On Lightness of Being (In Memory of Milan Kundera)

 

'Life which disappears once and for all, which does not return is without weight 

and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime means nothing at all.'

 

I. 

 

Milan Kundera, the Czech-French novelist who died earlier this month, aged 94, was one of those writers whom I tried (but failed) to read and to love - Umberto Eco would be another such author. 

 

And so it is that the only work of his to which I ever returned was the philosophical novel for which he is best remembered, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) [1]. And it's this work about which I'd like to make some brief remarks ...

 

 

II.   

 

Set in the late 1960s and early '70s - i.e., during and just after the so-called Prague Spring period - it is the tale of a sex-obsessed surgeon, Tomáš, who eventually learns how to love and remain faithful to his wife, Tereza, an animal-loving photographer with hang-ups about her body. 

 

It is the story also of Tomáš's mistress and confidante, Sabina, an artist who has declared war on kitsch and puritanism and wishes to lead a life of extreme lightness [2].

 

Essentially, the novel challenges Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence; an idea which, were it true - or were we to take it seriously and act as if it were true - would lie upon our actions as the greatest weight. 

 

Kundera obliges his characters (and readers) to ask themselves how they would live were they to know for sure that they only have one life to live and that which occurs in life does so once and once only - would this lightness of being bring freedom and happiness, or become unbearable: for without weight (i.e. existential meaning), do not all our actions become trivial and worthless? [3]

 

 

III.

 

Einmal ist keinmal, as our German friends like to say - i.e., once is never enough; indeed, once is as good as never having happened at all. If a human life, for example, fails to forever return, then once it is over it is truly over and the universe can simply carry on in utter indifference.

 

Obviously, as a floraphile - that is to say, as one who loves flowers and locates their beauty precisely in the fact that they bloom and then fade with no sense of shame, or responsibility, or significance - I am not particularly troubled by such a thought, nor do I accept the logic. 

 

And whilst I don't think we can ever become soulless like the flowers - or that this would be desirable - that doesn't mean that men and women should forever live as beasts of burden, weighed down by moral seriousness.      

 

Similarly, as a lover of birds, I approve of young women like Sabina learning how to fly in defiance of the spirit of gravity - even if that means they must first hollow out their bones; it is better to live in freedom with nothing to eat, than un-free and over-stuffed, as someone once wrote [4]. 

 

However, like Nietzsche, I would also counsel taking things slowly, cautiously. 

 

For if, like Sabina, you want to learn how to fly, then you must first learn how to stand and to walk and to run and to climb. And to do that, you need to develop strong legs and that means remaining true to the earth and practicing a little weight training.     

     

 

Notes

 

[1] Written in 1982, in Czech, as Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, it was first published in a French translation as L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être (Gallimard, 1984). That same year, it was also translated into English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and published by Harper & Row in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK. 

 

[2] The novel also introduces us to Sabina's other lover, Franz - a kindly academic and idealist who might have been better advised to stick to his books and not get mixed up with women like Sabina - and a smiling, cancer-ridden dog belonging to Tomáš and Tereza who, for all their flaws, love this poor mutt and so pass what for Kundera is the true moral test of mankind; namely, whether one can or cannot display kindness for those creatures at one's mercy.

 

[3] Kundera is aware that this debate within philosophy between those who favour weight and those who champion lightness is as old as the Greek hills and can be traced back to the pre-Socratic thinker Parmenides (who thought the latter positive and the former negative).

 

[4] See the post entitled 'On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird' (10 Oct 2015): click here.  

With thanks to Thomas Bonneville for providing the insight into Kundera's animal-based ethics.

 

 

A Letter to Heide Hatry (Parts I and II)

Heide Hatry

I. The Sickness Unto Death

Dear Heide,

Many thanks for your fascinating five-part response to the posts on Torpedo the Ark that referred to your recent body of work, Icons in Ash. I'm touched that you kindly took the time to write not only at length, but with such good grace and critical intelligence. I will attempt to reply in the same manner and to each part in turn. However, I should point out that I'm unconvinced about the possibility (or desirability) of serious discussion: either two people agree - in which case there's not much to say; or they disagree - in which case there's nothing to say. This renders the attempt to exchange ideas narcissistic and futile; a vacuous academic game to be avoided at all costs.

Having said that, there's no need for absolute silence; we can surely keep company and converse without attempting to discuss things and break words apart. It's just a question of bearing in mind this idea of incommensurability and accepting that even speaking subjects who seem to share a language never truly understand one another; that there's always a pathos of distance between things, between people. It's not surprising, therefore, that you fail to "recognise" yourself in my words: for I don't know you. Indeed, if I might be permitted to paraphrase Nietzsche once more, we knowers are unknown even to ourselves ...

You ask if I have "really looked" at your work. Sadly, as I don't live in New York, I've not been afforded the opportunity to do so. I've had to make do with printed reproductions and images online. Perhaps this explains why I haven't "felt" it (though I'm not quite sure I know what you mean by this). Ultimately, it's fair to say that I'm more interested in what you (and others) say about the portraits, rather than the portraits themselves. As I'm neither a practicing visual artist, nor a qualified art critic, you'll have to forgive my insensitivity.   

I'm pretty much in agreement with your remarks on Deleuze and Guattai; certainly theirs was a project critical and clinical in nature and they regarded themselves as cultural physicians. But it should be noted that they have a very unusual understanding of what constitutes health and it doesn't coinicide with the dreary and functional good health which we've been given and which we're endlessly told we have to look after.

In fact, it's an irresistable and delicate form of health that the conventionally robust who eat their five-a-day and visit the gym after work might find feeble and sickly. The key thing is, whilst strength preserves, it's only sickness that advances. That's why we need our decadents, our convalescents, and those artists and philosophers who have returned from the Underworld with bloodshot eyes and pierced eardrums. You mention Artaud and Rimbaud. I might mention others - such as D. H. Lawrence, for example. Theirs may not have been "salutary examples of the good life", but they were vital figures nevertheless. 


