BA-thesis

Kila van der Starre

3217345
Supervisor: Daniel Just
June 2010

Filling an empty sky:

Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness

of Being and Immortality as literary existentialist
texts.
Index

1. Philosophy and literature – a complex relationship 3

1.1 Literature influencing philosophy
3
1.2 Philosophy influencing literature 3
1.3 Literature and philosophy – taking in a position 5
2. Literature and existentialism 6

3. Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

and Immortality as literary existentialist texts 7
3.1 Authenticity and existential anguish 7
3.1.1 Bad faith and good faith 10
3.2 The Other 11
3.2.1 The gaze 12
3.2.2 Confrontation with the Other 13
3.3 Existential emotions 14
3.4 Small spaces 16
3.5 The body 17
3.6 Gestures 19
4. Conclusion 20
4.1 Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being
and Immortality be seen as literary existentialist texts? 20
4.2 Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify
and interpret these texts? 22
5. Suggestions for further research 23

6. Bibliography 24

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1. Philosophy and literature – a complex relationship

1.1 Literature influencing philosophy

The relationship between literature and philosophy is a complex one that raises many questions. How do
literature and philosophy influence each other? What are the similarities between the two and how do they
differ? Can literature be read in a philosophical way? Can philosophical works be read in a literary way? How
can literature help us to understand philosophy? How can philosophy help us to understand literature?
Although research about the relationship between literature and philosophy is mainly done by focusing
on how philosophy influences literature, the “literary turn” has made way for investigation about what literature
can mean for philosophy. An example of this is A. M. Skilleas who argues that philosophical works can be
written in a literary way and should also be read in that way. (Skilleas 2007) Skilleas says philosophy shares a
box of tricks with literature and we “should read philosophical works with the same attention to formal and
stylistic features as when we read literary works.” (Skilleas 2007: 124) The knowledge about literary features
and the way to study them can be found in and borrowed from literary studies. Another example is Martha
Nussbaum, who claims literary works give a specific and concrete example of a situation and thus make it
possible for the reader to experience philosophical ideas “from within”. Nussbaum also uses Greek tragedies by
Euripides and Sophocles to understand philosophical texts by Plato and Aristotle. (Doorman 2005: 398)

1.2 Philosophy influencing literature

On the other hand, the same questions about the relationship between literature and philosophy can be answered
by focusing on how philosophy influences literature. This aspect of the relationship between literature and
philosophy is the one I will be focusing on in this BA-thesis. The literature I will be using is work by the Czech
writer Milan Kundera. I will be looking at two of his novels: his best known work, The Unbearable Lightness of
Being (written in 1884) and his first novel published after that, Immortality (his last novel in Czech, published in
1990). The philosophy I will be using is existentialism, most frequently linked to the philosophers and writers
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Before I start researching Kundera’s work in combination with existentialism it is useful to position
myself in the discussions concerning the relationship between literature and philosophy. Firstly I will address the
discussion between Wellek and Leavis in 1937, which is a good example of the different views on the
relationship between literature and philosophy. Secondly I will discuss Van Stralen’s hermeneutic model he
recommends to use when researching literature in combination with philosophy.
In 1937 René Wellek writes is his letter to Frank Raymond Leavis, while commenting on Leavis’ book
Revaluation that had appeared the previous year, that “I could wish that you had stated your assumptions more
explicitly and defended them systematically.” He accuses Leavis of a “lack of interest in romantic philosophy”
and argues that his interpretations of Blake’s, Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s poetry are insufficient because Leavis
ignores the poets’ symbolic philosophy and the philosophy of the time. Leavis, in his reply, explains that this
was not done in a lack of consciousness. He states that “[l]iterary criticism and philosophy seem to me to be
quite distinct and different kinds of discipline”. Wellek is a philosopher, Leavis says, but he himself is not, he is
a literary critic. Although he does not neglect the value of the possible alliance between the literary critic and the
philosopher, Leavis does claim that “literary criticism is not philosophy.” He explains that reading poetry is

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different than reading philosophy. The last is abstract and invites the reader to think and judge, whereas poetry is
concrete and invites the reader to ‘feel into’ or ‘become’, “to realize a complex experience that is given in the
words.” Leavis does not see the relevance of the philosophy the poet uses or the philosophy of the poet’s period
for the literary critic. Each poet is different and he can not see what is gained by finding a common philosophy
amongst them. There is no ‘Romantic poet’, there are only different individual poets. He says generalities, such
as philosophy and theory, destroy the particularities of poetry. Philosophical knowledge creates insensibility to
literature: it destroys the text and makes you ignore the poetry. There is a difference between ‘reading’ and
‘feeling into’ a text on the one hand, and ‘reading into’ a text on the other. With the latter Leavis means reading
theory into a text that is not actually there: there is no philosophy in a text, it always comes from outside the text
itself.
This interesting discussion between Wellek and Leavis can be summarised by saying that the two men
disagree on: firstly, whether philosophy is necessary for literary critique, and secondly, what the effect is –
positive or negative – of relating philosophy to literature. Wellek says literary critical claims should be explained
in an abstract and theoretical way whereby philosophy can not and should not be ignored because it can ascertain
the meaning of a poem. Whereas Leavis argues that philosophy and literary critique are two different disciplines
and reading philosophy into a text destroys the literature that is being read.
The discussion between Wellek and Leavis shows how problematic the relationship between literature
and philosophy can be. Hans van Stralen also realises this, although he says many academics do not, and
distinguishes in his contribution to the first Jaarboek voor literatuurwetenschap (Van Stralen 2001) four models
for using one or more philosophical texts when trying to clarify a literary text. The most frequently used model is
the causalistic model: the researcher assumes a philosophical text has influenced a literary work. This model can
be seen as the outcome of positivism, the idea proposed by A. Comte that reality is made up out of interactions
between causes and consequences. Van Stralen’s main arguments against this model are firstly that the effect of
a philosophical text on another can hardly be measured. Unlike in the case of empirical sciences, it is impossible
to pinpoint exactly and unambiguously the influence a text has on another text. Secondly, finding the
philosophical work that can be seen as the source of a literary work is just the beginning of any research. The
next question should always be what this influence means. Finally, the concept of chronology and temporality
has become less self-evident after the modern theory of intertextuality. It is for example generally accepted that
Freud’s work can help to interpret Sophocles’ Oedipus rex although Sophocles of course never could have read
Freud’s work.
The second model Van Stralen distinguishes for researching the interpretative relationship between
literature and philosophy is the analogical model. In this model a relationship on the level of similarity is
presented – in contrast to a relationship on the level of influence. In this case research is done on similarities,
parallels and symmetries between a literary work and a philosophy. Van Stralen’s main arguments against this
model are that specific differences between the philosophical and literary language system are denied. Often in
this model different sorts of texts are groundlessly given the same status. Secondly, just like in the causalistic
model, finding similarities between literature and philosophy is seen as the main aim of a research, whereas it
should actually only be the beginning.
The third model is the autonomic model, in which the autonomy of the literary work is endorsed. The
philosophical elements of the text are not compared or traced back to philosophical sources, but are seen as an

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independent layer of the literary text. According to Van Stralen, the main problems involved in this model are
that not many literary works can be used – actually only idea-novels such as Zen and the art of motorcycle
maintenance. Secondly, because literature uses a different language game than philosophy, philosophical terms
hardly appear in literature, thus the philosophical concepts can not intrinsically be found in the work. Thereby,
philosophy in literature is only the concrete result of a philosophical process: the steps that were taken to reach
that outcome are rarely given in a literary work. In this way this model neglects one of the specific core elements
of philosophy; that is, explaining the steps taken to reach a conclusion. Finally, philosophy in literature never
reaches the status of ‘real’ philosophical works, as Van Stralen says: “Zonder neerbuigend ten opzichte van de
literatuur te willen zijn, kan men gerust stellen dat het literaire werk vaak slechts ‘filosofietjes’ of ideeën
presenteert en geen consistente systemen, zoals dat traditioneel in de filosofie het geval is.” (Van Stralen 2001:
91)
Van Stralen proposes a solution for the problematic relationship between literature and philosophy
which these three models do not seem to solve, in the form of a hermeneutic model. He explains that
philosophical works can and should help readers to solve interpretative problems that they come across when
reading a literary work. He sees this explanation as a direct reason to bring literature and philosophy into
connection. Van Stralen’s hermeneutic model can be divided into two ways of interpreting a literary text, the
‘reader aimed interpretation’ and the ‘context aimed interpretation’. In the first case a philosophical work is used
to help the contemporary reader to understand the text. An example is using Freud’s theory on the Oedipus
complex to clarify works such as Oedipus rex, Hamlet and Les mains sales. With a ‘context aimed interpretation’
a text is clarified by trying to reconstruct its context. Philosophies of the time in which the literary text was
written can help to interpret the text. In this way the Lebenswelt of the literary text is reconstructed.
Van Stralen explains that his model is better than the other models because it uses philosophy to clear
away obscurities for the reader, concerning the literary text or the context of the text. In his model you are freed
from the boundaries of chronology. In addition, it is not important whether the writer has read or was able to
read the philosophical texts. Also the relationship between literature and philosophy is made meaningful, unlike
in the other models: “In het hermeneutisch model fungeert het filosofische werk immers als een hoge abstractie
van het denken binnen een bepaalde cultuur en is het als zodanig bruikbaar als betekenissysteem.” (Van Stralen
2001: 93) Finally, the literary work is valued as an autonomic and linguistic representation of reality and
approached as a different language game than philosophical works.

