Филологические науки/2. Риторика и стилистика

К.ф.н. Ємчук Т.Б.

Тернопільський національний педагогічний університет ім.В.Гнатюка, Україна

Postmodern rhetoric in the novel

“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera: main character perspective

The Chech novelist Milan Kundera (born in 1929) is a representative of the generation that lived during the time of different ideological shifts, when one system of moral values contradicted the other. Having lived for almost thirty years in his Motherland and having experienced fascism and communism, Kundera still couldn’t find the mechanisms of adjustment to these totalitarian regimes. Therefore he had to emigrate to France, where he lives till now. Here he can openly express his ideas and points of view on politics and art as well as search for the answers to philosophical questions that mankind is worried about in the XXI century. Such circumstances formed Milan Kundera’s worldoutlook, which has been reflected in his fictional and critical works. The writer states: “An author can not speak about anything else but himself”[2].

The style of Milan Kundera can be defined as postmodern. In his novels he yearns to combine and complement the truth of different people, nations, cultures, religions and philosophical systems, which often may be quite opposite. He emphasizes: “A novel is not a confession of the author but an investigation of what a human’s life is when it gets into the trap of the modern world”[2]. The author “plays” with the readers demonstrating the abnormal, artificial and unnatural mode of the existing reality [3]. The routine in Kundera’s fictional world is often represented as the Theatre of Absurd, as an apocalyptic carnival. His novels are characterized by irony and parody.

The most important issue manifested by the author is the cult of an independent personality. The personality in postmodern novels, however, is marginal, living at the crossroads of different epochs and spaces without knowing where to go, in what to believe or where to find the shed. The person is the outcome of the existential crisis and the crisis influences his or her inner world.

The novels by Milan Kundera have become the subject for literary criticism and study of the western researchers such as Gale Cengage, Jim Miller, Wendy Lesser and others as well as the Ukrainian scientists Tamara Hundorova, Anatoliy Niamtsu, Serhiy Yakovenko. They analyzed the works of the Chech writer through the perspective of Postmodernism, focusing on different aspects. They studied narrative strategies, time and space, as well as the style of the novels. Special attention has also been paid to ways of rendering the images of body, paradox and game etc. While in our article we are going to illustrate the postmodern rhetoric of the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” from the perspective of the main character doctor Tomas.

One of effective tools of communication between a writer and a reader is the literary character rhetoric. Rolan Barth indicates that “rhetoric is the defining part of ideology” [1]. The image of the main character, a talented and promising surgeon, doctor Tomas, created by Milan Kundera in his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, is a vivid example of the phenomenon in question. This literary image is versatile, contradicting and rhetorically pronounced: “characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about... My characters are my own possibilities which are doomed not to come to reality… That’s why I love all of them with equal passion and they all frighten me in the same way.” – sais Kundera [2].

Following the postmodern tendencies, the Chech writer constantly emphasizes the paradox in actions and thoughts of his character. The paradox of inseparable identity of the opposites describes the incurable world in which humans are deprived of the decent context for their humanity [3].

Thus, Tomas constantly finds himself in the situations when he has to choose. However, each time having made the choice, he starts hesitating over the rightness of his own decision. Often Tomas seems to be stuck in “the emptiness of values”. That’s why he determines the main imperative for his life, it is a quote by Bethoven “Es muss sein!” (Germ. It must be so!). This gives him an opportunity to escape responsibility or justify his possible mistakes. In the novel the writer sets his character by turns into two different paradigms of personal and social life. As the author points out, in the personality of Tomas a passionate womanizer has been combined with a passionate surgeon. I the article we are going to analyze each paradigm.

In spite of having been married once and being a father, Tomas is a confirmed bachelor, who enjoys sexual relationships with different women. In order to secure his status, he created “such a system of life, when no woman could settle down in his place with suitcases” [2]. Nevertheless, once quite occasionally there appears a woman –Tereza, who has brought about radical change to his persuasions. The woman seems to him like a child exposed in a basket and now he must take care of her. She was the one who made him behave against his principle formulated as follows: “not to give way to sentimentality in relationships” [2]. Only with Tereza Tomas had realized that “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)” [2]. Though, according to the rules of the postmodern paradox, he couldn’t give up his previous lifestyle: cheating on Tereza seemed disgusting to him, but he couldn’t avoid it.

They moved to Geneva, where Tomas had a prestigious job. He hoped that being totally immersed into work would help him change, but it wasn’t so, for “he was carrying his lifestyle, like a snail caries his shell” [2]. His new affairs forced Tereza to leave her beloved and return to their Motherland. Now it seemed that life as a single man is restored and he is free again. There seemed to be a mysterious future ahead. This however didn’t last long. Tomas regained the feeling of “sympathy” to Theresa: the lightness of being turned into the burden of responsibility. The imperative “Es muss sein” was hanging over them again. Kundera claims that “heavy burden, necessity and value are three mutually dependant notions: only what is necessary is heavy and what is heavy is valuable” [2].

Tereza appeared in Tomas’s life due to a sequence of occasional coincidences, as if faith was playing a game with him. Again he hesitates and regrets that he has allowed an accident to become so important to him. Again he finds an excuse for himself: “Only an accident appears in front of us as a message. Everything that happens of necessity, which is expected and repeats day after day, is mute. Only an accident can speak to us” [2]. As we can see, in the paradigm of his personal life Tomas is torn by contradictions. He constantly finds himself being on the border. He is constantly hesitating and searching for the answers that wouldn’t discord with his inner world. However, it isn’t easy, because the crisis of external existence has affected his inside being.

