The Artistic Features of Kundera's Novels

Milan Kundera, a world-renowned French novelist of Czech origin, formed a novel view of "poetic thinking of existence" under the questioning of novels. Successfully realized the novel new art with unique style: "a completely concise new art"; The new art of novel counterpoint; "A unique novel and prose art". He created a new way of novel art in the sense of contemporary literature, thus making his novels appear in the novel world with a very new look and unique in the world literary world.

Milan Kundera is undoubtedly a highly conscious writer in the contemporary literary world, no matter from the ideological connotation or artistic form of the novel. This is not only reflected in his self-contained novel theory, but also in his novel and complex creation, which has personal artistic characteristics. He believes that "the novel examines not reality, but existence. However, existence has not happened, and there are areas that belong to human possibilities, and all mankind can do it. " He practiced the novel view of "poetic thinking on existence" with his own creation. And under the questioning of existence, it pursues a new novel art form, remoulds the expression of the novel by using musical thinking and humorous dramatic techniques, integrates counterpoint, multi-voice and polyphony in music into the narrative structure of the novel, directly shows the theme with abrupt juxtaposition and rhythm repetition, explores various possibilities of human existence in the present time and space, reveals the misery and absurdity of human life, deconstructs the absolute value system, delays moral judgment and glimpses the emptiness of human existence. It is conveyed in a satirical, game-like and farce-like structure, and is closely combined with comic political and sexual content, so that the novel shines with wisdom everywhere and creates novel art with extraordinary artistic characteristics: "a completely concise new art (it can accommodate the complexity of the modern world without losing the clarity of its structure)"; "A new novel counterpoint art (music in which philosophy, narration and fantasy can be combined)"; A unique novel prose art (that is, it does not try to bring an inevitable dogma, but it is still hypothetical, playful or ironic), which is exactly the artistic program of Milan Kundera's novels. Compared with traditional novels, he created a brand-new art form, built his own unique style, concentrated rich content in far from grand words, and made it an organic whole under the same theme. Although people have different opinions on the value of Milan Kundera's works, it is an indisputable fact that he started from the road of anti-traditional art and created a new novel art in the sense of contemporary literature and opened up a broader narrative world. This paper attempts to make a superficial analysis of the unique art of Milan Kundera's novels in order to thank my respected tutor.

First, a thorough and concise new art.

