Milan Kundera taught us to be free

I've been intrigued by his book, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," which has a captivating title. What caught my attention was the idea that lightness could become unbearable. Does it mean that even the slightest things could bring about a person's downfall?

Though I'm only 21 and haven't experienced much, I've observed absurdities occurring in the lives of others. Perhaps Kundera recognized such absurdities in his own life, which inspired him to write this book. These seemingly insignificant occurrences might lead to sudden and absurd collapses.

In his theory, “A novel is a long piece of synthetic prose based on play with invented characters. “This revealing understanding challenged conventional preconceptions about the novel. Especially the phrase “based on play” reveal that the novel is a game. This unconventional approach highlights the novel as a form of art and a game of creativity. He was expelled from the Czech Communist Party in 1970 and stripped of his job teaching at Prague’s Academy. As a jazz pianist, his ability to improvise enabled him to wield the subversive power of humor, not only for critique but also to undermine totalitarian regimes.

The power of humor is overwhelming. It makes people feel hopeful and delighted, daring to make governments jokes, dissolving?magnificent?narration. His first novel “The joke” published in 1967 during a period of loosening that culminated with the short-lived Prague Spring-represents a vivid case in point. But the Soviets put an end to this thriving campaign. His novel was banned as antisocialist, compelling him to exile to France.

Humor was a powerful weapon in Kundera’s literary arsenal, particularly being adept at using sexual politics as a lens through which to challenge the hypocrisies of the state. In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” a surgeon named Tomas who stands against the government, becomes a window washer and has a number of assignations, a lot of mistresses, which is a metaphor of sorts for the of dynamics of authoritarian power. He artfully blurred the line between politics and eros, mind and body. The effect was dizzying, exhilarating, in an unimagined way. In that sense, he revolutionized us all.

He believes that the novel has missed many of its possibilities; it has left many great opportunities unexplored, many path forgotten, calls unheard.” He preferred the more amorphous whimsy things, which frame a counter-history, as “unserious throughout.”?

Everything is called into question, everything exposed to doubt. We were free to play- not only free but also required. The state was just another fiction: even a cruel one, perhaps, but a fiction all the same.

We should believe in the power of humor and doubt, and remember that nothing is unquestionable. Never take anything for granted. Do not believe anything without a shadow of doubt, even the nation that possesses a kind of eternal life as a mortal thing it has been alleging all the time.

Dare to question prevailing narratives and challenge the status quo.

By doing so, one can resist the unquestioning acceptance of authority and dogma, promoting intellectual freedom and the pursuit of a more genuine understanding of the world.