Milan Kundera, who is one of my favorite authors, passed away earlier this month. This post is to commemorate him.
Warning: The post contains spoilers on The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I bought my copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Shakespeare and Company in
Paris in the summer of 2013. I was a fourth year PhD student then in Lausanne and
visiting Illegitimate Daughter. It was our first time hanging out in
Paris together, which would later become the first of many. We had Shakespeare
and Company in our list of places to see because it is one of the places
Celine and Jesse visit in Before
Sunset. I didn’t have a plan to buy a particular book, but I wanted to buy
one to commemorate the visit, which I usually do whenever I visit a bookstore
that I deem important for the first time. After almost an hour of roaming and
chilling at the bookstore, The Unbearable Lightness of Being ended up
being the choice, for no reason other than being one of those books that I
thought I should probably read one day.
I didn’t read that book until
shortly after I moved to San Jose in 2015. Whenever I was reading it during my
daily commute to work using the Light Rail in San Jose, it felt like drinking
water after being thirsty for a very long time. I later read it again shortly
after I moved to Copenhagen in 2018, and parts of it I read again and again in
my first year there.
The book has three main
characters: Tomáš, Tereza, and Sabina.
Sabina was the character that I
was the most drawn to. She was on her own unlike Tomáš and Tereza who were a
couple. She kept moving from place to place, whereas Tomáš and Tereza returned to
Prague. I related to her unenthusiasm about the events that aim to create a
nationality-based community for people living abroad. Toward the end, she
created an alternative family for herself, but on a shaky foundation. …
But, most importantly, the first chapter
where she is the character of focus, which is the third part of the book titled
“Words Misunderstood” was one of the best things I had ever read in my life.
“Words Misunderstood” centers on
the concept of words having different meanings to different people based on
their background. This isn’t a new concept. Some may claim it is an obvious
one. On the other hand, Milan Kundera’s rendition of this concept is the most
beautiful one I have ever encountered. At one point, he relates it to composing,
I assume because of his scholarly training in musicology. We form our life-compositions
with people who enter our lives early on. Thus, we form a common set of words
and gestures with them. When we meet people later in life, especially the ones
who come from very different backgrounds, the same words and gestures may
conflict or require over-explanation. In contrast, when you meet a good old
friend, even after years of absence, things flow with ease thanks to our shared
language/composition. On the other hand, he also mentions the possibility of
creating a new composition with the people who enter our lives later if one
makes the necessary effort.
“While people are fairly young
and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they
can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina
exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older,
like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and
every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of
them.”
The Unbearable Lightness of
Being – Part 3: Words Misunderstood
Lausanne was the first place I
moved to that didn’t have the sea. Switzerland doesn’t have sea. It has
beautiful mountains and lakes. That is what is engraved in the locals and many
foreigners that live there. I, on the other hand, lived the first 21 years of
my life in coastal cities seeing the sea almost every day. When I traveled, it
was also mostly to other coastal cities. The sea was the most consistent part
of my life. I knew the world is a lot more than its coasts, and the sea isn’t a
big part of many people’s lives, but I had never internalized that fact before
I moved to Switzerland. In Switzerland, the sea wasn’t a big deal. Or the
relation to the water was centered around water sports, creating a more active
state when interacting with the water as opposed to experiencing it as is. In
return, I didn’t care that much for their beautiful mountains, skiing, or
hiking. Turkey’s coast also has mountains, but to me the mountains came as an
attachment to the sea. Later in life, I adjusted my composition to appreciate
the beauty of the mountains and enjoy hiking with friends. That composition
hasn’t had a place for skiing, though, and I don’t expect that it ever will.
And I am afraid one day I will face deportation from Europe because I don’t
hike enough.
I know this example may sound like a first-world problem. Last month I wrote about way more serious challenges people face when they move abroad. Especially in the context of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the characters move abroad to escape the political climate in their home country. But even if you have the best conditions in your life abroad, seemingly very frivolous things can create a divide between you and the other people. With many words misunderstood the divide deepens. This is why it is very challenging to create strong bonds with local people when you live abroad unless both sides are willing to put the energy to create a common language/composition.
“Being in a foreign country means
walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by
the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can
easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.”
The Unbearable Lightness of
Being – Part 2: Soul & Body
The second part of the book
titled “Body & Soul”, which focuses on Tereza, touches on the theme of
living abroad as well, especially when your country of origin is the
politically more complicated and socio-economically less privileged one
compared to the country that you moved to. You end up being subjected to the
top-down or black-and-white views of the people about you and your country.
That contributes to the deepening of the divide substantially. In the book, our
characters first move to Switzerland from Czechoslovakia. Someone in
Switzerland shames Tereza for being dependent on Tomáš’s money.
I remember once a Frenchman I met
at a wedding telling me “You can feel free now that you live abroad” when we
were discussing issues related to my gender in Turkey. I was taken aback by
that statement. How did he get to that conclusion? Sure, we were discussing
serious issues women face in my home country, but how did he make this projection
to freedom and the lives of all the Turkish women? How did he project that onto
my life? Did I give him this impression? Or was this his entitlement making
such bold statements about the lives of people he knew very little of? Did he
not know that there are also many challenges women face in his own country, in
Europe, in USA …? Did he not realize that my residence in Europe/US depended on
my job, which by default made me less free than most people around me, and I
lacked the very strong support system I had in Turkey when I was abroad? Plus,
if I go down the rabbit hole, was anyone really “free”?
Milan Kundera was exiled to
France from his homeland Czechoslovakia in 1975. He lived the rest of his life
in France. He knew what it meant to live abroad, to come from a politically
complex country, and to be persecuted for one’s ideas. I admire and appreciate him
for analyzing concepts such as identity, misuse of political power, beauty, sex …
using the almost archetypical characters he creates, but without undermining, overgeneralizing,
or creating a caricature of those characters, so they all feel very human at
the same time.
I would like to end this post by
acknowledging the people who have contributed to forming the core of my composition
early on back when I still lived in Turkey and who have been generous with me as
I lived abroad so that I can keep enrichen my composition later in life. It is
hard to list them all, but they are the ones that frequently appear in this
blog. Thank you, and I love you!
P.S. Special thanks to Illegitimate
Daughter for remembering the dates of our visit to Shakespeare and
Company.