1.3 Literature and philosophy – taking in a position

To position myself in the discussions concerning the relationship between literature and philosophy I will
comment on the discussion between Wellek and Leavis and on Van Stralen’s critique on existing models and his
recommendation of the hermeneutic model. I agree with Leavis that literary criticism is not philosophy and I also
claim, just as he did, that I am not a philosopher but a literary critic. In addition, I find he is correct claiming that
each poet is different and that there are only different individual poets. The difference, however, in this thesis
will be that I will not be focusing on Milan Kundera as a writer and the question whether he is an existentialist
writer or not. I will only be focusing on the texts and asking the question whether the literary texts that I have
studied are existentialist texts or not. Leavis says he can not see what is gained by finding a common philosophy
among literary texts. In this sense he is on the same line as Van Stralen, who says the analogical model is not

5
sufficient as the specific differences between the philosophical and literary language system are denied. Also,
finding similarities between literature and philosophy is seen as the main aim of a research, whereas it should
actually only be the beginning.
In this thesis I will be combining Kundera’s literature with the philosophy of existentialism, but I will
not fall for the fallacies Leavis and Van Stralen write about. I realise that literature and philosophy use different
language games and I will never deny that they are two different disciplines. Moreover, finding similarities
between the novels and the philosophy is not the main aim of my thesis. I will be using existentialism to form a
better understanding of Kundera’s work. As might be clear by now, this means I will be using Van Stralen’s
fourth model, the hermeneutic model, to do research on Kundera’s literature in combination with the philosophy
of existentialism. Thus, I will be using philosophical ideas to clarify a literary text. This means I am not
interested whether Milan Kundera himself has read Sartre or De Beauvoir or other texts on existentialism (as in
the causalistic model). I would not have even considered it a problem if Kundera had written his novels before
the concepts of existentialism were written down by Sartre and other existentialists. Also, I will not try to extract
a philosophy from Kundera’s literature (as in the autonomic model). I will approach philosophical elements in
the text as part of the literary text, and not as an autonomic philosophy like a ‘real’ philosophy.
Going back to Leavis, I finally have to defend why I have chosen to interpret literary texts with the help
of philosophy, as he says generalities such as philosophy destroy the particularities of literature. Leavis claims
‘reading into’ a text means finding philosophy that is not actually there: there is no philosophy in a text, it always
comes from outside the text itself. My defense – although an interesting question is whether there is anything in
a text that the reader has not put there him or herself 1, but that would be a whole different thesis – is that
combining literature with the philosophy of existentialism is a special case. This situation is special because two
types of existentialism can be distinguished: philosophical existentialism and literary existentialism. This means
I have modified my prior statement that I will be asking the question whether the literary texts by Kundera that I
have studied are existentialist texts or not, to whether they are literary existentialist texts or not. Thereby, I will
not forget that I am using existentialism to clarify and interpret the texts in a better way. Thus this brings us to
my two main questions: Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality be
seen as literary existentialist texts? Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and interpret these
texts?

2. Literature and existentialism

Although existentialism can be divided into philosophical and literary existentialism as Van Stralen does 2, nearly
all academic research is carried out on the first. Sometimes existentialist writers – often Sartre or Camus – are
discussed by analysing their literature in an existentialist way, but not often is literary existentialism researched
or written about as a whole or as a literary movement.

1
See theories on reception theory, for example by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wolfgang Iser.
2
Van Stralen defines literary existentialism as a French-German movement that was influenced strongly by phenomenology,
the Second World War and common (negative) reactions to previous and following literary conventions. The last
characteristic makes it possible to mark a time period in which literary existentialism was active. Van Stralen takes 1935 as
the starting point, as then the modernists and avant-gardes start to fade away and the Second World War is in sight. He
chooses 1960 as the end of literary existentialism, as Sartre then starts to tend towards Marxism and the nouveaux romanciers
start to dominate the French literary circuit.

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 Thomas R. Flynn for example, whose book Existentialism. A Very Short Introduction (Flynn 2006) I
used to grasp the main ideas of this major philosophical movement of the 20 th-century, explains in his preface
that he could have chosen to mention existentialist writers such as Dostoevsky or Kafka in his book, but “my
concern is to treat existentialism as a philosophical movement with artistic implications rather than as (just) a
literary movement with philosophical pretensions – which is a common though misguided conception.” (Flynn
2006: xii) In his first chapter he goes on by saying that because existentialists place great significance on
emotions, such as anguish and nausea a link between them and creative artists, who trade on our emotional and
imaginative lives, is clear. “In fact, the relation between existentialism and the fine arts has been so close that its
critics have often dismissed it as solely a literary movement.” (Flynn 2006: 7) The mistake Flynn makes here, in
my opinion, is that he is pondering on the question whether existentialism is solely a philosophical or literary
movement. He disregards the fact that existentialism can also be divided into two different movements, as Van
Stralen does. In this way a distinction can be made between philosophical and literary existentialism, without
claiming that calling existentialism a literary movement is a “misguided conception”.
As we can see, Flynn, who is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, approaches existentialism
from the view of philosophy. In the division I made in the first chapter of this thesis he would fall in the first
category, focusing on the relationship between literature and philosophy from the side of philosophy. His
comments on the literary aspect of existentialism are one-sided and limited. In order not to neglect the other
perspective, where the focus lies on the relationship between literature and philosophy from the side of literature,
I used a book on literary existentialism by Hans van Stralen. Van Stralen, who studied philosophy, theology and
comparative literature and is now a university teacher of comparative literature in Utrecht and Amsterdam, gives
us this view in his book Beschreven keuzes. Een inleiding in het literaire existentialisme. (Van Stralen 1996)

3. Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality as literary

existentialist texts
To find an answer to my two main questions “Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being
and Immortality be seen as literary existentialist texts? Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and
interpret these texts?” I will discuss a number of existentialist aspects that I have derived from Flynn’s book on
philosophical existentialism and Van Stralen’s book on literary existentialism. I will continuously be asking
myself how these aspects correspond with and differ from the existentialist concepts Flynn and Van Stralen talk
about and how they help to clarify and interpret the texts.
The following existentialist aspects will be discussed: authenticity and existential anguish, bad faith and
good faith, the Other, the gaze, the confrontation with the Other, existential emotions, small spaces, the body and
gestures. In the case of existential emotions I will introduce humiliation as a literary existentialist characteristic
in Kundera’s two novels. I will also argue that the theme of gestures is a literary existentialist characteristic.
Both these aspects are not mentioned by Flynn or Van Stralen and thus can be seen as a unique literary
existentialist characteristic of Kundera’s texts.

3.1 Authenticity and existential anguish

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In The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kundera gives a beautiful definition of vertigo. Vertigo is not the fear of
failing, the narrator explains, but the insuperable longing to fall: “It is the voice of the emptiness below us which
tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” (Kundera 1985: 60)
This definition has a clear resemblance with the existentialist concept of anguish (and its distinction from fear).
To explain this I will shortly dwell on existentialist morality and the concepts of phenomenology. 3
Existentialists follow the philosopher Hume in his statement that “[t]he ‘ought’ of moral value or
obligation cannot be derived from the ‘is’ of factual description by the mere linking of non-moral items.” (Flynn
2006: 64) Thus, they believe that morality is something that comes from within us human beings: it is not
something that objectively exists. Sartre says the important thing is that every individual acknowledges the life
he or she is living; we have to own up to our self-defining choices. The important thing is that you make and live
your own truth. How is more important than what. Tomas puts this into words when he says to Tereza, on one of
the last days of their lives, that it does not matter that he did not continue as a surgeon, because now he is happy:
“‘Haven’t you noticed I’ve been happy here, Tereza?” Tomas said. ‘Surgery was your mission,’ she said.
‘Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it’s a terrific relief to realize you’re free, free
of all missions.’” (Kundera 1985: 313) Here Tomas expresses the existentialist state of mind that every human
lives in freedom, in a world of eternal choices, and that this is a positive thing. There is no objectively correct
path to choose in life, one makes their path the right choice by one’s follow-through and we always stay
responsible for these choices.
The fact that we are always responsible for what we do, and as Sartre says ‘without excuse’, is
emphasised by the idea of the pre-reflective and reflective consciousness, two interdependent concepts which are
worked out in the theory of phenomenology. The core of the phenomenological method developed by Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938), which was introduced in France by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) in the 1930s
and later adopted by existentialism in general, is that it is the very nature of consciousness to aim towards (to
intend) an Other. This is called the principle of intentionality. The human consciousness is intended to objects
(and this is more than strictly material objects) in the reality outside our consciousness, but these objects are also
present in the intentional action itself. For example, a person can love somebody while he or she is not actually
present. One of the most important phenomenological concepts that is crucial for existentialism is the distinction
between pre-reflectivity and reflectivity. While reading this thesis you are pre-reflectively conscious of what you
are reading. If someone would ask you ‘What are you doing?’ you will be able to answer ‘I am reading’. Your
reflective consciousness is now intended to a subject, ‘I’. Sartre says the awareness of this subject, the ‘I’, which
he calls pre-reflective awareness, was only implicit when you were reading. At that time you were explicitly
aware of the content of this thesis. But the subject was present all along in the explicit awareness of the object,
otherwise one could not have responded (reflectively). This means every conscious act is self-aware. This is
what Sartre calls the bifocal nature of the human being and it is his way of making self-deception possible
without an unconscious.
This bifocal nature distinguishes us humans from non-humans (animals and things). Our self-awareness
leads to the fact that we never coincide with ourselves, something animals and plants do. Heidegger defines this
difference by distinguishing between ‘Dasein’ and the existence of things. Sartre makes a comparable distinction
with ‘être-pour-soi’ and ‘être-en-soi’. Bad faith is when people try to avoid this innate human break in existence,
3
I both used Flynn’s (especially Chapter 1, p. 17-23) and Van Stralen’s (especially the paragraph “De existentiële
fenomenologie”, p. 23-40) literature on phenomenology for this paragraph.