Milan Kundera's novels first pursue "a completely concise new art" and are not good at plot. The structure of the article and the relationship between characters are simple and concentrated. By stripping and omitting, all unnecessary skills, scenes, transitions and plots are deleted, leaving a thought of thinking about "existence" with several words connected. He questioned the theme from different emotional spaces and tried to "grasp the complexity of the modern world". To this end, his technique is: "Don't transition, but stand side by side, don't change, but repeat, always go straight to the core of things." Drawing creative wisdom from Janacek's writing style makes the novel get rid of the mechanical side and verbose nonsense brought by novel skills and become concise. One is the abrupt juxtaposition. Milan Kundera adopts * * * narrative style, or multiple stories are shown at the same time, or the development of stories goes hand in hand with the interpretation of the theme and the author's creation. In Slow, a large number of characters appear in the text and interpret their own stories. With a thoughtful style, petals scattered by the wind are scattered around the content. There is another text embedded in this text, which is intertwined with time and space. Characters of different times in the novel are fixed on the garden path of an ancient castle: "I" (a writer) and my wife Vera go to an ancient castle that has been converted into a hotel for vacation; Mrs. T's love story happened in an ancient castle more than 200 years ago (/kloc-the content in the novel "Never Come Tomorrow" by French writer Vivien Denon in the 8th century); At the same time, a group of entomologists gathered in a similar castle that became a hotel for an annual meeting one day in the 20th century, and many ridiculous farce happened in this castle. We saw Milan Kundera, as a clever bartender, taking stories from different time and space: "I" and Vera's holiday trip; /kloc-the sweet and elegant affair between Mrs. T and the knight in the 0/8th century; The ignorance and show of academic performer Berger; The pursuit of narcissism and paranoia by female TV directors; The pedantry of Czech scholars; Vincent's flirting with the female typist and so on are all mixed into the slow cocktail, so let the readers taste it. In fact, this kind of temporal narrative runs through almost every novel of his. In Living Elsewhere, Milan Kundera lets all the storylines unfold together. His novels describe not only what happened in Prague, but also what happened in Paris in May 1968. Not only the protagonist Ya Romil, but also Rambo, Keats and Hugo. In Laughing and Forgetting Records, he further used this technique. The historical events of Foreign Minister clementi, his mother's story, tamina's story, and the author's autobiography about his father are intertwined and advanced simultaneously. Milan Kundera showed us the fragility and forgetfulness of "being". His most representative work, The Unbearable Lightness of Life, continues to discuss existence and forgetting. As he himself said, "All novelists may just write one theme (the first novel) with various variations." In the narrative of the story, Thomas's, Teresa's, Sabin's and Flantz's March separately and take care of each other. In Sabin's narrative, we already know the ending of Thomas and Teresa. The voice of the author (narrator) is also hidden from time to time in the works. While we read the story of the protagonist, the author will also tell how he conceived the whole story. Thomas "was born in a situation, a word, a metaphor" just to prove the adage "Einstein keinmal" (once happened equals nothing), while Teresa was born in the womb. In this seemingly contrary to the principle of novel authenticity, it just makes people feel a kind of psychological identity and "metaphysical truth". The second is the repetition of notes. Milan Kundera's literary creation has benefited from music lessons in many places, which is inseparable from his experience. He studied composition when he was young, his father was a famous pianist, and his family background gave him a good musical influence and education. When he was young, he was active in Czech music as a jazz musician, so he said, "Until I was twenty-five, I was more attracted to music than literature", which was the whole time of his later literary creation. The birth of rhythm requires the repetition of notes, that is, the same word (or others) is used repeatedly in the same part. In rhythmic movement, these notes can be a symbol (such as Sabin's round hat), a metaphor (such as Thomas comparing Teresa's entry into his life to a child floating in grass blue), or a detail (such as Teresa's dizziness, Thomas's staring out of the window, Teresa's dream). But the repetition of these notes is not random and chaotic, and the repetition of the same note should be coordinated with the changes of other notes. "In the first chapter of the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven repeated the motivation of the first theme sentence for more than 80 times, and presented it in different tones, different instruments and different pitches in different harmony sounds. The audience was completely bored." Milan Kundera also reached this extreme in her novel creation. Notes appear cyclically depending on the novel concept of "poetic existence", and the constant questioning of the theme will inevitably lead to repetition, so the incomprehensible text theme is launched around "Sabin's round hat"; Teresa's Dream embodies the theme of spirit and flesh. Thomas's Staring Out of the Window presents a theme from light to heavy. The repetition of notes serves the theme and its variation, so the theme is very important in Milan Kundera's novels. It "goes straight into the heart of things", which makes the original chaotic plot form a unified whole harmoniously, and plays an irreplaceable role in the conciseness and integration of structure and the narration of different styles. Based on this, Milan Kundera pays great attention to the exploration of themes: "I have been constructing novels at two levels: the first level, I organize novel stories, and at the upper level, I develop various themes, which are constantly developing in and through novel stories." In his novels, the theme is not embodied by the story, but arranged by the theme. For example, all the stories under the theme of "lightness and heaviness" in The Unbearable Lightness of Life show Thomas' choice of love, faith and persistence, that is, lightness and heaviness. He is a philanthropist, but after six "accidental" acquaintances with Teresa, he was forced to face a choice-his love for Teresa May changed him. In order to keep a love for Teresa and to be free, he thought it would be easy. Unexpectedly, Teresa's departure plunged him into a very heavy abyss. In the questioning thinking of "lightness and heaviness", we followed Milan Kundera's wise philosophy and completed the journey of "unbearable lightness". Milan Kundera believes that "once a novel gives up its theme and is satisfied with telling a story, it becomes dull." On the contrary, a theme can develop independently outside the story. "So he often cuts off the story he is telling and specializes in the theme directly. For example, the sixth book "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", "The March", all the thoughts on kitsch themes are above the level of novel stories, and the novel stories are retired and the essence of kitsch is explored with great concentration. It can be seen that the use of the theme is not only a strong connection between stories, but also a concentrated expression of the main events of key figures, and the narrative structure is compact and concise; It also forms the thinking surface of the novel, which gradually deepens in constant questioning, highlights the meaning of existence itself through the essence of existence, and then comprehensively presents the complexity of the world. Integrating the complexity of the modern world into the concise structure has become one of the important artistic features of Milan Kundera's novels.

Second, the new art of counterpoint.

