Building a philosophical outlook on life
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Author: Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Czech born writer Milan
Kundera is a literary feat that blends innovative narrative styles to
approach ideological contemplations and confrontations, to build a
philosophical outlook on life, existence through a voice that sheds
trappings of orthodoxy. The volume discussed in this article is an
English translation by one Aaron Asher from the French version of it
written by Kundera.
As a modernistic writer Kundera has adopted a narrative style of a
third person narrator voice which takes an active role with
multimodality. The novel narrates biographical facets of the writer,
interlaced with element of fictional value, while adopting tones that
vary in its politics from being observational, descriptive and
conversationally inquisitive to overtly and unapologetically partisan.
The activeness of the book’s narrative voice and mode that addresses
the reader, turning him in to a participant, with whom the story flows,
echoes qualities discernible in the narrative voice in Nobel laureate
Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow.
The structure of the book would not have much logic if one were to
frame it in the traditional flow and sequence and sectioning found in a
novel as conceived traditionally.
The breaking down of the text in to ‘chapters’ and ‘parts’ and so on
would be for the purpose of coherence no doubt. Thereby establishing
order for a chain of reading the reader would embark on. That would be a
practical purpose and function of such a format; to create grounding for
time and space, through which the reader would be taken in to by the
author.
Therefore the ground which the reader is invited and ushered through
would be a rational place where the imaginary acts of fiction, however
‘unreal’ they maybe, are contained in a space, or universe constructed
to hold (the) phenomena described as possibilities within conditioned
universes.
The intergalactic battle cruisers in Star Wars are a possibility
achieved in a universe advance in space technology. The rationale is
contained within the universe constructed by the author and therefore
not an utterly bizarre, abstract notion. The flying broomsticks of Harry
Potter and Co. with al their supernatural feats are grounded in ‘magic’
a concept we are not unfamiliar with irrespective of however much it
maybe contested for its veracity and realness.
But when Kundera takes the reader through his book at varying paces
and narrative modes, there is a deficit in rationale within the
constructed spaces that lend a sense of absurdity. Is Kundera of the
absurdist tradition? Or is he the result of no tradition? Or is he party
to a tradition that is yet to find firm ground t be spared from being
read as ‘absurd’ on account of unorthodox ways?
Referring to the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, Kundera presents
a sub-story of two American students Gabrielle and Michelle, taking a
summer course on the drama, in a coastal town in the French
Mediterranean.
Known as a work representative of ‘absurd theater’ Ionesco’s play is
discussed in the storyline of Gabrielle and Michelle while a host of
irrational and absurd elements are built into the narrative.
The story of the American students end with the two girls with their
teacher, Madam Raphael, rising spirally holding hands, levitating
upwards, passing through the ceiling of the room and ambiguously dubbed
as three ‘archangels.’ I would like to cite words of Kundera from his
novel which could lend an understanding to the psychology that the
writer grounds his writing.
“Angels are partisans not of Good but divine creation. The devil, on
the other hand, is one who refuses to grant any rational meaning to that
divinely created world.”
From a prose by James Boswell titled “Beware of cant” published in
Portraits of England, an Anthology, the following is extracted-
“…[Y]ou may say to a man, ‘Sir, I am your most humble servant.’ You
may say, ‘These are bad times; it is a melancholoy thing to be reserved
to such times.’ You don’t mind the times…you may talk in this manner; it
is a mode of talking in society: but don’t think foolishly.”
In the afore extract I feel Boswell has propounded an illustration on
how the political mind is made to act and voice itself to the world
while maintaining a mind true to itself. Then one could deduce that the
(willful) politician is one who does not speak his mind.
Then what intonation of political thinking is woven in to the voices
Kundera has created in his noel? What gaps could there be between the
thinking and the public pleasing speech his characters produce?
The prospect may offer new platforms for discussion and debate, yet I
feel the crux of character formations and the array of events that shape
their stories are given by Kundera with scarcely any divide between the
truthfulness of what was said as being born of what was honestly thought
by the characters. And therefore ‘the absurd’ is given allowance to take
flight.
The ‘foolishness’ brought in to discussion in Boswell’s words may
take a new form as ‘absurdity’ born of unfiltered thoughts, of impulse
and fancy. A whim and a well constructed plan may be put on the same
page as being creations born of the same consciousness, with different
psycho-emotional composites. But never the less they remain intermingled
as born of the same being, representing the consciousness of a
storyteller.
In relation to what can be understood by Kundera’s novel, I would
like to present a perspective on how the ‘absurd’ may take shape. Public
behaviour is distinguished as acceptable and unacceptable.
It is the public domain that gives birth to ‘propriety.’ In the
privacy of one’s own personal space (especially of the mind)
distinctions of acceptability may cease. And in such a state of affairs,
behaviour is not adjudicate upon and distinguished as sane or insane.
One could in fact argue that sanity is a necessity insisted by the
public from the person, and therefore what is dubbed as ‘absurd’ is what
the public may not easily digest as acceptable. The absurd can be born
of the person who disallows public intrusion to his mode of, expression,
communication and also state of being.
History
Through the course of the novel Kundera presents a thesis of
distinguishing History from the Past. Through a character named Mirek, a
victim of communist persecution in Prague, the writer presents a facet
to the Aristotelian theory of “man by nature is a political animal.” The
past of an individual is seen by the author as integral to the formation
of identity and the controlling of history is a contortion of identity
with political motive. In the story of Mirek Kundera says
“Mirek rewrote history just like the communist party, like al
political parties, like all peoples, like mankind.
