| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis I position 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 follow 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 is 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 follow 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. 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 discuss a number of existentialist aspects derived from philosophical and literary existentialism and ask 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 show 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 or as an indirect gaze.
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 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. 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 or because they are places where the character can directly respond to the Other .
In my research I discuss 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.
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 existentialist texts. However, because some existentialist characteristics differ slightly from their ‘traditional’ form 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.
To answer my second main question, “Does this help, and if so how does this help, to clarify and interpret these texts?”, I discuss ways in which using existentialist concepts help in understanding Kundera’s two novels. Firstly, I use 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 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 and living in wishfulness. Other forms of bad faith that can be found in Kundera’s novels are fleeing one’s responsibility by pointing to one’s condition and ‘being-for-others’. Living in good faith is also portrayed in the two novels, for example not choosing for ‘being-for-others’, and embracing contingency.
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 use 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 is the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia which causes Tereza to turn to Sartrean commitment. This makes Tereza an authentic, committed individual. Just as the existentialists she believes you are not born an authentic individual, but that becoming an individual is an achievement.
Thus, defining Kundera’s two novels as literary existentialist texts 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. | |
