaisance (Gallimard,
des idées).
Bibliothèque
7Theexpressionis Sade s.
enthusiasm of participatingin the "long march" of history) that

installed totalitarianismin the firstplace. Another is that the Soviet
invasion of 1968 created a veritable intoxication in the Czech
population, the paradoxical and troublingeuphoria of a clear struggle
that could be engaged in withoutsecond thoughts.Then there is the
contradictory"fact" that a repressive situation, like that of Tomas,
who loses his surgeon's position for political reasons and becomes a
window washer, can be sexually more free, more favorable to
libertinage, than a "normal position." And finally there is the
irrepressable "truth" that there exists at times a barely perceptible
complicity (visible in the simple way one points one's index figure
while speaking) between the attitudes of dissidents and of the
communist authorities in power- or let us say the same way of
appealing to the political superego. Paradoxical, scandalous and
insubordinate,these "truths"are irreducibleto any political conception
whatsoever.Not that Kundera is not a dissident, but here too, he is
beyondthe strictlypolitical sphere. Like any authenticwriter,he is a
dissidentagainst all mannerof conformismor communal illusion.
THE ABSENCE OF INNOCENCE

In a famous 1957 piece,8 Alain Robbe-Grilletcatalogued "several
outdated notions" regarding the novel, to wit: character, story,
commitment(engagement),the oppositionof formand content,and the
latter's primacy. Clearly Kundera does not fit in this type of
"progressive" estheticlogic, and does not submitto any of its dictates
or decrees. In a novel like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for
example, there are characters that create the effect of emotional
participation,even identification;there are "stories" trimmedof all
classical narrative prestige; ideological, psychological and sexual
"contents" that can not be reduced to simple pretexts(Kundera is
obviously a writerforwhom the "what to say" is just as importantas
the "how to say it"). And if it is clear thatthe problem of Sartrienor
social realist commitmentis radically foreign to him, his novel
nonetheless possesses an undeniable ethical dimension: he analyses
behaviors and values, denounces hypocrisy,and so forth.
But we must not conclude for all this that Kundera's art of the
novel postulates an innocence for the genre, or emerges from the
8AlainRobbe-Grillet,
Fora NewNovel(New York:GrovePress, 1965).
118 GUYSCARPETTA
Balzacian "paradise lost" ironicallyinvokedby Robbe-Grillet.There is

no trace in Kundera's writing of any naturalization of nineteenth
centurycodes. The elementsdecried as outdatedby the theoristsof the
new novel are indeed present,but skewed, and treatedin the second
degree; theyare not excluded or subverted,but to use one of Barthes'
terms, they are turnedover. As for his characters,Kundera presents
themto us as theyare, as fictionalbeings, and goes so faras to indicate
how, withinthe novel's creation, they were bit by bit conceived. His
"stories" or his representationsnever functionin a purely referential
way; if there are themes, it is in the musical sense of the word, and
their musical treatmentis always perceptible. The novelist's art of
composition is never effaced behind "realistic effects." As for the
ethicaljudgmentthe novel elicits, it is neithertacked on to the fiction,
nor anterioror exteriorto it. It emerges, as I again emphasize, froma
"novelist's gaze," and not fromany outside conscience or ready-made
analysis. This, no doubt, is the major interestof such a novelistic
esthetic: the ability to conjugate representativeeffects from the
classical novel with the "age of suspicion" introducedby modernity;
the abilityto claim the functionof knowledgeor of truthforthe novel
without,forall that,ceasing to assume and even demonstratewriting's
artifices.In short,truthforKundera is not the contraryof artifice,but
ratherits effect.In otherwords: if, in his novels, thereis a "critique of
innocence," then it is not only the theme of the situationspresented,
but also a principlethataffectswritingitselfas such.

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Skidmore College

Kundera's Quartet (On The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

•Milan Kundera,The UnbearableLightnessof Being (New York: Harperand Row,

restatement,an apparentlygratuitousmotif, such as that of Sabina 's

characters)served him as the test of an always open thoughtprocess,

THE MATERNAL SPHERE

3Letus recallthata novellikeBroch'sTheIrresponsible is also centeredon a somewhat

THE SHIT VARIATIONS

sin, and maintaining upperand lowerin theirrespective, hierarchical

be manipulated,or turnedaside to contributeto repression;a universe,

5MilanKundera,"l'Espritcentre-européen," no. 78.

enthusiasm of participatingin the "long march" of history) that

THE ABSENCE OF INNOCENCE

Balzacian "paradise lost" ironicallyinvokedby Robbe-Grillet.There is

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