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as Van Stralen calls it (Van Stralen 1996: 14), and try to coincide with themselves anyway, just like things. In
Immortality Agnes makes a similar distinction as Heidegger as Sartre with the terms “being one’s self”/“living”
and “being”. She says “being one’s self” is unbearable and “losing her self” is happiness. When she once lay
down on the bank of a stream she experienced being which she calls “the primordial being”, a being without a
self, just as before “The Creator, with his computer, released into the world billions of selves as well as their
lives.” (Kundera 1992: 287) This “cleansing of her self” made her feel intensely happy. “Living, there is no
happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being:
becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.” (Kundera 1992: 288) As we see in
this quote “being” is what things do (hence Agnes takes the example of being a thing, a fountain). Being is
existing without a self (just as things do not have a self), which clears you of your responsibility to choose, thus
of your anguish. Although this distinction can clearly be compared to Heidegger’s and Sartre’s existentialist
distinctions, a big difference is that Agnes turns around the value statements. Existing as a thing, ‘être-en-soi’, is
existentially seen as negative, inauthentic and bad faith. For Agnes however existing in this way, which she calls
“being”, is happiness: “there is nothing more beautiful.” (Kundera 1992: 288) Thus she is celebrating bad faith,
which is an act of bad faith in itself.
Our constant self-awareness leads to the fact that we are always conscious of how we live and act.
Therefore a concept of how to live correctly, or authentically, is possible in existentialism. Authenticity (a term
Sartre admitted borrowing from Heidegger) is the central existentialist virtue. Bad faith and good faith are
Sartre’s own terms. Sartre believes human beings in general tend to deny responsibility for their situation. This is
what he calls being in bad faith or living inauthentically as ‘they’ do. Because of our pre-reflective
consciousness explained above, we are always aware of living in bad faith and we remain responsible for staying
this way. Sartre explains that even our attempt to live in good faith is done in bad faith. He says we can never be
exactly what we want to be, because we can never be completely identical with ourselves and free of
responsibility. We are always more than ourselves and without excuse. This is why Sartre claims that we are
always in the situation of ‘not-being’. This is “the source of that famous existential anguish ( Angst) which
denotes our implicit awareness of our freedom as the sheer possibility of possibility.” (Flynn 2006: 70)
Existentialists distinguish a difference between anguish and fear. Fear has a definite object (Flynn gives the
example of being afraid off falling of a narrow precipice), whereas anguish is a more general feeling (the
awareness that one could throw oneself off the ledge). Anguish is the awareness that we can make any choice in
the world, the awareness of freedom. Living in bad faith is an attempt to escape from this anguish of our
freedom. According to existentialists this is what most people do. Thus the easy way is to act and live like ‘they’
do. Existentialists distinguish a difference between being an individual (living in good faith) and not (living in
bad faith), the latter defined as ‘plebs’ by Kierkegaard, the ‘herd’ by Nietzsche, ‘Das Man’ by Heidegger and the
‘one’ by Sartre.
The idea of vertigo Kundera writes about in The Unbearable Lightness of Being can be understood as
this existential anguish. In his metaphor “down below” (the place you long to fall to) is the place for “them” who
live in bad faith, which the narrator calls “the soulless”. For Tereza these soulless are symbolised by her mother
and friends of her mother, a place where she had fought to get away from when she was young. Tereza’s vertigo
is “[t]he solidarity of the soulless calling her. And in times of weakness, she was ready to heed the call and return
to her mother.” (Kundera 1985: 60) This urge to give in and to join the soulless, in other words to become and

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live as a thing, can be understood as an urge to turn to bad faith. Tomas stops Tereza from falling by stopping
her going back to her mother, but she keeps on living in a state of vertigo. This is expressed by Tereza literally
falling on the street and dropping objects: “She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a
constant state of vertigo.” (Kundera 1985: 61) Other moments when Tereza feels vertigo is when she thinks of
Dubcek’s speech and feels attraction to his weakness and the weakness of her country (Kundera 1985: 73) and
when she thinks of the cook at her old work who wanted to sleep with her and she feels the urge to look him up
and sleep with him anyway (Kundera 1985: 76).
The narrator explains weakness is the main cause for vertigo, which is also the main cause for bad faith:
“We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather
than stand up to it.” (Kundera 1985: 76) This is bad faith, Sartre would say, as due to our bifocal nature we are
self-aware and thus aware of our weakness. We live in freedom and we are responsible for all our choices. Thus
the choice “to give in rather than stand up to it” is bad faith. As ‘we are condemned to be free’, as Sartre says, we
have to make choices. Thus not-choosing is another form of bad faith. When Agnes’ father in Immortality does
not confront the two boys who are blocking the forest path, Agnes and her mother are angry and disappointed.
Instead of pushing the boys aside or giving them a coin he walks away and continues along another path.
(Kundera 1992: 24) This inauthentic passive behaviour is condemned by existentialists, as well as by Kundera’s
characters. The biggest case of not-choosing is suicide, when you do not take responsibility for your freedom of
eternal choices and flee for the existential anguish this causes by taking the easy way out: death. Laura acts in
this inauthentic way when she talks of suicide to Agnes and Paul. She says to her sister: “Either life gives me
everything, or I’ll quit.” (Kundera 1992: 179) This is an articulation of bad faith as Laura adapts a passive
attitude to life in which she wants life to act for her, instead of undertaking action and making choices herself.
Although Agnes and Paul do not point to this existentialist line of thought – but emphasise their love for Laura to
convince her not to take her life – the existentialist concepts of anguish and bad faith can make us understand
why Laura feels this way.

3.1.1 Bad faith and good faith

Flynn explains that Sartre speaks of two forms of bad faith. The first one is when one flees responsibility by
pointing to one’s condition, so by saying ‘That’s just the way I am’. Tomas’ idea of his bachelor life while being
married is an example of this form of bad faith. He feels he has the right to cheat on his wife Tereza by sleeping
with other women during their relationship and marriage because this way of living lets him be what he actually
is. (Kundera 1985: 10) ‘That’s just the way I am’, he seems to say, as he does not take the responsibility of being
a truthful husband who spares his wife grief by being faithful.
Another example of the first form of bad faith, says Sartre, is when we allow another subject to
determine our identity. This is when we play we are being someone else, trying to live up to others’ expectations.
This is what Sartre calls our ‘being-for-others’. Reflectively you have chosen to be this way, but pre-reflectively
you are aware of the role you are playing. Tereza is a good example of this bad faith when she was young; she
did everything to be who her mother wanted her to be: “She was willing to do anything to gain her mother’s
love.” (Kundera 1985: 44) She worked as a waitress, ran the household and took care of her siblings while she
was the brightest in the class and yearned for something higher. Thus she was aware of playing the role she
played and actually wanted the situation to change. During periods of bad faith small signs of good faith can

