Immortality...

Author : Milan Kundera

A few weeks, the first time I paid attention to the name Milan Kundera(In Pamuk’s – “The naïve and the sentimental novelist”), the Indian-ness of the name struck me. I was curious how I had missed an Indian writer who had impressed Pamuk. I wiki-ed and found he was actually Czech born. Later I started looking out for his books and the first one I found was “Immortality”.

First impression :  Great ideas thrown at you in randomness. On the cover is a review quote that says – “It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that.” (The smart cover designer put in a place where a reader notices it despite the small font.) I was curious, “a better lover" of what!? I could not keep the book back, the question was too interesting not to pursue.

After a few chapters, when the seeming haphazard-ness of topics, thoughts, ideas – brilliant though when I considered them individually, I so deeply wished for some order, some chronology and some sense in the bigger picture terms. But I could not give up, nonetheless. What about the answer I was seeking. It took some effort to keep me going and I felt like a “wanna-be” intellectual trying to read something smart, just because it claims to be – and to seem smart and in the process hoping the book smartens you in some-way kind!

I, as a reader am very comfortable in my skin. I care not much about being an intellectual. I say so, because at a certain time, I strove to be one, but no more. I am more the fun kind of a reader – no strings attached, just seeking pleasure in the company of a book, if I could say so! I prefer reading anything that I can lay my hands on and interests me. I just want to read all kinds of interesting books just to see how it feels.

Cons:

It was like the novelist took no pain to arrange his thoughts. Just wrote them as it occurred to him(Was there no editor at all one wonders initially!), he keeps throwing Goethe, Beethoven, Bettina, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin at you, amidst the actual characters – I take the liberty to use “actual” since the author himself talks of a heroine for his novel, and I refer to her and everyone related to her as the actual characters. References to history and Bible(Kundera suddenly mentions “Simon” like we all know him and you wonder who is Simon now, although from context I get what Kundera wants to say, I was plainly irritated by the suddenness! I look at the author when he writes in first person - like a good friend who takes me through the story introducing people I do not know and maintains that basic courtesy and not throw people and references at you like that! Or is it precisely so, that he thinks of you as a good friend, he takes the liberty to do so! J ).

I did not even know Goethe, Beethoven and Napoleon were contemporaries! I was only glad I knew they existed once! Then I suddenly find Goethe talking to Ernest Hemingway and give up all hopes of recollecting anybody from history correctly, when to my relief it turns out its an imaginary conversation they have in the other world!

There are some places where nothing seems to make sense, and you need to have patience! That’s one thing that this novel almost demands as a pre-requisite(if you are like me – a first time reader of Kundera i.e)!

Pros:

If you pursue with a little more patience, you will slowly get a hang of his narrative style and random references don’t annoy you anymore. It does not bother you if you don’t understand what Kundera is talking about when he seems to start off on something totally new thus far , because in the next few lines or paragraphs you know it will be made clear and he will give you more context eventually. And his references may be seem absurd, but on closer observation you don’t need to know history or Bible to get what he is saying – it’s the parallels he draws - between the people of then and now, of the situations then and now – and how what you say has been said before – someone else in history has been there and done that - how what you think has been thought before, what you feel has been felt before, that gesture – that facial expression – that feature- you think is unique to you, could be your mother’s or father’s or someone in your family tree so long ago before you, that you never got to see! When you get it, you go wow! 

His observations about many things change the way you feel about things. The way he talks about ‘life theme’(something like - even if you started your life all over again, it would more or less be the same, set around the same theme!) , how time is circular and how beautifully he puts it.

Brilliance! Great observations. That acute sense of humor! A joy to read! (All these appear at the back cover including “one of those great unclassifiable masterpieces that appear once every twenty years” – taken from book reviews, but these were my feelings as well – like the book says, what I have to say has been said before! :P)

You need to have patience for wonderful things to unfold and make sense to you. When it is in progress, it may or may not make any sense. Wait. Patience is a virtue. J

I was in no hurry to finish the book, I savored passages that I enjoyed - slowly, soaking the ideas, warming up to the brilliance and germinating thoughts. Mostly with a smile!

Some brilliant lines from the book. They are flavored with humor, that only makes the brilliance strike you with a smile.

Check these out:

“When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons; he does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme; he will come to realize it only when his life begins to enact its first variations.”

“…Nineteenth-century writers often ended their novels with marriage. This was not because they wanted to save the love story from marital boredom. No, they wanted to save it from intercourse!”

“I think, therefore I am is a statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that’s alive”.

“Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not the thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of geocentricism.”

My take : Highly recommend it! Go ahead, enjoy! J

P.S: I found my answer to “a better a lover of what!?” question. Icing on the cake, indeed!