The Lethal Power Of Silence
Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera (April 1, 1929 – July 11, 2023) was not interested in whether the global community celebrated his achievements even in his lifetime. Perhaps, the author realised that he would be isolated amidst the frenzy of thought and the era of media!
Many have long forgotten that Kundera was among us. Incidentally, his fans forgot and isolated the novelist. However, Kundera used to enjoy this isolation. Before anyone else could do so, he had isolated himself from others. Kundrea took shelter in a quiet and silent world. Of course, he shared his thoughts and philosophical wisdom with close ones, and gave interviews, occasionally. Still, he gradually moved away from the everyday world. His death on July 11, 2023 prompted many to remember Kundera.
The author himself did not let one feel his presence. He took not many years to be at the position, where he could well maintain his silence! He was expelled from his country… the erstwhile Czechoslovakia. Later, the State acknowledged his existence, and allowed him to return to the country. Often, he visited Czechoslovakia to find his roots. However, he never settled there, and returned to France, his new home. He never made an announcement regarding his trip to Czechoslovakia. Hence, no one even noticed his journey most of the time. It can be assumed that Kundera might have visited his familiar places a few times, thought for a while whether to knock on a known door or spent time quietly in a park for a while.
Kundera was not at all bothered to accept French citizenship, abandoning his own language and writing in French. Instead, he utilised the opportunity to concentrate on his philosophical thoughts in France. Kundera was an avid reader of Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859 – April 27, 1938), an Austrian-German Philosopher and Mathematician who had established the School of Phenomenology. He felt that social life was gradually becoming a political discourse. He also observed that the quality of human lives was constantly declining. Kundera once stressed: “Man is caught in a veritable whirlpool of reduction where Husserl’s ‘world of life‘ is fatally obscured and being is forgotten.“
Kundera had a close relationship with politics, as he was an active member of the Communist Party. He penned Left-Wing verses at that period of time before getting involved in revolt. He was also expelled from the party twice. During the 1968 Prague Spring, he backed an alternative domestic Left-Wing uprising against the repression of the state apparatus of erstwhile Soviet Union. Kundera thought that Czechoslovakia would move towards a different kind of Communist Revolution. However, he had to leave his country. Many believe that a broken-hearted Kundera decided to detach himself from social life.
In the contemporary world, one should try to understand Kundera’s philosophy. Humans are at the centre of the society, and the institution – called society – is formed to serve human beings. However, man is saintly even before he becomes social. Dasein, as described by German Philosopher Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976), helps man identify his self. According to Heidegger, a human being should instead be conceived as Dasein, or “being there”. By using the term Dasein as a replacement for consciousness and mind, Heidegger intended to suggest that an individual is in the world in the mode of uncovering, and is thus disclosing other entities, as well as itself. Meanwhile, Kundera stated that modern society was increasingly denying this Beingness.
Modernity wants quick answers to all questions, and some formulae through which all arrangements of this world can be understood. Kundera considered this carefree attitude of philosophy as a bit disoriented in the wake of modernity. Quick answers to all questions and the constant boom of the media frustrated him. He found that people lost interest in experiencing Husserl’s world of life. As a result, a disheartened Kundera isolated himself.
In his theoretical works, Kundera tried to convince his readers that literature or narrative was aimed at helping man to remember his being. People meet narratives in private, and there lies the essence of life. Without this communication, the sense of human being disappears. In that case, everyone becomes like each other, thinks in a similar manner, acts the same, consumes the same food, reads the same book, etc. It also becomes difficult to differentiate between Right and Left. Differences between the thoughts and beliefs of different individuals cannot be distinguished anymore. A person becomes alienated from her/his own self and personal world.
Kundera’s works contain a kind of fruitless melancholy, and also an implosion of grief and pain. He strongly opposed finding definitive answers to all questions, or the consequential end of knowing everything, within the framework of modernity. Time and again, he returned to Dante, Boccaccio and Cervantes, and reminded his readers how they all had the same basic question: What is self or being? However, they did not find any definite one-dimensional answer to this question. Commenting on the beginning and end of self, Kundera stated that one should not be surprised by the infinite immensity of the soul, but by the uncertain character of her/his own being and identity.
Kundera isolated himself from society because of mechanical reproduction. However, he used to introspect himself. In his novels, one can find the continuous search for the Self and Meditative Interrogation. This is certainly an issue of modernity that is aimed at discovering one’s own existential consciousness. Kundera also asked his readers to read Kafka. This way, he made an attempt to establish a link between the existential and the phenomenal. Kundera never deviated from his responsibility even for a moment. In spite of his intense philosophical distaste for social life, he guided his readers by the essence of his thoughts. In fact, the relationship is actually between people and their world. There exists no society or politics. According to Kundera, the relationship between man and his world is not a relationship between subject and object, but between the eye and the canvas or between actors and the stage. “The world is part of man, it is his dimension,” he stressed.
In his 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera wrote: “A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.” One can consider this as the essence of his biography. It seems that he could not adapt to the world around him in any way. He also carefully avoided the possibility of any events to celebrate his success. “Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion,” Kundera mentioned in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Instead of the duality of noise and celebration, this extraordinary author chose to live in seclusion. This is, perhaps, an inevitable consequence of modernity.
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