Introduction to Unbearable Lightness in Life

Unbearable Lightness in Life (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, French: L 'insolutenable lé gè reté de l 'ê tre) is a novel written by Milan Kundera, a Czech-born French writer, in 1984.

The novel is set in Prague and involves quite a few philosophical concepts. "Milan Kundera thus established himself as the greatest writer in the world." (The New York Times)

The Chinese version of this book was first translated by Han Shaogong and Han Gang on 1985, and 1987 was published by Writers Publishing House. In 2003, Shanghai Translation Publishing House published a retranslated version of Xu Jun, a professor at Nanjing University, entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Life. In Taiwan Province Province, Crown Publishing House published a traditional Chinese translation in 2004 on the basis of the latest French translation, which was translated by Wei Chixiu.

well-known saying

1, "If every second of our lives is repeated countless times, we will be crucified like Jesus and crucified forever. This prospect is terrible. In the eternal world of robbery and restitution, unbearable responsibilities weigh heavily on our every action. This is why Nietzsche said that the concept of eternal robbery and repayment is the heaviest burden. "

2. "If the return of eternal robbery is the heaviest burden, then our life can compete with it with all its brilliant lightness, but is heaviness really a tragedy and lightness really brilliant?"

"The heaviest burden crushed us, sank and nailed us to the ground. However, in the love poems of every era, women are always eager to be under men. Perhaps the heaviest burden is also a symbol of the most fulfilling life. The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth and the closer we are to truth and reality. "

Kundera played his quartet: Thomas, Teresa, sabina and Flantz. Tell an existential theme from the perspective of each character, which is more important and which is not? To what extent does politics distort people's lives? Kundera said through sabina: "I am not against * * *, I am against kitsch!" So as to express their own orientation.

Extended data:

author

Milan Kundera (Czech: Milan Kundera, 1929 April 1-), a famous Czech writer, was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. 1975 exiled in France, 198 1 naturalized French citizen. In an interview in his later years, he called himself a French writer and thought that his works should be classified as French literature.

Famous works include Unbearable Lightness in Life and Forgetfulness Book. 1989 Before the Velvet Revolution, his works were banned in Czechoslovakia for a long time. He seldom gives interviews to the media. Although he was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature six times, he has not won the prize so far.

Creative process

Kundera's character plot is composed of one or two key words and basic situations. With the wisdom of a philosopher, he raised the living scene of human beings to a metaphysical level for thinking, examining and describing. Therefore, we have successfully grasped the two sensitive areas of politics and sex, and initially formed the novel styles of "humor" and "polyphony".

Kundera pays more attention to the basic situation of characters-"Philosophy is carried out without characters and situations". The Unbearable Lightness of Life puts Thomas' problem there from the beginning: in a world without eternal robbery, life is light.

Firstly, the novel puts forward the problem of setting a prescribed situation for Thomas, that is, the existence password of light and heavy; Therefore, philosophical thinking itself is a novel, and the problem itself is the philosophical thinking shown by novelists in their works.

The important feature of Kundera's research is that he refuses to draw conclusions. He thinks Cervantes let people know that there is no absolute truth in the world, only many relative problems. In the book, Kundera puts forward a series of survival codes, such as lightness, heaviness, spirit, flesh, memory, weakness, dizziness, pastoral, heaven and so on. , one-to-one correspondence with the characters, supporting their respective living conditions, showing the duality of body and mind.

And each keyword is a different possibility side of the character. Possibility is the most positive way to fight against one-off, so this book can be seen as the disintegration of self-righteous "absolute". Because of the lack of absolute meaning, life has no basis and support, not even as certain as feathers flying in the wind.

The influence of later generations

This book was adapted into the film Love in Prague on 1988, directed by philip kaufman and starring Daniel Day Lewis, Juliet Binoche and lena olin.

The film adapted from this book won the American Academy Award, the American Golden Globe Award nomination, the American Film Critics Association 1988 Award for Best Film and Best Director, and the British Oscar Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-unbearable lightness in life