The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Book Description

Critics

• Light but sound

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim 314pp, Faber, £7.99 Returning after 20 years to what is acknowledged as a modern classic, I was struck by how little I remembered. As I began re-reading The Unbearab ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• Book review: Milan Kundera's *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera Harper Perennial Paperback 352 pages September 2008 A modern literary classic first published in 1984, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being follows the lives of four people living in 1960’s ... (read full critics)

  curledup published on Tue, 7 Sep 2010

22 Reviews

• 4 people find this helpful

  

  "If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibliy lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the id ... (continue)

  "If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibliy lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens.

  If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
  But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

  The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the gorund. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simltaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

  Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

  What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

  Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light / darkness, fineness / coarseness, warmth / cold, being / non-being. One half of the opposition he called positive..., the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?

  ...The only certainty is: the lightness / weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all." -- Part One, Chapter 2.

  If you, like me, are pinned down by this mind-blowing para, bring it home and you shall never regret it.

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  Vivian said on Jul 14, 2006 | Add your feedback

• 3 people find this helpful

  

  "Things exist when they are needed." as long as I remember, there is a saying like this in physics.

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  a.sh.le.y said on Dec 6, 2007 | Add your feedback

• 2 people find this helpful

  

  This was one of the best books I read all year. It completely won me over by the end. It had everything, sex, relationships, communism and pets. I loved the way that analysing the world and people was woven into a story. It reminded me of the type of books that Wells’ wrote at the turn of the centu ... (continue)

  This was one of the best books I read all year. It completely won me over by the end. It had everything, sex, relationships, communism and pets. I loved the way that analysing the world and people was woven into a story. It reminded me of the type of books that Wells’ wrote at the turn of the century. Despite being a translation the style was still good and I would Very highly recommend it. Like Kerouac I’m going to add Kundera to my list of authors whose books I need to read all of.

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  Robot-mel said on Jan 4, 2008 | Add your feedback

• 

  Highly Recommend!

  In fact, I haven't finished this one yet (still sparing more time to read it), but I'd seen the movie already. I love the way how the author tell his (?) philosophy about life. I don't know how to describe this kind of feelings, but I just LOVE it, anyway. In short, THIS is a GREAT novel in my opini ... (continue)

  In fact, I haven't finished this one yet (still sparing more time to read it), but I'd seen the movie already. I love the way how the author tell his (?) philosophy about life. I don't know how to describe this kind of feelings, but I just LOVE it, anyway. In short, THIS is a GREAT novel in my opinion!

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  TSAI said on Sep 5, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  A Good Account

  A great story set behind the Iron Curtain, with the uprising in Czechoslovakia as an early backdrop. Within this, the personal relationships of primary and secondary characters are skillfully unwound. Yes, I tired of it a little at times, but glad I kept with it to the end and I think it deserves re ... (continue)

  A great story set behind the Iron Curtain, with the uprising in Czechoslovakia as an early backdrop. Within this, the personal relationships of primary and secondary characters are skillfully unwound. Yes, I tired of it a little at times, but glad I kept with it to the end and I think it deserves re-reading sometime.

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  mrpeterryan said on Jan 11, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  Finally I read it too. After having had a few copies available. I enjoyed the first pages more than the rest. It was missing something... maybe some heaviness.

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  incidental reader said on Nov 15, 2009 | Add your feedback

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Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Paperback 328 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0571135390
• ISBN-13: 9780571135394
• Publisher: Faber Faber Inc
• Pub date: Jul 01, 1996
• Dimensions: 1290 mm x 839 mm x 129 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Cassette, School & Library Binding and Others
• In other languages: other languages 繁體書, 简体书, Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, llibres en català, Libri Italiani, Nederlandse Boeken

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