Another paradigm used by Kundera to reveal the identity of his character is through Tomas’s position in his community, i.e. his social status. At first sight Tomas seems to be not very much concerned about social or political problems. His intimate life was of more importance to him. However, following the rules of postmodern game, Kundera unexpectedly reveals to readers an absolutely different Tomas: a successful professional surgeon and a patriot citizen. It is important to emphasize though, that these two aspects are not pathetic either. In this paradigm the main character also hesitates, is full of doubt and finds himself in the dubious situations forcing him to choose again and again.

For the first time Tomas openly expresses his civil opinion in the letter written to the editor of a magazine, in which he shows his indignation with the existing totalitarian regime policy. According to his moral code, the claim of the current government about its unawareness of the consequences of collaboration with the Soviet Union is extremely hypocritical: “Can we plead innocent a person that claims he or she didn’t know the law? <…> Because of your unawareness this country has lost its liberty, while you are boasting you don’t feel guilty! How can you look at what you have done? Doesn’t it horrify you?” He precedes with the reference to a myth about King Oedipus and maintains: “Have you got eyes to see? If you had, you should have blinded yourself and have left the Thebes!” [2]

Such statement couldn’t possibly go unnoticed. Therefore soon Tomas was “offered” to choose either to deny his claim or quit his job as a surgeon: “There were two things on the scales: on the first there lay his honour (which meant he was not going to deny his words) and on the other – everything he considered to be the sense of all his life: his work as a scientist and surgeon” [2]. So he was hesitating and doubting over and over again. On the one hand, Tomas realized that it was not mere coincidence or rational consideration that led him to medicine, while it was a deep inner determination. On the other hand, he didn’t want to put up with the tendency of society ruled by terror, when “cowardice slowly but surely was becoming a conduct norm, and soon it won’t be perceived as the phenomenon it really is” [2]. Eventually, he sacrifices his profession in order to preserve his personal dignity.

It should be emphasized, however, that the civic opinion was not the only motive for such a decision: least of all he wanted to be a subject for rumors. As Kundera mentions, Tomas has chosen the profession that excludes necessity to be exposed to public censure. He distrusted people and believed they had no right to judge him, while a doctor can be judged only by his patients face to face. Eventually, he refused his doctor’s position and became a window washer. As most of representatives of intelligentsia of those times, Thomas believed that police would lose interest in him in case he moves down to the lowest stage of the social scale.

However, Kundera’s narration is marked with paradox again. The author brings in a rhetoric question, whether this was simply an abrupt and unthinking gesture, with which Tomas isolated himself from a heavy burden, his “Es muss sein!” or was it something different? [2]. The writer further expends on the thought and maintains that then it definitely was an external “Es muss sein!”, determined by social conditions, while “Es muss sein!” of his love to medicine was internal. The last is even harder, for an internal imperative is much stronger and consequently calls for riot more intensively.

Tomas believed that surgery stretches the main human imperative to its limits where the human borders with the divine. Being a surgeon for him meant to be able to “cut” the surface of things and see what is hidden inside. This might be the reason why Tomas had the desire to find out what was hidden on the other side of his “Es muss sein!”. In other words, he wanted to find out what will be left of life after a person gets rid of something he or she considered to be the true vocation before.

In the beginning, living without his profession seemed to him as long holidays, especially when they moved to the country with Tereza. He was overwhelmed with the sensation of freedom, but did he feel balance and harmony? Tomas knew that his only vocation in this life was to help people, and the only way to realize it was through treating them and saving their lives. At the end of the novel, Tomas comments on his state: “I am free. I don’t have a vocation” [2]. Finally the reader finds out about the death of the main character. In the light of postmodern rhetoric this element of plot can be explained dubiously. On the one hand, his life ended in idyllic state of happiness and freedom. While on the other hand, further living being “free” had no sense. As the author emphasizes: “Hopelessness which conquered the country penetrated through souls into the bodies and killed them” [2].

Thus, the detailed analysis of the main character rhetoric in the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera illustrates the postmodern ways of the literary character structuring. First of all it is realized through modelling situations of choice, when a character is forced to make a decision. However, his or her decisions can not be considered ultimately correct, which implies further doubts and hesitations leading to personal crisis. The value paradigms of the characters are being constantly changed and reconsidered. A favourable literary device in the analysed text was the presentation of the main character as a doctor. Medical profession is considered to be the most noble and the most important one, because doctors approach the very mystery of human life and its essence.

Література:

1. Барт Р. Риторика образа / Р. Барт // Избранные работы: Семиотика. Поэтика. – М.: «Прогрес», «Универс», 1994 – С. 297-318.

2. Кундера М. Невыносимая легкость бытия: [роман] / Милан Кундера. – Режим доступа к книге: http://lib.guru.ua/INPROZ/KUNDERA/legkost.txt

3. Літературознавча енциклопедія: У двох томах Т.2/ Автор-укладач Ю.І. Ковалів. – К.: ВЦ «Академія», 2007. – 624с.

4. Палій О.І Романи Мілана Кундери: проблематика, поетика, наративні стратегії: автореф. дис. на здобуття наук. ступеня канд. філол. наук: спец. 10.01.03 / О.П. Палій. – К., 2005. — 20 с.