Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 17:15:33 CST
From:         franko <BAE03@TWNTKU10.BITNET>
Subject:      heavy/lite

...many got erased mysteriously before i could read 'em so this is at best a
shot in the dark, or "vacuum-packed" posting (better vacuum-packed than
no pack-ing at all, i spose, & perhaps better in the dark where you're less
likely to actually hit someone):
   a while back some people were talking about kundera's Unbearable Lightness
of Being (or of "Bean"?), to which discussion i make this modest response/re-
joinder:  It seems clear to me you can see Sabina as a light character, Teresa
as a "heavvy" and Tomas as both...& that kundera is probably thinking of this..
..tho we might be able to see them in other/opposite ways as well, and in any
 case lightness tends paradoxically to engender heaviness & vice versa, in life
as in the novel, THIS being the more essential pt:
   thus kundera cites Nietzsche's "eternal return" at the novel's opening...we
get n's return in Joyful Wisdom, Zarathustra & Will to Power in various forms/
guises but i think k is thinking of a famous passage in Joyful Wisdom where N
asks us: what if a demon were to tell you that "this life as you now live and
havve lived you will havve to live once more and innumerable times more" & all
will return exactly as it is, in the same sequence,
         "evven this spider and this moonlight between the trees,
          and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass
          of existence is turned over and over, and you with it,
                        a dust grain of dust."
 N then asks the reader: would you not be upset by this prospect, feeling it a
heavy burden (since you'd havve to take everything very seriously in life, & be
morally responsible, etc, if you thought it would return again & again)? OR
would this prospect liberate you, making the actuality of this limited earthly
life seem wonderful, an "eternal confirmation & seal"...There are different
interpretations, no one knows for sure what N means but it seems the latter
 response (to accept the return joyfully = to accept THIS LIFE joyfully)
  represents N's philosphy of saying yes to (immanent, transient) life
     (rather than to God/"eternal life" which N doesn't believe in)....but
  the "heavy" response (seeing eternal return of this life as a heavy weight,
 making it "serious") can paradoxically, in N, come round to have the "light"
meaning & vvice versa...In any case, N's return is a paradoxical concept...












    Now K plays with N at the beginning of the novvel: so he distinguishes
  "just this one lifetime" from "infinite return of this lifetime"--it's true
that 1 interp of N's "light response" takes the return as an "as if" only one
lifetime (paradoxcically, since then it hasn't returned)...& K may be thinking
of this...Anyway, this may be K's own concept here (so forget about N): einmal
ist keinmal, one life (not repeated, and of course no heavven/hell, that goes
without saying for N & for the mainstream of european 20th c intellectuals
influenced by N (?!?)....one life is as if no life, just floating, meaningless
(Camus' consciousness of our "absurd fate" perhaps, like sisyphus), existential
ism by another name, or "theatre of the absurd,"  surrealism, etc...K is con-
trasting this "floating/absurd" quality of one life only (and knowing there's
nothing after life) with the "heavy" quality of a life in which each action
must be taken seriously as it has serious moral consequences.
     Of course, heavvy is tied to fate, as in Beethovven's "es muss sein": "it
must be"....and light tied to a free-play, randomness, avoidance of fate: thus
Sabina is "free," runs away in a sense, while Teresa is Tomas' "fate," she came
to him like the baby Moses down the rivver...a heavvy weight to him...but
(whether or not we think of N's original paradox) the heavviness also becomes
a lightness (Teresa came randomly, by chance, to T; fate is also "chance") (may
fe N's pt. also), & sabina's life can also be seen as heavy, fated. Tomas is
 more complex, paradoxically combining heavy/light in any case....
     my personal view: a brilliant novvel, & k plays with the heavy/light, but
finally it may be hard to analyze it very far, or strictly, or in a "heavvy"
way...also, k MAYnot understand N (tho it wouldn't matter) & definitely does
not understand Parmenides, who does NOT equate (as k says at beginning of novel
) logic and being with lightness....if anything, P's logic/being/fate are tied
to heavviness (the "sphere of being" is bound by moira, fate) and irrational/
being-and-nothing tied to lightness (tho he doesn't talk about heavy/light).
 Parmenides not important to K readers no doubt, tho very important o N inter-
preters as N ;much influenced by early Greek metaphysics.....Regards, Franko
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