Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom

Milan Kundera's choice to open his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) with two short chapters discussing Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence is, if nothing else, unconventional. It foregrounds his engagement with Nietzsche and suggests that the novel itself is some...

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Autor principal:	Jeremy Wattles
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	University of Edinburgh 2006
Materias:	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/06a3833a254a466793f6d04431c702ad
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:06a3833a254a466793f6d04431c702ad2021-11-23T09:46:01ZHappiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom1749-9771https://doaj.org/article/06a3833a254a466793f6d04431c702ad2006-12-01T00:00:00Zhttp://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/574https://doaj.org/toc/1749-9771Milan Kundera's choice to open his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) with two short chapters discussing Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence is, if nothing else, unconventional. It foregrounds his engagement with Nietzsche and suggests that the novel itself is something of a thought experiment, a working out of how such an abstract but compelling idea can have meaning in the world. The myth of eternal return poses, as Kundera's narrator implies, an ultimate question of existence: will we choose that our lives, and therefore our actions, have weight or lightness? Or, as Nietzsche says in The Gay Science (1882), "If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again' would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight!" (194). In other words, will this thought enslave an individual or will it empower them? Is there a paradoxical, controlling freedom an individual may obtain by embracing the vicissitudes of life, in willing that a chance event and its consequences might recur again and again?Jeremy WattlesUniversity of EdinburgharticleFine ArtsNLanguage and LiteraturePENForum, Iss 03 (2006)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
spellingShingle	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P Jeremy Wattles Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
description	Milan Kundera's choice to open his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) with two short chapters discussing Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence is, if nothing else, unconventional. It foregrounds his engagement with Nietzsche and suggests that the novel itself is something of a thought experiment, a working out of how such an abstract but compelling idea can have meaning in the world. The myth of eternal return poses, as Kundera's narrator implies, an ultimate question of existence: will we choose that our lives, and therefore our actions, have weight or lightness? Or, as Nietzsche says in The Gay Science (1882), "If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again' would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight!" (194). In other words, will this thought enslave an individual or will it empower them? Is there a paradoxical, controlling freedom an individual may obtain by embracing the vicissitudes of life, in willing that a chance event and its consequences might recur again and again?
format	article
author	Jeremy Wattles
author_facet	Jeremy Wattles
author_sort	Jeremy Wattles
title	Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
title_short	Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
title_full	Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
title_fullStr	Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
title_full_unstemmed	Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom
title_sort	happiness filled the space of sadness: the weight, tragedy and paradox of milan kundera's freedom
publisher	University of Edinburgh
publishDate	2006
url	https://doaj.org/article/06a3833a254a466793f6d04431c702ad
work_keys_str_mv	AT jeremywattles happinessfilledthespaceofsadnesstheweighttragedyandparadoxofmilankunderasfreedom
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Happiness Filled the Space of Sadness: the Weight, Tragedy and Paradox of Milan Kundera's Freedom

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