In novel art, Milan Kundera emphasized "a new novel counterpoint art", which can integrate philosophy, narration and dreams into the same piece of music. Counterpoint is a proper term in music, which means that "different voices (melodies) unfold at the same time, which are independent of each other and perfectly combine to play the same theme", also known as "polyphony". Moving into the literary page refers to a novel that breaks away from the single-line structure, develops in parallel with multiple clues and styles, and is perfectly combined. Polyphonic novels did not originate from Milan Kundera.19th century Russian critical realist writer Dostoevsky's novel The Demons has mature polyphonic characteristics. Mikhail mikhailov Bakhtin (1895— 1975), an aesthetician and literary psychologist in the former Soviet Union, creatively introduced the concept of "polyphony" in the field of music into the novel theory system on the basis of his unique comments on Dostoevsky's novels. In Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin said: "There are many independent voices and consciousness, which are composed of different voices and have full value. This is indeed the feature of Dostoevsky's novels. " "In his works, not many personalities and fates have formed a unified objective world, which is unfolded layer by layer under the control of the author's unified consciousness; It is here that many equal status consciousness, together with their respective worlds, are combined in a unified event, but not integrated with each other. " The characters in Dostoevsky's novels have a wide-ranging dialogue with different selves, forming a pluralistic world, which makes the important propositions of human spirit and survival field expressed. Based on this, Bakhtin believes that polyphonic novels are based on the principle of dialogue, which includes the dialogue of characters' self-awareness, equality and dialogue between characters and writers. However, Bakhtin overemphasized the counterpoint that constitutes polyphony music and the dialogue that constitutes narration, ignoring the essential significance of counterpoint to polyphony, which brought certain limitations to polyphony theory.

When Milan Kundera arrived, the development of polyphony theory showed a new dimension, and the conscious exploration and systematic study of polyphony made it surpass any previous theory. He once compared Dostoevsky's novel Mob with Hermann Broch's Sleepwalker III, pointing out that both works have a certain degree of polyphonic intention. Milan Kundera explained it this way: "If we analyze the novel Mob from a purely technical point of view, we can see that it is composed of three clues that develop at the same time, and even three independent novels can be formed: First, about the old staff Rochina and. The second is a romantic novel about Stavrokin and his lover; Third, political novels about a group of revolutionaries. " Dostoevsky used polyphonic skills to connect the stories of these strangers into an inseparable whole, that is to say, multi-clue narration is one of the characteristics of polyphonic novels. The polyphony in Dostoevsky's novels is still confined to the same category (although the three lines have their own characteristics, they are all novel stories). At this point, Milan Kundera believes that Bloch should go further, "Take the third novel of Sleepwalker as an example. It consists of five elements and five deliberately heterogeneous clues: first, the novel narrative based on the three main characters of the trilogy (Pasnov, Esch and Huguenot); Second, the private short stories about Hannah Wendling; Third, a report on field hospitals; Fourthly, a poetic narrative about a girl in the Salvation Army (partly in the form of poetry); Fifth, a philosophical essay on the depreciation of value (written in scientific language). " We clearly see that this novel contains five clues: novels, short stories, reports, poems and essays. Bloch's revolutionary innovative practice of introducing non-fiction into novel polyphony is highly praised by Milan Kundera. But the connection of these five clues is not ideal, and they are not completely integrated into a whole. Great polyphonic musicians, such as Beethoven, can achieve the equality of voices with counterpoint and lateral thinking, which contains complex rhythm in slow movements. However, Bloch did not properly handle the relationship between these five parts, which led to the first clue (about Essay and Huguenot's "novel" narrative) occupying a dominant position, and reduced the role of the other four clues to a simple foil. If we take away the short stories about Hannah Wendling or the essays about the devaluation of value, it will have no effect on the meaning of the novels. Bach's fugue requires that any part is indispensable, that is, the equality of all parts and the indivisibility of the whole are also necessary conditions for the counterpoint of Milan Kundera's novels. This new narrative construction method is embodied in the third part of Laughing and Forgetting Records, which consists of many elements: "First, anecdotes about two female college students and how they ascended to heaven;" Second, autobiographical narration; Third, a critical article about feminist works; Fourth, fables about angels and demons; V. Narration about Ai Lvya's flying over Prague. " This technique of integrating stories, essays, fables and papers into novels embodies Milan Kundera's unique views on polyphony. He regards polyphonic (multi-voice) novels as the unity of philosophy, narration and fantasy, and thinks that modern polyphonic novels can completely absorb various stylistic elements other than traditional novels, making novels the crystallization of the high expression of human spiritual form at a higher level, and opening up a new way of modern novel art.

