Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being was my first Christmas gift. Thus, I met Kundera thanks to my Czech friend Miro, who gifted me this novel 😊 It is a very striking, thought-provoking, a questioning novel with wonderful wording ✨ I think the way to feel closer to a country is to read the novels of the valuable authors of that country. I will share with you what I learned about Kundera's life and my thoughts on this novel.
The place where I took this photo is Letná Park in Prague. Since I like the view of Letná so much, I wanted to immortalize this view with Kundera 🥰
Milan Kundera is a Czech writer born in 1929. His father is a musician who was the director of the Brno Music Academy. Kundera received his first piano training from his father. While Kundera was studying Literature and Aesthetics at the university, he continued his education in the department of film direction and script writing. He wrote articles about directing but discontinued them due to political pressures.
I wanna enter into some detail about the interesting life of Milan Kundera because I think knowing the life of the writers is also important for the understanding of the emotion in their works.
Kundera became a member of the Communist Party in his youth. He was then removed for his contrary thoughts. Years later, he became a member of the Communist Party again. However, he was removed from the party for the second time because he took an active role in the Prague Spring.
He was working at the Prague Film Academy at the time, Kundera was writing plays and essays. He was concerned for his country, Kundera published his first novel, The Joke (1967), in Prague to express his thoughts.
"Prague Spring" 2
The major uprisings in Prague in 1968 resulted in Soviet military intervention, and hard times began for Kundera, like many intellectuals and dissidents. He lost his job and his works are banned. And he had to leave the country.
He went to France as an immigrant in 1975. He was revoked of his Czech citizenship because of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting he wrote in 1979. Unfortunately, this citizenship is returned to him in 2019, 40 years later 😑
Kundera, who became a French citizen in 1981, didn't come back to his country. April 1 is the birthday of the writer, who has a life that has been very affected by the chaos of great dramas and tragedies, that is, he will turn 93 in 8 days 😊
When I read a book, I like to underline the sentences that interest me. So I can look at them again. There are so many sentences in this novel that you can underline, which is great 😍
Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being includes politics, philosophy, love, eroticism, passion, rootlessness, memory, alienation and black humor. Unlike writers who generally judge novel characters and want to convey a moral message, Kundera refuses this. According to him, the novelist does not judge, it is the reader's job to judge. He says:
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.
In his novels that I have read and in this novel, Kundera has written about a modern world where psychology, sociology and ideology come together. Although socialist events take place in his novels, he focuses on individuals.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being created a huge sensation. Actually, this novel, which describes the relationship of a couple, also deals with issues such as infidelity, who the individual is, and bodily pleasure, to belong. It is full of questions and answers, but it also raises a lot of questions.
One of the most impressive thoughts in the novel is this. We make a choice, but how can we say that we made the right choice or we made the wrong choice? We have one life and we live it once, we can't live it once more. According to the author, just because something happens once doesn't mean it's happening or not.
We cannot say that it would have been better if we had not done this or had chosen another path, because we don't know, we have not experienced it. We can only think, but not know, what might happen if we made other choices, the author says. If we don't know what the lives we didn't choose to live would look like, thinking about those unchosen lives adds weight to our lives. We can get lighter by taking their weight off us.
While telling the story, he interrupts and chats with the reader about life. It also makes the reader feel very special 🥰
imdb
Btw, there is a movie of this book that was shot in 1988. I watched the movie, it was good but not as good as the book. I would definitely recommend reading the book first. I recommend that you read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and all Milan Kundera's works. Then, Let's read Milan Kundera 🤩
Thank you 🤗
Hi @enveng, you brought me quickly into your story, it's interesting to follow you because there is a lot of imagination in you. But if I'm being honest, your smile is really cute. Thanks for sharing happiness with us.
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It means a lot to me that you feel included in what I'm talking about. Because that's exactly what I want. So your thought made me very happy 🤗 Thank you so much for your nice compliment and kind words 🌸
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We had to read it in school many years ago... One of the few compulsory readings. that really impressed me.
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It's nice that it's obligatory. I wish I had read Kundera earlier too .
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Bilgilendirici ve okuması zevkli bir post olmuş. İtiraf etmeliyim ki yazarın hiçbir kitabını okuma fırsatım olmadı. Hayatımın bu döneminde yaptığım seçimleri sorgulayıp dururken bu kitap ilgimi çekti.
Ben kitapları çizmeyi sevmeyenlerdenim. Zaten okuduğum kitapları tekrar açıp bakmıyorum ama çizersem de eğer tekrar okursam dikkatim dağılır gibime geliyor😅
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Gönderim uzun olunca okuması sıkıcı olur mu diye bir endişe de oluşuyor. O nedenle okumasını keyifli bulman beni rahatlattı 😀 O zaman bu kitap sorgulayıcı dönemin için bence de iyi bir seçim olabilir.
Kitap çizip çizmeme konusu bir tarz gerçekten. Ben de genelde okuduğum kitaplara çok sık bakmıyorum ama başucu kitaplarıma bakarım ara ara 😊
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That's the only book of Kundera that I read so far and honestly, I'm not sure I'll be able to read another of his books.
I remember the end and how I cried then. And I also remember how this book was extremely enlightening for me, it opened my eyes to many things and gave me explanations for many events and facts, even events from my personal life in which I had to work and contact with Czechs. It even gave me explanations about things, actions, events, people and traditions related to my country. Because all of us in the Eastern bloc have shared more or less the same fate. Therefore, this book was like a textbook for me and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about that so sad period for all of us in the life of our countries.