II. On Death and Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence       

I'm very sorry if my suggestion that, in calling up the spirits of deceased loved ones, you were seeking to have the last word upset you. It might well be that such a remark displays all of the faults you ascribe to it (banality, reductiveness, wrong-headedness, tone-deafness, remarkable ungenerosity, and wilful misunderstanding). Nevertheless, it surely has to be admitted that the dead, being dead, have no right of reply and cannot give consent.

In fact, one of the irritating things about the dead is that no matter how loud you cry and scream at them, or or how fully you explain yourself to them, they never listen and they never respond. Again, it's not so much rudeness or indifference on their part - it's just how they are (dead).

Obviously, we disagree on this ... It might please you to know, however, that I like the idea of the souls of the dead investing the lives of the living. And of the dead who do not die, but look on and silently help. It might be noted too that I've written sympathetically and approvingly of necrophilia and spectrophilia. But still - with the possible exception of those posthumous individuals who, as Nietzsche says, only enter into life once they've died - I can't quite accept that the dead have a great deal to offer (although, to be fair, neither do the noisy majority of the living). 

Moving on ... I opened my eyes wide in astonishment when you referred to (human) life as the "most glorious phenomenon" - but decided you were only teasing. I mean, Heide, c'mon - you can't be serious! At best life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche describes it. To privilege life over death is just prejudice. I'm all for living life joyfully, but it's only ever a practice of joy before death and the real festivity begins when we make a return to material actuality.

To be clear: I'm not championing that negative representation of death conceived as a form of judgement which comes at the end of a life upon which, as you say, it "exerts an oppressive and defeatist effect". Rather, I'm speaking of death as a form of becoming (a line of flight and a dissolution). You mention at this point in your comments Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence and, clearly, it speaks of both types of death which Keith Ansell-Pearson characterises as heat death and fire death. Please note, however, that there's never any attempt at reconciliation in Nietzsche's work.

I wouldn't say Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is a "life-affirming" teaching (even you put this phrase in scare quotes); what it affirms, rather, is repetition and the difference engendered by it (the Same - das Gleiche - is not a fixed essence and does not refer to a content in and of itself). Nor is it a cheerful teaching - it's a form of tragic pessimism; there's no promise of salvation or any hope of transcending existence precisely as is. The happiness it promises is forever tied to pain and suffering (as well as moonlight, spiders and demons).      


To read parts III-V of this letter to Heide Hatry, please click here. 

To read Heide Hatry's extensive series of comments please see the posts to which they are attached: Heide Hatry: Icons in Ash and On Faciality and Becoming-Imperceptible with Reference to the Work of Heide Hatry. 

Another Bloody Sunset (On Eternal Recurrence and the Snobbery of Photographers)

Die Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen 
SA/2016

I hate people who take photography seriously; people who fuss over every aspect of their composition and have to employ all the latest technology; people who look down on those of us who enjoy simply taking snaps - including snaps of the sunset which, apparently, is not the done thing in the world of professional image making. Indeed, there's even a sneering acronym used in online chat forums: NABS - not another bloody sunset.

For me, there's something not only touching but philosophically interesting about the fact that, apart from a few superior types who like their cyclopic perception of the world to remain immaculate and claim to be unmoved by natural beauty or the wonder of events, people continue to look to the skies and attempt to capture, however naively or inadequately, the splendour of the rising or setting sun.

For I suspect that one of the things that enchants is the fact that just as no one steps twice into the same river, no sunset is ever witnessed more than once; it's an absolutely unique occurrence that only gives the illusion of an identical event happening over and over each day.

Nietzsche famously terms this the eternal recurrence of the same and, as Deleuze demonstrates in his radical interpretation of this concept, what returns is actually difference itself (paradoxical as this initially seems and contrary to what those commentators believe who write of return in terms of crushing certainty and fixed essence, rather than the very momentariness of the moment).  

The reason people will never tire of the sun and its effects and will never tire either of pictures, is because even the most clichéd of these images tell us something crucial; namely, that despite the experience of duration and continuity, there is no universal stability. 

Oh Bondage Up Yours! (A Slice of Punk Nostalgia)

A model for Vivienne Westwood wearing an Exhibition Tartan Bondage jacket 

and Lyon Tartan Bondage trousers (Anglomania, A/W 2015)

viviennewestood.com 

I'm not entirely convinced by the Nietzschean notion of eternal recurrence, but it's certainly true to say that within the fabulous world of fashion everything comes around again; yesterday's daring new looks so outmoded today will be marketed as avant-garde all over again tomorrow. 

Even designers who think of themselves as radical and revolutionary, invariably return to their old designs and recycle ideas. So it is, for example, that Vivienne Westwood is once again flogging her tartan bondage lines first seen all those years ago at Seditionaries. 

Of course, ripping garments out of their cultural and historical context robs them of their fetishistic power and subversive potential; transforming clothes for heroes into items of fancy dress for those who long for a past they didn't experience, or those who vainly wish to relive their youth. 

But, well, there you go: even ageing punks are prone to nostalgia and a certain wistfulness; just like the old rockers and hippies before them whom they so scorned. It's nothing to be proud of, but nothing to really feel so ashamed of either. 

Indeed, when I saw one of the models on Westwood's website wearing her mismatched tartan bondage jacket and trousers, even I couldn't help remembering with a certain poignant joy those years gone by when I would hobble around the streets of Soho still thinking of myself as a sex pistol and still fiercely loyal to Malcolm and his project of pop-cultural provocation:

Portrait of the artist as a young punk (1985)