Milan Kundera's interpretation of novel art is more stylistic, which goes beyond the scope of traditional novel style, introduces other styles into novel creation, and displays traditional novel narrative style and other non-narrative styles in the same novel to express a common theme. According to Milan Kundera's artistic theory on polyphonic novels and his polyphonic novels, some scholars have defined polyphony in Milan Kundera's novels as follows: "Multi-clues (as opposed to the linear development structure of most novels), equality (mainly the independence of each clue, with different capacities), wholeness (they are intertwined, integrated and inseparable) and simultaneity (that is, simultaneity) their existence and development. But in the same space or plane), multi-style (novels, poems, reportage and non-literary papers or Kundera's so-called "a special novel paper" are juxtaposed), and the theme is the same (Kundera said: "They are only linked by the same theme ... The unity of this theme is completely sufficient. The idea of "being" is the highest or biggest theme, from which many sub-themes are derived. In The Unbearable Lightness of Life, the above characteristics are reflected: the first and fifth parts are titled "Lightness and Weight", and all the stories revolve around Thomas' understanding, thinking and choice of lightness and weight; In the second part and the fourth part, "Spirit and Meat", Teresa's unitary thinking on spirit and meat, as well as her desire and pursuit for the story of the unity of spirit and meat; Kundera discusses the theme of "kitsch and betrayal" through the stories of Flantz and Sabine in the third book "Words Without Solution" and the sixth book "The Great March". Finally, in the seventh part, the theme of unbearable lightness of life is answered in the sonata full of pastoral colors. It embodies the characteristics of multi-clue, equality, simultaneity, multi-style and the same theme. The four characters in Joke (Ludvik, Helena, yaroslav and Kostka) think about the theme of "* * * productism" from four clues at the same time. The stories of Agnes, Goethe and Bettina, Laura and Rubens in Eternal Life, as well as the author's self-entry, are intertwined in the novel. Milan Kundera's unique innovation and development of polyphonic novels pushed polyphony to an unprecedented height, which made the novel extraordinary inclusive and became a combination of philosophy, narrative and fantasy. He believes that "if European philosophy is not good at thinking about people's life and its' concrete metaphysics', then it is destined that novels occupy this clearing, where it is irreplaceable (this has been confirmed by existential philosophy, because the analysis of existence cannot be a system and existence cannot be systematized. As a lover of poetry, Heidegger made the mistake of being indifferent to the history of novels. Therefore, Milan Kundera is carrying out philosophical thinking about existence in each of his novels. He presented all the important propositions in human life, which are more unbearable, the heavy burden in life is weightlessness, the division and unity of spirit and flesh, kitsch, forgetfulness and so on, and made metaphysical thinking. Milan Kundera's novel view of "being" was mainly influenced by existentialism represented by Sartre and others in the 1960s and 1970s. He thinks that "the world has become a trap" and people are doomed to die when they are born, which is essentially consistent with Sartre and others' views that "others are hell" and people face "nihilistic despair". Milan Kundera combined the ultimate concern for human existence with "poetic meditation" and projected it into novel creation through inquiry and questioning, forming a philosophical speculative novel art. However, this kind of philosophical speculation does not appear boring and isolated in Kundera's novels, and the existing state of the characters in the novels melted in philosophical thinking plays a regulatory role: Thomas chose light between light and heavy, but it was unbearable for him; Teresa never got rid of the fear brought by Thomas' sexual friendship; Flantz served as a kitsch tool in the meaningless big army and died in a foreign country; Tamina tried her best to keep the memory of her dear late husband, but she still couldn't stop forgetting. As the image of her husband became more and more blurred in her mind involuntarily, she became desperate day by day. Milan Kundera's novels reflect and reveal life from a philosophical height, "raising philosophical novels to a new level of dreamy lyricism and strong feelings" (Newsweek, USA), so his works also have obvious lyricism and poetic color. Milan Kundera combines narrative (different from the traditional meaning) with lyricism (more philosophical thinking) in a fantastic way, and he adopts life elsewhere. In the author's own words, this novel is "an analysis of what I call a lyrical attitude". "Milan Kundera described the tangled feelings between the poet Ya Romil and his mother Mamam in the second part, and used fantastic narration in order to penetrate the psychological space of the characters. Zeyar (body double of Maria Romil)' s life is a dream in itself. He fell asleep and had a dream, in which he fell asleep again and had a dream. When he woke up from his dream, he found that he was still in his previous dream, and the dream chain was interlocking. In The Unbearable Lightness of Life, Milan Kundera broke the traditional narrative mode, shook off the ending of the hero in the novel, and then went back to carve every detail of the hero's story and describe the whole process of the event in detail, thus creating a dreamy circular narrative, and a hazy and sad aesthetic mood emerged in the idyllic atmosphere.

Thirdly, the unique art of novel prose.