10
appear, an example, in Tereza’s case is that “[w]henever she did the clothes, she kept a book next to the tub. As
she turned the pages, the wash dripped all over them.” (Kundera 1985: 44-45) The habit of reading is something
she would hold onto her whole life and would see an emblem of a secret brotherhood, an emblem of authenticity.
This is why it is so important to her that Tomas is reading a book when they meet for the first time. Just like
Tereza, Sabina rejects this ‘being-for-others’ form of bad faith too, although in a more active way. She realises
that if she stayed with Franz after he had divorced his wife, she would be forced to playact: “instead of being
Sabina, she would have to act the role of Sabina; decide how best to act the role. […] Sabina cringed at the very
thought of it.” (Kundera 1985: 115) To be able to live in good faith, she vanishes out of Franz’s life. Brigitte in
Immortality also gives an example of good faith when she refuses to learn to play the piano to please Laura
(Kundera 1992: 114); she does not want to do something she does not fancy, just to be someone another wants
her to be.
The second form of bad faith, which is less common than the first, is when we live in wishfulness, “as if
we were pure possibility with no actuality, living entirely in the future, unencumbered by any past.” (Flynn
2006: 74) People living in this form of bad faith are daydreamers that fantasize of becoming someone or doing
something, but not choosing to act in a way that makes it happen. These people are deceiving themselves. In
Immortality Agnes seems to be living in this form of bad faith as for seven years she has thought of and longed
to move to the Swiss Alps. (Kundera 1992: 287) Every year she drives to the mountains and imagines she is
living there without Paul and Brigitte. But every time she goes back home and tells herself it will happen one
day. However, when she finally decides to fulfil her wish she packs her belongings, starts driving to Switzerland
and dies in a car crash. Her leap to good faith is brutally ended and her wish will always stay a wish. This
concept of bad faith helps us understand what the narrator is trying to tell us: the narrator seems to be showing us
his disapproval of living in bad faith by demonstrating what can happen if you live a life of wishfulness.
Opposed to living in bad faith stands living in good faith, or living authentically. A person lives
authentically when he or she embraces contingency, the experience of the fact that we are and that we do not
have to be. This realisation emphasises, existentialists say, our non-necessity in this world. This is, however, not
understood as a negative or a pessimistic realisation, but a reason to make something of our lives and of who we
are. The last line of Sartre’s play No Exit summarises this perfectly: “Well, let’s get on with it.” (Sartre 1989)
During her visit to the sauna Agnes ponders on her contingency: “When we are thrust out into the world
just as we are, we first have to identify with that particular throw of the dice, with the accident organised by the
divine computer” (Kundera 1992: 14). This “accident” can be understood as the absurdity and non-necessity of
us in the world. Her further thoughts remind us of Camus, who believes in the total acceptance of reality,
including its negativities, positivities and absurdity: “And it isn’t enough for us to identify with our selves, it is
necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves
not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.” (Kundera 1992:
14) Thus just as Camus, Agnes believes in accepting our absurd state of being. But for her the reason for doing
this has to do with our essence. The existentialist claim that “existence precedes essence” is recognisable here, as
Agnes explains that people form their own essence, for example the woman in the sauna who draws her self-
portrait by claiming five defined points. But for Agnes, even more important than the fact that essence comes
after existence, is that essence is irreplaceable and unique. Agnes claims that people want to show this
uniqueness to others. They want to show their essence is “something worth fighting or even dying for.” (Kundera

11
1992: 14) This way of thinking can be clarified by looking at Camus’ existentialist interpretation of the Greek
myth of Sisyphus. Camus claims that Sisyphus succeeds in being happy rolling his stone up the hill for eternity
by rising above his fate by deliberate choice. (Camus 1991) He shows himself superior to his rock. Camus’
conclusion is that our only hope is to acknowledge that there is no ultimate hope. Flynn explains that Camus did
not believe in a fixed meaning of life: “we long for meaning conveyed by a Universe that cares but discover only
an empty sky.” (Flynn 2006: 47) However, we can always make something out of what we’ve been made into.
This is also what Agnes is saying, in her own version of how to live authentically: we should passionately accept
who we are in this absurd world, form our essence and proudly show the uniqueness of it to others. The
importance of these others will be discussed in the following paragraph.

3.2 The Other4

In his book Beschreven keuzes Van Stralen claims that one of the biggest literary existentialist themes is the
Other. The importance of the Other can be explained by the influence phenomenology has on existentialism: the
main phenomenological idea is that it is the very nature of our consciousness to intend an Other. In addition, the
theory of pre-reflectivity and reflectivity makes it possible for an individual to reflect on his or herself as an
Other, emphasising the importance of a self and an Other. Also, the Other is necessary for the self consciousness
to prove its own existence, and the way it exists, as the narrator of The Unbearable Lightness of Being says: “We
all need someone to look at us.” (Kundera 1985: 269) Paul in Immortality also touches upon this when he says:
“‘A person is nothing but his image. […] As long as we live with other people, we are only what other people
consider us to be.’” (Kundera 1992: 142) The Other in literary existentialist texts is not an abstract fellow person,
but an unignorable factor with which the individual stands in a tense relationship. The presence of the Other is
mainly sensed by the Other’s gaze, as again Paul explains: “‘does there exist any other kind of direct contract
between my self and [other] selves except through the mediation of the eyes?’” (Kundera 1992: 143)) The other
puts characters in existentialist literature under pressure to make choices. This is done by the gaze, which
stimulates the character’s existential emotions, Van Stralen explains, such as shame, anguish and nausea. This
can lead to a confrontation with the Other which forces the character to take a position against the Other.

3.2.1 The gaze

Of the five senses Kundera’s characters attach the most value to sight. It differs however whether seeing, not
seeing, being seen or not being seen is important in a character’s life. Sabina, for example, finds seeing
important: “Living for Sabina meant seeing.” (Kundera 1985: 94) This contrasts with Franz, who finds not
seeing important, for example during intercourse: he closes his eyes while he makes love to Sabina. On the other
hand, Franz finds being seen essential, as for him that means living in truth: “For Franz, living in truth meant
breaking down the barriers between the private and the public. He was fond of quoting André Breton on the
desirability of living “in a glass house” into which everyone can look and there are no secrets.” (Kundera 1985:
113) Marie-Claude is also a character who enjoys being looked at. At her cocktail party she tells stories and
makes statements to catch the attention of the others: “They all looked at her in amazement. She basked in it.”
(Kundera 1985: 105) Other characters prefer not to be looked at, such as Agnes’ father, whose last words were

4
Although van Stralen writes “de ander” with a small ‘a’ in his Beschreven keuzes, I have chosen to write “the Other” with a
capital ‘O’, to distinguish “the Other” as concept, from the ‘normal’ word “the other”.

12
“Don’t look at me anymore.” (Kundera 1992: 277) and Agnes herself, who doesn’t want her husband to be able
to look at her before she dies: “She was tired and she didn’t want anyone looking at her. She didn’t want Paul
looking at her.” (Kundera 1992: 299)
A second striking observation in Kundera’s novels is that the gaze often appears in a different way than
a human eye looking directly at another human. Firstly, it can be a gaze from someone who is not present. Franz
for example keeps on feeling Sabina’s gaze after she has left him: “Everything he did, he did for Sabina, the way
Sabina would have liked to see it.” (Kundera 1985: 126) Thus even a gaze of an absent Other can influence a
person. In Franz’s case it is even able to cause the ‘being-for-others’ form of bad faith. Tereza goes even further
than Franz, she feels a gaze that most likely is not actually present, when she suspects the engineer she slept with
had set up a movie camera, “Or, more likely, he had let in someone with still a camera, who then had
photographed them from behind the curtain.” (Kundera 1985: 167) Agnes in Immortality goes even further than
Franz and Tereza when she states that “The eye is everywhere. The lens is everywhere.” (Kundera 1992: 32)
Agnes believes nowadays God’s eye has been replaced by a camera: “The eye of one has been replaced by the
eye of all. Life has changed into one vast partouze in which everyone takes part.” (Kundera 1992: 33) Thus
according to her the Other and its gaze are omnipresent.
Secondly, the gaze can be indirect, for example via Tereza’s camera or via Laura’s sunglasses. These
objects through which the gaze functions protect the gazing person from the Other. The narrator in The
Unbearable Lightness of Being speaks of this when Tereza is holding her camera in Sabina’s studio: “The
camera served Tereza as both a mechanical eye through which to observe Tomas’s mistress and a veil by which
to conceal her face from her.” (Kundera 1985: 65) When Sabina takes the camera away Tereza literally feels
naked and disarmed. (Kundera 1985: 66) Also Laura feels disarmed when her glasses are taken away from her:
“Laura looked at Agnes and saw her glasses in her sister’s hands. She suddenly felt a need for them. She felt a
need for a shield, a veil that would cover her face from her sister’s hatred.” (Kundera 1992: 205)

3.2.2 Confrontation with the Other

A fragment of The Unbearable Lightness of Being in which the existentialist Other and the gaze can clearly be
traced is Tereza’s idea of the concentration camp:

Almost from childhood, Tereza had used the term to express how she felt about life with her family. A concentration
camp is a world in which people live crammed together constantly, night and day. Brutality and violence are merely
secondary (and not in the least indispensable) characteristics. A concentration camp is the complete obliteration of
privacy. […] Tereza lived in the concentration camp when she lived with her mother. Almost from childhood, she
knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we
are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts. (Kundera 1985: 136-137)

The situation that is described here has several existentialist characteristics. Firstly, the Other and the gaze play a
huge role in Tereza’s vision of the concentration camp. The Other is constantly near you, “night and day”,
gazing at you. There is no privacy left, which Tereza finds unbearable. Secondly, Tereza sees the time when she
was living with her mother as the concentration camp. As explained before, Tereza sees her mother and her
friends as “them”, the people living in bad faith. Her associations with these people and with the time she lived