They shout that they want to shape a better future, but that’s not
true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the
past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent,
wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it.”
Kundera seems to be unreservedly attributing his character Mirek the
political depth that any man formed institution (such as a political
party) would be identified as having. An individual cannot be completely
spared or divorced from the political landscape in which he traverses
and acts in.
The treacheries and sins committed by the communists of Prague or any
other political force may be perpetrated by an individual propelled by
his own politics or politically shaded emotions. Kundera’s distinctions
of ‘History’ from ‘the past’ seem to be conceived on the nature of what
has preceded our present.
And the extents of its politicization as well as by whom. Kundera in
his novel would seem to propose that ‘History’ is a device of a
politically motivated force or entity, where records are kept and
rigorously maintained.
The past, resides memories of an individual who posses it as
personal, and perhaps as undeclared experiences that led to the present.
The future and its lack of significance, in the larger experience of
man’s existence is very interestingly linked to what significance lie in
the past. If the future, which is ‘a present to be,’ is materially
inconceivable and perpetually pending, then to the man who lives and
bears memory of having lived, it is indifferent until it has given him
prospects of living.
The individual, once he has perceived his situations in the realm of
materiality can place it either in the present, in which he still
continues to ‘feel it,’ or in the past of which he carries the memory of
having ‘felt it.’ Both these instances are known to him, having had or
continuing to have contact with his faculties. But the future cannot be
classified in the world of experience as neither ‘being felt’ nor
‘having been felt.’ And thus it becomes in the words of Kundera, a void,
which is not linked to man’s realm of experience and memory.
Moving on to a different aspect of the schema of the novel, the
character of Tamina, human existence is discussed in relation to
existential philosophy expounded by French theorist Jean-Paul Satre.
The sordid marooning of Tamina in an island of children shows how
conformity by the odd one is required for survival. Kundera presents a
dose of existentialism in relation to circumstances encountered by the
character when made to play hopscotch- “She must go on hopping like this
day after day, bearing on her shoulders as she hops the weight of time
like a cross growing heavier from day to day.”
The image of repetition, a circular, cyclical motion of action
resonates with the myth Sisyphus which ahs been evoked in existentialist
literature.
Strangulations
In his critical denouncement of communism and its strangulations of
individuality and identity not conducive for the perpetuation of
communist regimental machinery of control, Kundera takes on the matter
of name changing and renaming and the vast politicized landscapes that
transform an urban human habitation that is a city, in to an entity
testimony to political and military might of an invader who fast becomes
master over all and everything.
Shakespearean loftiness of “What’s in a name…” has to be dismissed in
the face of the crises Kundera speaks of, and the depth and significance
of naming and renaming must be grappled as a political act that is by no
means “a rose by any other name.” Kundera’s prose bring out an
impassioned voice which bespeaks experiences of pain and anguish in
dealing the politics of naming that is integral to identity
constitution. Kundera laments Prague’s state of being battered in to
identitylessness by successive regimes.
He cites Prague as a city without a memory as presented in the
writings of Franz Kafka. The political potency of a name is very
artfully put in to perspective when Kundera says “…a name is continuity
with the past and people without a past are people without a name.”
Kundera speaks of the renaming and reconstruction of a sphere of human
habitation (such as a city) becomes routine to the extent that the act
loses significance to the point that it loses purpose however much
politically strategized it may be.
When Kundera portrays Prague as a victim of successive political
agenda that defaced the city and refaced it in to a path of
transformation that tracked towards unrecognizability, he appears to
suggest that Prague is a subordinate to the regime and was erased of the
linkage it carried with the collective soul of its populace.
The scathing attack Kundera lunches against the Church and polity
makes one wonder is he heretic? Is he an anarchist? Probably yes, his
voice is that of a rebel who is intelligently raging against the
machine.
The author accuses the Church of putting in force an ever present
veil of oppression over the lives of the citizenry through politically
devised topography. This makes one wonder, what would Prague be without
the numerous institutional presences? Kundera vehemently resents with
bitterness.
While accusations are voiced against the religiously motivated
machinery that effaced Prague of what it was, not much is said of what
Prague could have been. But then The Book of laughter and Forgetting is
not a ground on which hypothetical futures are speculated when History
had set a course for a present that agonize a son of Prague such as
Kundera.
Lament
Is The Book of Laughter and Forgetting a lament? Is it a creative
wail of a grief stricken soul? Yes one could believe so, and so much
more as well. Kundera’s grief breathes out what I feel is an
intellectual lament, which analytically takes to task the factors that
make up the collective his voice represents.
His seems to be a voice that wails in whispers, for that is what the
kind as the ones in his book are allowed in the vast domains of
politicized spaces. They are allowed only to view in silence and speak
in whispers and nothing more than sotto voce, lest their laments become
outcries.
And so it seems as a people traversing on a trajectory of polity and
regime agenda they struggle to keep some sense of who and what they
believe themselves to be. Within inner sancta of individuals in their
emotion’s depths, memories may be preserved with sanctity. Kundera is
gently unfolding such sanctified memories. Memories that may be unsung,
unspoken, unwritten and not so much as breathed beyond the parameters of
one’s being, lest it is swept up by a tide of persecuting political
conformity.
- Dilshan Boange
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