Some of Mr. Kundera's characters develop a hatred for language itself, since language is seen as the medium of falsity. The result is a kind of spiritual nausea, the sour taste of self-disgust. Somehow people must find relief, and Mr. Kundera's characters look for it in personal relations. Mr. Kundera is at both his strongest and most problematic. For he knows that the falsities pervading public life must seep into that private life to which people retreat for shelter.
Love means speech, and speech has become devalued.
Only sex and violence can be undertaken without language. Mr. Kundera's characters turn to sex as a pure physical act they suppose beyond the reach of social controls and norms, but they are mistaken and soon their mistake creates the farce in which they have to face the pathos of their existence. ALL of this is depicted with a virtuosity that no writer of our moment quite matches. Yet there are troubling aspects too. Writers who portray degradation find it hard wholly to escape the stain of their subject.