13
with them, thus with the concentration camp, are shame and humiliation. These are existential emotions that I
will discuss in the next chapter. Thirdly, she realises that the concentration camp is nothing exceptional, but
“something very basic” and something “from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts”. This
strokes with the existentialist ideas that, firstly, the Other is everywhere and can not be avoided and secondly,
that you are not born an authentic individual, but that becoming an individual is an achievement, one that
perhaps is never permanently achieved. We can understand this second existentialist idea if we look at Van
Stralen, who claims that in existentialist literature there is often a necessity for a confrontation with the Other
because authenticity can be the outcome of such a confrontation. However, the outcome of such a confrontation
is not per definition authenticity. The situation in which you are confronted with the Other is called the
borderline situation and Van Stralen explains that three forms of commitment can evolve out of such a situation.
According to the existentialist Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) borderline situations are life threatening
situations in which humans are woken up and realise they can not go on living like a thing and will have to give
meaning to their life. Van Stralen explains that in many literary existentialist works characters are portrayed as
living as things, in bad faith, who are woken up by a borderline situation that reminds them of the demands their
existence asks from them. The borderline situation is a happening that is not realised by the character, but by
fate, for example illness, or more often by others, for example a political attack or a war. The choices that are
made after the moment of awakening caused by the borderline situation are each a form of commitment.
Van Stralen distinguishes three forms of commitment. In the first form the character fades back into the
mass, taking his enlightening experiences caused by the borderline situation with him. Often these characters
tend to autodestruction or resentment. The second form entails that the character accepts the situation, whereby
new insights lead to a reorientation on the world. The character seems to be sadder but wiser, as he or she has
reached a higher level of authenticity. The third form of commitment is the Sartrean form of engagement. Here
the character realises and feels the faith in the range of human freedom and becomes aware of his or her
responsibility for society and the Other. An example of this form of commitment is the Tereza’s commitment,
who uses her gaze as a weapon by taking pictures of the Russian invasion. Her camera is often compared to a
weapon. Tereza is described as being “disarmed” (Kundera 1985: 66) without it, she is described as “aiming” it
at Sabina “like a weapon” (Kundera 1985: 66) and “shooting” roll after roll of Russian soldiers (Kundera 1985:
67). The camera is her non-violent weapon she uses against violence; it is her way of being active and
committed. We can understand this commitment better by looking at Sartre’s claim in “Is Existentialism a
Humanism?”, delivered as a public lecture in 1945, in which he states that no one can be free unless everyone is
free. ‘In choosing, I choose for all people’, is the ethical principle he states. (Flynn 2006: 46) Due to the war
circumstances caused by the Russian invasion Tereza realises this and knows what she has to do for those who
are suffering and not free: “preserve the face of violence for the distant future.” (Kundera 1985: 67)
According to Van Stralen a tendency can be found in literary existentialist works after 1945 in which
characters that are disorientated human beings in an unrecognisable reality can not understand their alienation or
the way to master this in their freedom. This characteristic of literary existentialism can clearly be linked to the
Second World War and the influence its alienation and disorientation had on society, literary writers and their
work. This war can be seen as a universal borderline situation in which – as is repeatedly stated in works by
literary existentialists such as Sartre, De Beauvoir and Camus – individuals feel the impossibility and
undesirability to keep on passively observing the situation.

14
 Striking is that Tereza uses a comparison with a concentration camp to express her ideas on the constant
and unbearable gaze of the Other and the fact that only with the greatest of efforts we can escape from this. This
Second World War connoted notion is one of the very few concepts in Kundera’s two novels that can be linked
to the war which is so important for earlier literary existentialist works such as that by Sartre, De Beauvoir and
Camus. However, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia can be seen as a comparable universal borderline
situation for the characters of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Thus the existentialist concept of the
borderline situation helps us understand Tereza’s actions: the confrontation with the Other causes her to turn to
Sartrean commitment which she expresses with her camera: her gaze. Thus this active and engaged behaviour
not only makes her happier than she has ever been in Prague: “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.” (Kundera 1985: 26),
but it also makes her an authentic, committed individual.
Now we have grasped what the existentialist borderline situation is we can understand why Tereza
claims that the concentration camp is something “from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts”.
Just as the existentialists, she believes you are not born an authentic individual, but that becoming an individual
is an achievement. This effortful achievement can be reached after a confrontation with the Other (in this case a
war). Due to Van Stralen we understand that Tereza reaches a Sartrean form of commitment; she becomes aware
of her responsibility for society and the Other.

3.3 Existential emotions

In the previous chapter I mentioned that the Other’s gaze stimulates characters’ existential emotions such as
shame, anguish and nausea. According to Sartre these are the only three authentic emotions. (Van Stralen 1996:
96) In both Kundera’s novels these emotions play a role. However, as I have dealt with anguish 5 in the previous
chapter and nausea is not mentioned as such in Kundera’s two novels, I will only be discussing shame. An
emotion that is not traditionally existential but that often occurs in Kundera’s two novels is humiliation. As I will
argue, this emotion has an even closer link to the Other than shame. Humiliation is also closely related to the
body, another literary existentialist characteristic I will discuss in a later chapter.
Tereza’s childhood was filled with shame: she was ashamed of her nudity; she was ashamed of her
mother, who walked around naked, burped and farted; she was ashamed of her mother’s friends, who laughed
about this. Tereza’s mother did not understand Tereza feeling shame: “At home, there was no such thing as
shame.” (Kundera 1985: 45) Tereza, for example, was not allowed to lock the bathroom door, as a result of
which her mother’s husband walked in every time Tereza was taking a bath. Hence, there was no privacy in
Tereza’s childhood, which reminds us of Tereza’s association of her childhood with a concentration camp. Also,
when Tereza one day runs to pull the curtains because her mother is walking around naked in the winter when
the lights are on, the following day her mother tells her friends, in the presence of Tereza, how Tereza tried to
protect her mother’s modesty and they all laughed at her. (Kundera 1985: 45) Tereza’s mother’s friends also
laughed at Tereza’s shame when her mother read her diary out loud during a dinner. (Kundera 1985: 134) Thus
Tereza’s mother not only does not understand Tereza feeling shame, but also makes fun of it.

5
It must be noted that Kundera uses the words ‘anguish’ and ‘fear’ disorderly; often they mean the same. Thus the clear
distinction between the two terms that is used in existentialism is not apparent. However, the concept of anguish is clearly
distinguished from the concept of fear, as my interpretation of ‘vertigo’ in The Unbearable Lightness of Being shows.

15
 Again we see a distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity in the differences between Tereza
and her mother and friends. In this distinction authenticity entails feeling shame (one of the three emotions Sartre
calls authentic) and inautenticity entails not feeling shame, not understanding people who do feel shame and
making fun of shame.6 Tereza and her mother are a perfect example of this, as Tereza feels shame, and her
mother does not understand this, does not experience shame herself and does everything to banish this existential
emotion from her daughter’s life. The ironic outcome, however, of Tereza’s mother’s efforts is that Tereza feels
even more shame. This makes her even more determined to leave her mother’s world in which she lives in bad
faith, and to escape to become an authentic individual.
An emotion that is closely linked to shame, but that is not defined as an authentic existential emotion by
Sartre, nor mentioned as an existentialist characteristic by Flynn, or as a literary existentialist characteristic by
Van Stralen, is the emotion of humiliation. I would like to argue that this is a literary existentialist characteristic
of Kundera’s work. Humiliation is a level worse than shame, it is degradation, disgrace and indignity. And even
more important: the Other plays an active role in humiliation. In the case of shame, the Other also plays a role: a
person is ashamed of something with regard to the Other. But the Other does not always play an active role: for
example, someone can be ashamed of her nose, while everyone around her does not notice her nose or even finds
her nose beautiful. In the case of humiliation the Other does play an active role, the Other is the one humiliating
(in contrast to the Other in the case of shame, who is not ‘shaming’). This means humiliation is more closely
linked to the Other than shame. An other literary existentialist characteristic humiliation is linked to is the body
(a theme I will discus in a later chapter). Tereza, for example, feels humiliated by her mother, who constantly
emphasising her own and Tereza’s body: “Since childhood, Tereza had seen nudity as a sign of concentration
camp uniformity, a sign of humiliation.” (Kundera 1985: 57)
In stead of proposing humiliation as a fourth existential emotion that shows authenticity, I would like to
suggest humiliation to be the emotion that triggers characters to take the leap to authenticity. The narrator in
Immortality explains this by saying that we always feel humiliation for the fact that we must be what we are
without any choice in the matter. (Kundera 1992: 276) Humiliation forces us to realise we can choose what we
are: it forces us to choose for good faith. For example: after Tereza is humiliated by her mother her whole
childhood, she chooses to leave her mother and to move in with Tomas. This is why characters sometimes long
for humiliation: they long for an opportunity to change their bad faith into good faith. Sabina for example feels
humiliated by Tomas when he puts a black bowler hat on her head and she stands in front of the mirror in her
studio wearing only her underwear and the hat. At the moment the essence of what they both saw was
humiliation. “But instead of spurning it [the humiliation, KvdS], she proudly, provocatively played it for all it
was worth” (Kundera 1985: 87). So she decides to accept the challenge of this unbearable emotion; she accepts
the confrontation with the Other, the person actively causing the humiliation. This reminds us of Van Stralen’s
claim, that in existentialist literature there is often a need for a confrontation with the Other because authenticity
can be the outcome of such a confrontation.
Tereza also longs for humiliation, for example, when she in the bathroom of the engineer she slept with:
“She was sitting there on the toilet, and her sudden desire to void her bowels was in fact a desire to go to the
extreme of humiliation, to become only and utterly a body” (Kundera 1985: 157). She then indeed succeeds in
becoming only and utterly a body (something characters long for during confrontations with the Other, as we
6
The narrator in The unbearable lightness of being holds on to this distinction throughout the whole book. For example it is
explicitly stated that the dog Karenin, who is not human and thus can not live authentically, does not know shame. (297)

16
shall see), but this brings “a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness.” (Kundera 1985: 157) This reminds us of
another claim by Van Stralen, namely that characters who accept their situation of superfluousness in the world
(Tereza’s “infinite grief and loneliness”) come out of this sadder but wiser, as he or she has reached a higher
level of authenticity.