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The effect of his books is very strong, so after reading one of them, I feel the need to take a break before starting the next novel. Like the need to take a deep breath.
Actually, it is a bit harsh to start Kundera's novels with this novel. In my research after reading this novel, it is recommended to start Kundera with "Ignorance" or "Slowness".
The book has both had a great impact and benefit for you. This is exactly what I expect from a novel 👌 The comment of someone who read this book is valuable, thank you very much 😊🌷
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You are probably right, that I shouldn't have started with this book. But I read it on the recommendation of an acquaintance - she is a great and famous film critic and a 'highly intellectual' woman. So, this book is a very good choice anyway. And as I wrote, anyone who is interested in those political and purely human events in the last century, should read it.
I'm glad someone here is talking about it.
Regards 🌹🌞
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You received advice from a very valuable person for this book, which is further proof that it is a good choice 😊 Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🤗
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There is a certain weirdness about me. Weird is an unusual word. Its modern connotation leans to being bizarre (which I accept is true about me) but there is also the archaic meaning wyrd. Wyrd is a word meaning something in the way of fate or personal destiny. In my case, it cases the suggestion of personal obligation. In the epic Beowulf, there is the quotation: "Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel!" ("Fate goes ever as she shall!"). My personal translation is "the quality/nature of fate is that drives you forward."
I mention this because whenever I experience a traumatic event in my life, I lose the taste or enjoyment or passion for something that I do. When my sister died, I no longer had the heart to play the piano. When I was betrayed in my marriage, I lost the passion I had for reading books. I used to read almost a book a day (usually around 100k words). Slightly above the size of a novella. I always found that reading Eastern European literature was an acquired taste, and generally wasn't pleasant to the soul. After reading the synopsis of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," I imagine that it might be well written but afterward, I might need to balance it by reading a story like Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
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Traumatic events unfortunately take away some things from us, but they also give us some new things. Maturity and Fighting spirit... Playing the piano, reading books every day, these are all innocent friends that make you happy. It is not fair to punish them as if they were guilty or to punish yourself by staying away from these passions. I know very well how a person loses his enthusiasm for something. Recovering it is certainly not easy. Well, if happiness and peace are complemented with them, why should we continue incomplete? The fighting spirit should not hide!
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I am glad, I would never get in an argument with you. You are very persuasive.
I read a story one time about an ape that was trained to talk using sign language. Eventually, his emotions became so disrupted, he used a rock to permanently crush his fingers.
When I played music, it didn't make me happy. It was a medium to express emotions. By denying that outlet, I think my emotions are more intense, but in a playful dimension.
Reading was a way that I could escape mundane life. It is opium to my mind. If I returned to the intensity that I used to have with reading, I would no longer need to engage with people again. The ape crushed his fingers to escape communicating with an unhappy world. All I need to do is pick up a book and turn to page 1.
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The story about Ape is very effective and thought-provoking. I respect your decisions, thoughts and feelings. There's no need to force an activity that doesn't make you feel happy. Instead of a book every day, a few pages a day will prevent your disconnecting from people. We all don't want you to stay away from Steemit 😉
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When did you travel to Hungary? When I was a teenager, I always carried a deck of cards. It is a practice I need to start doing again. I visited a vacation camp owned by a cousin and her husband one summer. A cousin of her husband visited. I think she might have been one of his Hungarian relatives, but I cannot be sure. I couldn't speak her language, and she couldn't speak mine. We spent the entire afternoon playing cards, and communication was never a problem.
I like connecting with people, especially if there is a challenge involved.
I haven't given up reading entirely; I just don't read books for pleasure anymore. I was inspired in my most recent article because I saw this image in a video. Unfortunately, the source wasn't mentioned, but I quickly found it.
I also watch a video on the relationship between water, microwaves, and background radiation. I still find reading pleasurable, but mainly it fulfils my thirst for knowledge. A proverb says one shouldn't search for knowledge but wisdom. I hope I get it right one of these days.
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I went to Hungary in December 2019. It's great to be able to communicate and have a good time without speaking the same language. Our energy can become a universal language 👌
Watching informative videos is enjoyable like swimming in a sea of information. I also sometimes turn off the lamp in the evening and listen to audiobooks in the dark. It's enjoyable like listening to someone who has an adventurous life. "one shouldn't search for knowledge but wisdom" is a very nice and thought-provoking sentence 🤗
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I asked myself, if I was going to introduce a book to a young girl which one would I choose? Archive.org has a huge library of audiobooks you can listen to. Anne of Green Gables is a world famous Canadian book beloved by girls and women everywhere. It is one of my mother's favourites.
You can download it, listen to it on the sight, you can read along as the recording plays.
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I can't believe it, I love this story too😍 I even watched the adapted series on Netflix recently. It was a very nice coincidence. I try to have Anne's energy and positive outlook on life. Greetings to your mother 🤗
Btw, the listening feature of this archive is very nice, thank you so much🌸
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Thank you for introducing us to this writer and giving us these interesting details of his life. In this way we enrich our knowledge a little more. Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you for reading it detailed and your nice words 😊
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Greetings and blessings.
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Sometimes we travel to cities and sometimes we travel to books. It makes me happy that you follow my content. It's especially nice to read your comments 🤗
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Harika bir yazı olmuş. Okurken insan hiç sıkılmıyor. Sizde harikasınız bu arada. :)
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İçeriğim uzun olmasına rağmen sıkılmamanız ve beğenmeniz beni mutlu etti, çok teşekkürler 😊
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very nice and cool photo
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Thank you for your kind words 🙂
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Thanks for sharing the book
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Thank you for reading it 🙂
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