Milan Kundera also summarized the novel art as "a unique novel essay art". There is such an image metaphor that "composition is actually a basket, and everything can be put in it". Essay art is the basic prototype of Milan Kundera's novel, which belongs to the sense of structure and is closely combined with the idea and content of the novel. His novels are humorous, playful and self-deprecating, excluding any ideal and lofty factors, rising to thinking about the essence of existence, "combining the most serious side of the problem with the lightest side of the form", and expressing the tragedy of existence in a terrible and meaningless way. Through a fictional story full of exaggerated coincidence, Farewell asks the essence of human existence from the perspectives of sex, politics and life in a very light form. Lucina, a beautiful single female nurse in Hot Springs, had sex with Klima, a famous trumpeter, in the capital two months ago and got pregnant. In order to get rid of the involvement, Clima went to a hot spring to persuade Lucina to have an abortion. Lucina clung to Clima in order to leave the remote nursing home, and Clima tried to get rid of her. At the same time, yakubu, a psychologist who suffered from political persecution, came here to bid farewell to his friend Dr. Skreta and Olga, his adopted daughter who was recuperating here, and prepared to return a piece of blue poison (which he carried with him to escape political persecution again) to Dr. Skreta. But by chance, he put the poison in Lucina's medicine bottle and delayed looking for Lucina for various reasons. In this unexpected situation, Lucina accidentally took poison and died suddenly, but no one felt uneasy about it. Milan Kundera uses superb exaggeration and coincidence in this novel, and presents the relaxed and funny face of the novel with burlesque scenes. For example, a group of old people in the park are madly hunting puppies; A group of naked fat women make a shameless shout at the camera; Three faun gods (director, photographer and assistant director) and Clima's "two persecutors" (Lucina and Camilla) are drinking and having fun; There are also naked and wet women, with their hips up and around Lucina's body, vying to see the scene. These scenes add to the funny and frivolous atmosphere of the novel. "The combination of frivolous forms and serious themes makes our personal drama (whether it happens in our bed or we perform on the big stage of history) extremely meaningless." It makes us see the hell described in Dante's Divine Comedy. The difference is that the originally gloomy and biting hell is shrouded in a comedy-like lively and funny atmosphere, while the people in the hell are numb and ignorant.

Milan Kundera's novels are intended to be all-encompassing and write the important contents of life, and the rich and inclusive features of essays just meet this demand. It can be said that his novels are based on essays. Milan Kundera discussed the proposition of "lightness and heaviness" with prose-style philosophical thinking at the beginning of "Unbearable Lightness of Life": "If every second of our life is infinitely repeated, we will be crucified in eternity like Jesus was crucified. This idea is cruel. In the world of eternal reincarnation, every move bears an unbearable burden of responsibility. This is why Nietzsche said that the concept of eternal reincarnation is the heaviest burden. If eternal reincarnation is the heaviest burden, then our life, under this background, can show all its brilliance and lightness. However, heavy toilets are really cruel, while light toilets are really beautiful? The heaviest burden oppresses us, makes us succumb to it and knocks us to the ground. But in the love poems of past dynasties, women are always eager to bear the weight of a man's body. As a result, the heaviest burden has become the image of the most powerful life. The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth and the more real it is. On the contrary, when the burden is completely absent, people will become lighter than air, will float, will be far away from the earth and life on the ground, people will only exist in a semi-reality, and people's sports will become free and meaningless. So, what do you choose? Is it heavy or light? ..... "It's like a philosophical essay of a wise man. The sixth part is a short article about kitsch, and its main argument is: "kitsch is an absolute denial of feces." The story of Stalin's son; Some theological thinking; Political stories in Asia; Flantz was killed in Bangkok; Fragments of Thomas' life in Bohemia, such as his funeral, are inserted into this article as examples and materials to prove his point. At the same time, we also know the life ending of Flantz and Sabin and the relationship between Thomas and his son. Meditation is the main theme of Milan Kundera's unique artistic characteristics. He discussed the proposition of life from the height of thinking. Even for the stories in the novel, he adopts the method of thinking narrative. The objective description of the characters in the novel has a sense of distance, which is constantly involved and has the nature of analysis and comment. When essays enter the novel, the relationship between the plot, characters and themes of the novel changes. With the theme itself becoming the narrative content, Milan Kundera developed a new art of "novel essays". For example, his exposition of lyric times, laughter and forgetting, kitsch and immortality all adopted the narrative style of essays, but this essay art is novel-like, so he infiltrated highly abstract philosophy into vivid descriptions, enriched the connotation of contemporary novel art with a different kind of thinking and skills, and expanded its extension.

Milan Kundera's outstanding exploration of novel art has made him one of the greatest novelists of our time. On the basis of exploring existence, his novels embody the idea of ultimate concern for human beings, which gives us great enlightenment in the sense of novels to novelists. In the practice of literary creation, he opened up the unique artistic space of novels and stood proudly in the colorful world art forest.