3.4 Small spaces

A literary existentialist theme that is closely linked to the Other and the gaze is small spaces. Small spaces are
places where individuals are forced to confront the Other. Van Stralen states that in no other literary movement
do doors and rooms play such an important role, as in literary existentialism. He states that in these closed spaces
humans are subjected to the gaze of the Other: the character realises he or she should escape from the power
control the gaze exercises, which triggers the battle with the Other. In addition, the confronted character in the
small space feels as if he or she is reduced to his or her body.
In Kundera’s novels small spaces can be found that correspond with Van Stralen’s idea of closed spaces
in which characters are subjected to the gaze of the Other. A clear example of this can be found in Immortality,
when Laura has returned from Martinique and she is standing with Agnes and Paul in their living room. The
narrator emphasises the fact that the characters are standing in a small space by comparing the room with a stage,
elaborating on which furniture is standing where and where the characters are standing with regard to each other.
(Kundera 1992: 203) Moreover, the narrator describes the gazes of the characters, emphasising the gaze from
one sister to the other: “Laura is by the fireplace keeping her eyes fixed upon Agnes, who is standing only a few
steps away. Laura’s swollen eyes are accusing her sister of cruelty, insensitivity and cold-heartedness.” (Kundera
1992: 203) The small space of the living room is the place where Laura and Agnes feel the Other’s gaze become
concrete and direct. This is the place where they can not escape from the Other’s gaze anymore and feel they are
forced to confront the Other. The tensions that have been building up between the two women concerning
Laura’s threats to commit suicide come to a climax in this closed space. The narrator stresses this by stating: “It
was no longer possible to avoid a fight.” (Kundera 1992: 203) When the confrontation breaks loose Paul tries to
ease the tension by saying: “‘We need to get away somewhere’” (Kundera 1992: 204), underlining once again
that the closed space is playing a big role in the sisters’ confrontation; he feels if they would leave the room the
tensions would diminish.
However, other small spaces in Kundera’s novel do not correspond with Van Stralen’s idea. In Van
Stralen’s existentialist concept of small spaces these closed spaces are a place where characters confront each
other through their gaze. Yet Kundera’s characters also tend to desire small space precisely because they are
places where they can escape from the Other and the Other’s gaze. Agnes for example enjoys using the elevator
“because it permitted her a few moments of solitude.” (Kundera 1992: 30) She also looks forward to driving in
her car “because in the car nobody talked to her and nobody looked at her. Yes, the most important thing was
that nobody looked at her. Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.” (Kundera 1992: 30) Thus particularly the absence
of the Other’s gaze is what Agnes likes in small closed spaces.
On the other hand Tomas has a different reason than Agnes for preferring closed spaces to open spaces.
He realises this when he feels looks from others outside the small spaces of his hospital:

17
 A doctor (unlike a politician or an actor) is judged only by his patients and immediate colleagues, that is, behind
closed doors, man to man. Confronted by the looks of those who judge him, he can respond at once with his own
look, to explain or defend himself. Now (for the first time in his life) Tomas found himself in a situation where the
looks fixed on him were so numerous that he was unable to register them. He could answer them neither with his own
look nor with words. […] People talked about him inside and outside the hospital […] He was surprised at how
unbearable he found it, how panic-stricken it made him feel. (Kundera 1985: 183-184)

In this fragment it becomes clear that Tomas prefers closed spaces to open spaces because he likes to be able to
respond directly and at once to the Other’s gaze, something which can not be done in the case of numerous
anonymous looks in open spaces. Thus he is willing to enter into a confrontation, provided that he can “explain
or defend himself.”, which is only possible in a small space.
Thus Van Stralen’s existentialist theme of small spaces can be found in Kundera’s work. But small
spaces are not always the place where a confrontation with the Other takes place; characters also desire small
spaces to avoid the Other. Also, small spaces and the possible confrontations that take place in them are not
always avoided, as gazes in small spaces can be preferred above gazes in open spaces.

3.5 The body

As mentioned above, Van Stralen not only states that in closed spaces humans are subjected to the gaze of the
Other, but also that these confronted characters in small spaces feel as if they are reduced to their body. The
scene (as the narrator of Immortality calls it) described above with Laura, Agnes and Paul standing in the living
room is again a good example of a fragment that illustrates Van Stralen’s idea. After the verbal discussion
between the two sisters they look at each other in silence and the narrator describes to the reader that Laura
“wanted to be as much of a body as possible, an abandoned, discarded body. She wanted to place that body in
the middle of their living room and leave it there. To let it lie there, heavy and motionless.” (Kundera 1992: 205)
Thus the confrontation with the Other makes characters conscious of their body, insofar as even making them
desire to be nothing more than that body.
According to Flynn the body is important for existentialism, as existentialists emphasise “our
situatedness, beginning with our embodiedness that gives us a perspective and frustrates every attempt to
volatilize our existence into that of some free-floating spirit hovering over the world. As Merleau-Ponty insisted
(and Marcel agreed), I do not have a body, I am my body.” (Flynn 2006: 61) This existentialist statement that a
person is his or her body brings along the dilemma of body and soul. The question of duality or unity of body
and soul is a returning motif in Kundera’s novels (two parts of The Unbearable Lightness of Being are called
“Soul and Body” and two chapters in Immortality carry the title “The body”). A recurring pondering by
Kundera’s characters is how they can link their soul, their “I” or their self to their body. In Immortality Agnes,
for example, explains to Paul that she feels that her face is not herself, and that all faces are just one face in many
variations. (Kundera 1992: 35) Tereza also struggles with the body-soul dilemma and tries to see her self through
her body. (Kundera 1985: 41) Since her childhood, questions have been going through her head such as “what
was the relationship between Tereza and her body? Had her body the right to call itself Tereza? And if not, then
what did the name refer to? Merely something incorporeal, intangible?” (Kundera 1985: 139) The narrator
believes that these are questions without answers (the narrator in Immortality goes even further by claiming that
the face “reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a

18
specimen.” (Kundera 1992: 13)) but Tereza thinks differently: she often stares at her face in the mirror and then
forgets she is looking at “the instrument panel of her body mechanisms” (Kundera 1985: 41) and sees it as “the
true expression of her nature.” (Kundera 1985: 41)
This staring at an object to find its underlying essence reminds us of Husserl’s phenomenology in which
he pleads for a method in which we go back to the ‘Sachen’. 7 Husserl explains that everything that appears
before our consciousness is incomplete and that our consciousness is the one that gives unity to this chaos. To be
able to find the essence of an object Husserl claims our consciousness has to be cleared of all irrelevant thoughts.
During this phenomenological reduction the consciousness is cleared of all associations, prejudices and theories
about the object. Finding this essence makes it possible to understand and truly see objects as they are. An
example of this reduction in a literary existentialist text can be found in Sartre’s De Walging. (Sartre 1958)
Roquentin stares at the root of a chestnut tree and experiences seeing the root as what it essentially is. Through
phenomenological reduction Roquentin experiences contingency and feels nausea when he realises everything in
the world is unnecessary: we are but we do not have to be.
When Tereza stares at her face in the mirror she is also seeking the essence of that phenomenon. Just as
Roquentin she uses reduction to reach the essence, by clearing her face of her mother’s features: “she was
occasionally upset at the sight of her mother’s features in her face. She would stare all the more doggedly at her
image in an attempt to wish them away and keep only what was hers alone.” (Kundera 1985: 41) Agnes also tries
to find her essence by reduction (which the narrator calls “subtraction”): “Agnes subtracts from her self
everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence.” (Kundera 1992: 111) The
biggest difference between Tereza’s and Agnes’ phenomenological experience of countering their face as a
phenomenon and grasping the essence of it through reduction and Roquentin’s phenomenological experience is
that the two women do not experience contingency or feel nausea. Tereza for example, on contrary, rejoices:
“Each time she succeeded [in reducing her face to what was hers alone, KvdS] was a time of intoxication: her
soul would rise to the surface of her body like a crew charging up from the bowels of a ship, spreading out over
the deck, waving at the sky and singing in jubilation.” (Kundera 1985: 41) For both Tereza and Agnes reaching
the essence of the phenomenon of the body (or seemingly reaching this essence, as they both realise it might be
an illusion) is a necessity in life. The narrator of Immortality describes this clearly by saying: “Without the faith
that our face expresses our self, without that basic illusion, that arch-illusion, we cannot live or at least we cannot
take life seriously.” (Kundera 1992: 14)
A second recurring pondering by Kundera’s characters is on the importance of the uniqueness of the
body. When Tomas sees Tereza dancing with one of his colleagues “[h]e had no difficulty imagining Tereza and
his young colleague as lovers. [...] He realized that Tereza’s body was perfectly thinkable coupled with any male
body, and the thought put him in a foul mood.” (Kundera 1985: 17) The fact that the body is not unique or
irreplaceable is also a realisation Tereza undergoes. In one of her nightmares the identicalness of bodies is an
important theme that can be traced back to her childhood in which her mother emphasised that her body was just
like all other bodies. (Kundera 1985: 57) Now she is together with Tomas she feels as if she still has not escaped
form the sameness of all bodies: “She had come to [Tomas] to escape her mother’s world, a world where all
bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceable. But he, too, had drawn an equal
sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no
7
I both used Flynn’s (especially Chapter 1, p. 17-23) and Van Stralen’s (especially the paragraph “De existentiële
fenomenologie”, p. 23-40) literature on phenomenology for this paragraph.

19
distinction between Tereza’s body and the other bodies.” (Kundera 1985: 58) If we hold on to the earlier
comparison between her mother’s world and living in bad faith from which Tereza wanted to escape, we can
now add another characteristic to this inauthentic way of life: the identicalness and sameness of bodies.
A third bodily theme is whether characters identify with their body or not. Laura and Paul perfectly
identify with their body. In her body Laura “felt at home as in a well-furnished house.” (Kundera 1992: 107) In
contrast, “Agnes envied Paul for being able to live without constant awareness of his body.” (Kundera 1992:
108) Only in moments of sexual excitement Agnes is able to identify with her body, something Laura would
never understand, as for her “the body was sexual from the beginning, a priori, constantly and completely, by its
very essence.” (Kundera 1992: 109)8 The fact Agnes has difficulty identifying with her body reminds us of the
existentialist thought that humans never coincide with ourselves, something animals and plants do. As bad faith
is defined as the attempt to avoid this innate human break in existence and to coincide with yourself anyway, we
can see Laura and Paul as inauthentic, as they are not conscious of this break and try to coincide with themselves
as things do, and Agnes as authentic, as she consciously feels this break. However, following this argumentation,
as Agnes envies Paul she implicitly envies living in bad faith, which in itself is a form of bad faith.

3.6 Gestures
An existentialist bodily theme that often occurs in Kundera’s two novels but is not mentioned by Van Stralen or
Flynn is the theme of gestures. In several instances the narrators of the two novels stand still to elaborate on a
character’s gesture: they describe the movement and ponder on what the gesture means. The main question
Kundera’s narrators and characters muse on is whether gestures reflect the essence of a person, or whether a
small number of ‘standard’ gestures are used by everyone and say nothing about a person’s essence. In
Immortality the narrator, in the first instance, seems to believe the former, as the narrator states that the essence
of an individual, independent of time, is revealed in gestures. (Kundera 1992: 4) This notion can be understood
with the help of the existentialist idea that a person’s individual choices in life can reveal his or her ‘fundamental
Choice’ that gives unity and direction to his or her person’s life. (Flynn, 12) In this comparison a person’s
gestures can reveal his or her ‘fundamental Choice’, which carries a person’s essence. Tomas is a character who
believes in this idea. When he meets his son after many years he traces a movement in his son’s face which he
often sees himself do in the mirrorr (Kundera 1992: 216) The fact that his son and himself use the same gesture
makes him uneasy: he is confronted with the essential similarities between himself and his child.
On the other hand the same narrator later in Immortality corrects him or herself by saying: “I was
wrong. The gesture revealed nothing of that woman’s [Agnes’, KvdS] essence, one could rather say that the
woman revealed to me the charm of a gesture. A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual,
[…] on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.” (Kundera
1992: 8) Thus here the narrator turns to the conviction that gestures do not reveal a person’s essence, but use us
humans to reveal themselves. Such ‘standard’ gestures are for example “the gesture of protest against a violation
of human rights” that uses Brigitte as an instrument (Kundera 1992: 152) and “the gesture of longing for
immortality” that uses Bettina and Laura. (Kundera 1992: 185) A character who agrees with this notion is Agnes

8
It may be useful and interesting to use Georges Bataille’s theory on eroticism to interpret Agnes’ experience of only being
able to identify with her body during sexual excitement. In his book L’Erotisme he explains “dat het er bij erotiek steeds om
gaat het isolement van de mens, zijn discontinuïteit, te vervangen door een gevoel van dieperliggende continuïteit.” (Dutch
translation: Jan Versteeg. 1993 De Erotiek. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Arena. 21.)

20
who, when she notices her younger sister Laura using her gesture of turning her head, smiling and tossing her
arm up to say goodbye, realises “that the gesture was available to all and thus did not really belong to her”
(Kundera 1992: 41). Thus, because the gesture is used by many people, it is not hers and does not reveal her
essence.
We can understand this bodily theme of the gesture as a discussion by Kundera’s narrators and
characters about the existentialist notion of “existence precedes essence” in the case of gestures. They do not
agree on whether this existentialist notion is the case, or whether in the case of gestures it is turned around into
“essence precedes existence”. In my opinion the theme of the gesture, derived from Van Stralen’s literary
existentialist theme of the body, can be noted as a characteristic of Kundera’s work as literary existentialist texts.

4. Conclusion
In this thesis I positioned myself in the discussion about the relationship between literature and philosophy by
agreeing with Leavis and Van Stralen, that finding philosophical elements in a text should not be the aim of a
research, but the beginning. I have followed Van Stralen in his hermeneutic model by focusing on how
existentialist elements in Kundera’s two novels can help understand the two texts in a better way. Thus my main
question was not only “Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality be seen
as literary existentialist texts?”, but also “Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and interpret
these texts?”. I also followed Van Stralen by making a distinction between philosophical existentialism and
literary existentialism. Doing this I opposed Flynn who disregards this division by pondering on the question
whether existentialism is solely a philosophical or literary movement.

4.1 Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality be
seen as literary existentialist texts?
To find an answer to my first main question. “Can Milan Kundera’s novels The Unbearable Lightness of Being
and Immortality be seen as literary existentialist texts?”, I discussed a number of existentialist aspects derived
from philosophical and literary existentialism and asked myself in which way these aspects correspond with and
differ from the existentialist concepts Flynn and Van Stralen talk about. Concerning authenticity, bad faith and
good faith I showed a distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity which in Kundera’s The Unbearable
Lightness of Being is represented in the contrast between Tereza (featuring authenticity, good faith, having a
soul, shame, and the unique and irreplaceable body) and Tereza’s mother (featuring inauthenticity, bad faith,
soullessness, not understanding, not experiencing and banning shame, and the identicalness and sameness of
bodies). Thus here many similarities can be found between the existentialist concepts in philosophical and
literary existentialism and these concepts in Kundera’s novels.
The important existentialist concept of the Other and the Other’s gaze can also clearly be found in the
two novels; characters need and long for the gaze, and they are also forced into a confrontation with the Other
through the gaze. A striking difference however is that this gaze often appears in a different way than a human
eye looking directly at another human; for example, as a gaze from someone who is not present (Franz
constantly feels Sabina’s absent gaze, Agnes believes that “[t]he eye is everywhere” (Kundera 1992: 32)) or as
an indirect gaze (via Tereza’s camera or Laura’s sunglasses).

21
 The body is an existentialist concept that plays a big role in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and
Immortality. The existentialist statement that a person is his or her body (Flynn, 61) brings along the returning
motif of the question of duality or unity of body and soul is in Kundera’s novels. A recurring pondering by
Kundera’s characters is how they can link their soul, their “I” or their self to their body. Tereza and Agnes for
example stare at their face in the mirror to find the essence of their selves. This reminds us of phenomenological
reduction. The biggest difference between Tereza’s and Agnes’ phenomenological experience of countering their
face as a phenomenon and grasping the essence of it through reduction and the ‘traditional’ phenomenological
experience is that the two women do not experience contingency or feel nausea. Tereza, for example, on the
contrary, rejoices when it happens.
Another existentialist distinction that appears in Kundera’s work is the distinction between existing as a
human and as a thing (Sartre: ‘être-pour-soi’ and ‘être-en-soi’). In Immortality Agnes makes this distinction with
the terms “being one’s self”/“living” and “being”. A difference between the existentialist concept and the
concept in Kundera’s text is however, just as in the case of the body and phenomenological reduction, a
difference in value judgement. For Agnes existing as a thing is happiness: “there is nothing more beautiful.”
(Kundera 1992: 288), while for existentialists this is seen as bad faith.
Van Stralen states that small spaces are places where individuals are forced to confront the Other. In
Kundera’s novels small spaces can be found that correspond with this idea (Agnes, Laura and Paul in the living
room). However, other small spaces in Kundera’s novel do not correspond with Van Stralen’s idea.: some of
Kundera’s characters tend to desire small space precisely because they are places where they can escape from the
Other and the Other’s gaze (Agnes enjoys being in the elevator and the car) or because they are places where the
character can directly respond to the Other (Tomas in the small spaces of his hospital).
In my research I found two unique literary existentialist characteristic of Kundera’s novels (which
Flynn and Van Stralen do not mention). The first is humiliation. In the case of this emotion the Other plays an
active role (in contrast to the case of shame), thus humiliation is even more closely linked to the Other than
shame. I have suggested humiliation to be the emotion that triggers characters to take the leap to authenticity. It
forces us to realise we can choose what we are: it forces us to choose for good faith. This is why characters
sometimes long for humiliation: they long for an opportunity to change their bad faith into good faith (Sabina
looks for confrontation with the Other by letting Tomas humiliate her with the black hat; Tereza wants to feel
humiliated by becoming “utterly and only a body” (Kundera 1985: 157).
The second existentialist feature that characterises Kundera’s texts is the theme of gestures, which can
be derived from the existentialist concept of the body. In several instances the narrators of the two novels stand
still to elaborate on a character’s gesture: they describe the movement and ponder on what the gesture means.
The main question Kundera’s narrators and characters muse on is whether gestures reflect the essence of a
person, or whether a small number of ‘standard’ gestures are used by everyone and say nothing about a person’s
essence. We can understand this theme as a discussion by Kundera’s narrators and characters about the
existentialist notion of “existence precedes essence” in the case of gestures. They do not agree on whether this
existentialist notion is the case, or whether in the case of gestures it is turned around into “essence precedes
existence”.
Thus, due to many existentialist aspects that can be found and understood in an existentialist way in The
Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality I believe these texts by Milan Kundera can be seen as literary

22
existentialist texts. However, because some existentialist characteristics differ slightly from their ‘traditional’
form (as Flynn and Van Stralen explain them) and because unique literary existentialist themes can be found in
Kundera’s novels such as humiliation and gestures, we should approach Kundera’s two novels as examples of
‘Kundera’s literary existentialism’, which is something different than the ‘traditional’ literary existentialism
known from for example literature by Sartre and Camus.

4.2 Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and interpret these texts?
To answer my second main question, “Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and interpret these
texts?”, I discussed ways in which using existentialist concepts help in understanding Kundera’s two novels.
Firstly, I used the concept of existential anguish to clarify the narrator’s notion of “vertigo” in The Unbearable
Lightness of Being. By analysing this notion a distinction becomes clear between Tereza and authenticity on one
side, and the world of her mother and friends (“the soulless” (Kundera 1985: 60)) and inauthenticity on the other
side. Due to this existentialist concept we understand that weakness lures Tereza back to the bad faith she
escaped from when she left her mother to move in with Tomas. In Kundera’s novel this urge is described as “the
longing to fall”.
The existentialist distinction between good faith and bad faith helps us understand why Kundera’s
narrators and characters condemn inauthentic behaviour such as not-choosing (Agnes’ father in the forest and
Laura threatening to commit suicide) and living in wishfulness (Agnes’ wanting to move to Switzerland). Other
forms of bad faith that can be found in Kundera’s novels are fleeing one’s responsibility by pointing to one’s
condition (Tomas and his infidelity) and ‘being-for-others’ (Tereza wanting to please her mother). Living in
good faith is also portrayed in the two novels, for example not choosing for ‘being-for-others’ (Sabina who does
not want “to act the role of Sabina” for Franz (Kundera 1985: 115), and Brigitte who does not want to learn to
play the piano for Laura) and embracing contingency (Agnes, who does this in a comparable way to Camus’
Sisyphus).
The concepts of the Other and the Other’s gaze help us interpret Tereza’s notion of the concentration
camp in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. To clarify this I used Van Stralen’s claim that in existentialist
literature there is often a need for a confrontation with the Other because authenticity can be the outcome of such
a confrontation. An example of such a borderline situation (as Jaspers calls it) is the Russian invasion of
Czechoslovakia which causes Tereza to turn to Sartrean commitment: she uses her gaze to help those who are
suffering and not free by preserving “the face of violence for the distant future” with her camera (Kundera 1985:
67). This makes Tereza an authentic, committed individual. We now also understand why Tereza claims that the
concentration camp is something “from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts”. Just as the
existentialists she believes you are not born an authentic individual, but that becoming an individual is an
achievement. This effortful achievement can be reached after a confrontation with the Other (in this case a war).
Thus, defining Kundera’s two novels as literary existentialist texts (to be more exact: examples of
‘Kundera’s literary existentialism’) results in the fact that certain parts of Unbearable Lightness of Being and
Immortality can be clarified and interpreted in a better way. This means combining the work of Milan Kundera
with the philosophy of existentialism not only has the aim to find similarities between the literature and the
philosophy, a fallacy both Leavis and Van Stralen mentioned, but also uses the philosophy to interpret the
literature, something Van Stralen proposed with his hermeneutic model.

23
5. Suggestions for further research
Unfortunately there were many more aspects of Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality that can be
linked to existentialism and that can be explained using existentialism than I could attend to in this BA-thesis.
But fortunately there are many more literary critics who love Kundera’s work and are interested in
existentialism. Therefore I will mention a few suggestions I have for further research concerning these two
novels by Kundera and existentialism.
Van Stralen claims that many existentialist writers interpret Christian concepts in a new way. This could
be analysed in an essay about the notions of God as Creator, God as computer, the eye of God changing into the
eye of the camera, paradise, Adam, Eve, love and biblical names in Unbearable Lightness of Being and
Immortality.
Another interesting subject for research is the relationship between postmodernism and existentialism. 9
In the case of Kundera’s novel I believe interesting results can be found when focusing on the role of the
narrator. How postmodern is the narrator in Kundera’s work? And how does this influence Kundera’s
existentialism? Other interesting aspects are the motif of small, closed spaces which can be compared to the
postmodern motif of the labyrinth and the role of the reader with regard to existential commitment.
Thirdly, I believe the relationship between existentialism and Freud’s psychoanalysis can be interesting
in analysing Kundera’s novels. Sartre says Freud’s psychoanalysis and his concept of the unconscious is a
theoretical versions of bad faith. “[It relieves] us of the anguish of our freedom by denying that we are free in
this creative, existentialist sense.” (Flynn 2006: 72) In Kundera’s novels however, dreams are analysed, the
Oedipus complex is mentioned a few times and Agnes is caught thinking that “her father was her only love”
(Kundera 1992: 279).
Finally, coincidences play a big role in Unbearable Lightness of Being as well as in Immortality, for
example the coincidences that bring Tereza en Tomas together, the narrator speaking of coincidences as a
dimension of beauty in life (Kundera 1985: 52), the different types of coincidences listed in Immortality and the
idea of “existential mathematics” (Kundera 1992: 253). An interesting essay could be written about the
relationship between the motif of coincidences in these novels and literature by surrealists, such as Nadja by
André Breton.

9
As Hans van Stralen for example touches upon in: Stralen, Hans van. 1995 “Slaughterhouse-Five, existentialist themes
elaborated in a postmodernist way”. In: Neophilologus 79 (1995), blz. 3-12.

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6. Bibliography

- Bataille, Georges. 1993 De Erotiek.. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Arena. 21. [1957]

- Camus, Albert. 1991 The myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books. [1942]

- Doorman, Maarten & Heleen Pott. 2005 Filosofen van deze tijd. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bakker. [2000] 398.

- Flynn, Thomas R. 2006 Existentialism. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: University Press.

- Kundera, Milan. 1992 Immortality. London: Faber and faber. [1990]

- Kundera, Milan. 1985 The Unbearable Lightness of Being. London: Faber and faber. [1984]

- Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1985 De Walging. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers. [1938]

- Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1989. No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books. [1944]

- Skilleas, O. M. 2001 “Literature in Philosophy?” in: Philosophy and Literature. An introduction. Edingburgh:
University Press. 105-127.

- Stralen, Hans van. 1996 Beschreven keuzes, een inleiding in het literaire existentialisme. Apeldoorn/Leuven:
Garant.

- Stralen, Hans van. 2001 “Zelfontplooing en scepsis, de filosofie en de literatuur van het existentialisme na de
Tweede Wereldoorlog.”. In: Jaarboek voor literatuurwetenschap I. 85-96.

- Stralen, Hans van. 1995 “Slaughterhouse-Five, existentialist themes elaborated in a postmodernist way”. In:
Neophilologus 79. 3-12.

- Wellek, René and Frank Raymond Leavis. 1937 “Literary Criticism and Philosophy”. Scrutiny.

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