When I first read the book in the third year of high school, when I was so worried that I had no time to look after it in the college entrance examination, this book touched me a lot. Not because of exoticism, not because of a large number of sexual descriptions, but when I, a 16-year-old young man, carrying the expectations of my parents and the promise of friends, there is an infinite possibility to cross the bridge of the college entrance examination. Although I will be confused, I am still full of confidence. I can't understand what the lightness of life is. Life is so heavy that even when I am only 16 years old, I am full of exhaustion.
And it took me a whole month to realize that this light is nothingness.
Life itself is meaningless and unworthy of pity, but power can be collectively crushed in any form by all non-life names, and then disappear without a trace. And the individual, in every moment of existence, is trying to get rid of this harmful form of life, carrying all kinds of things so that he will not go without a trace.
Three or four years later, I reread the book, far from the original shock, but to take a step back to examine it.
In Freud's theory, sex is the root of all desires. Admittedly, your pursuit of anything can be said to be experiencing the pleasure of the best part. And this pleasure is just a chemical in the brain, it forms and disappears, leaving you not the gentle beach after low tide, but your disappointment.
Thomas and Teresa both have their own disappointments.
Thomas was afraid of marriage, of the product of that careless night, of his son, that he had to play the role of father, husband and son. So he got rid of it and became a high-status adult male without ethical shackles, and he enjoyed his sexual friendship at will. He loves his job and enjoys the pleasure of a scalpel scratching his skin, just as he is keen to sleep with all kinds of women. Reveal their most secret places to satisfy their curiosity of infinite exploration.
But because of his six accidents, he met Teresa by chance and fell in love with her. Because of Teresa, he escaped from his country when he was humiliated by foreign countries, returned to it, lost his career as a doctor and became a window cleaner. All this was considered by him, and it was the es muss sein in his life that had to be so. But isn't this a series of accidents? He finally listened to Teresa's request and hid in the country, with no women and endless cheating. When Teresa finally realized his aging, she apologized. From the reader's point of view, even Thomas himself believes that Teresa changed or even destroyed his life. But he said he was happy and enjoyed his present life. I can imagine his contentment. When he resisted his fate countless times and accepted the challenge with all his intelligence, he let go of this. There was no mission that was necessary. He felt at ease with life, life itself, wife, dog, life, freedom. And when he is sick, disappointed and has a stomachache, he may not judge how he evaluates his life. Because he always has Teresa.
Teresa's loyalty is the unequal pillar of their love, especially when Thomas is so promiscuous. So it seems that the most sympathetic character in this book is this poor woman. She tried her best to get rid of her old life, from the dirty, low, shameless, undisguised life represented by her mother and mini-bar. She seized the opportunity of fate and thought she could get rid of it. But she was saddened to find that she was still the same as everyone else, and that Thomas's promiscuity made her body nothing unique. So she immersed herself in her work, she tried to have sex with strangers, and she persuaded Thomas to go to the country. When she finally had Thomas to herself, she realized that she loved Karenin more than Thomas.
In the end, Thomas and Teresa fell off a cliff together, and they stayed together no matter how it ended. Even though the author always plays the role of a ruthless judge in the defense of their love, ruthlessness is almost cruel to expose their hypocrisy, men and women in the world hide their cowardice in the name of love.
And perhaps the bravest person in the whole book is Sabina. If there is any consolation in the ending of Thomas and Teresa, Sabina still has no place to belong, she is still wandering on the road of betrayal, and the man she misses, Franz, died in Vietnam with spiritual love for her.
At the end of the story, why can't you bear the lightness of life?
Every woman longs for a man's body on top of her. The heaviest burden has become the image of the strongest vitality. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives are to the earth, the more real it becomes. But for Theresa, Thomas's body is weightless because he has sex with too much; for Sabina, Franz's body is weightless because he is an unweaned baby.
Men disillusioned women and eventually led to their own disillusionment. Thomas moved to the country and stopped having sex, while Franz finally realized on his deathbed that he should protect female college students, even though he ridiculously sacrificed his life and could no longer protect any woman.
The common disillusionment of men and women lies in the fact that there is no ownership in the current society, which must be vulgar if they want to belong. Some people consciously resist kitsch, while others unconsciously fawn on vulgarity to the world. The former hates the latter but has its own vulgarity, while the latter is simply infatuated with the former, such as Sabina and Franz.
And living in the present, how we fawn on vulgarity; living in the present, how we exist.
If you define life as nothingness. Then fawning on vulgarity is meaningless, but Thomas and Sabina still live in their own realm of non-kitsch, rebelling and resisting rejection; Sabina is the representative of defection, and Thomas is a vulgar devil. They unconsciously try their best to maintain their own uniqueness. On the other hand, Franz and Teresa are in the big social environment, in the turbulent world pattern, when they are temporarily disillusioned, they are vulgar, connect with the world, and yearn to belong, but don't they want to rebel?
Franz did not allow himself to hurt his wife at first, but he later realized that his fantasy (the woman on his wife) was wrong, so he abandoned his wife. Sabina could not bear not to betray, so she defected from Franz. Thomas couldn't bear to lose Teresa, so he followed her all the time. And what can't Teresa stand? She is weak, maybe she can't stand the bottom, but in fact, after she stands out, she is infinitely eager to fall back to the bottom, and she is horrified to find that the whole of Prague is becoming ugly.
Freedom is this state of instability. These four characters are in pursuit of freedom, so they are all in the danger of sloshing, which is explored, shaped and shown to the readers by the author.
As a reader, I saw it.
See human beings, see mutual betrayal in love, see power invasion, unification, slogans, centralization, commercialization, noise, secret surveillance, ignorance, cowardice, moral decay is absurd. I saw the smallness of people in life, and there was nothing I could do.
What I see is real in the present society, and life is meaningless and ridiculous. Human beings are not in control of their own lives. Freedom is a state that is even unattainable.
But in fact, I feel that we have shifted our disappointments and grievances to others. People give up saving themselves and pin their hopes on others.
Longing for the absolute pleasure of having sex, the best part of sex, to connect with others, to become one with each other, and to find belonging. But Thomas is the opposite of this desire.
There are so many sex-related novels in modern times that I think even writers are reflecting the fact that even if they fall in love and are physically entangled with each other, it is still unbearable light of life.
Marx once said that the important thing is not to find problems, but to solve them. The writer uses these distinctive close-up characters to show us. More importantly, we should choose what kind of life we should live.
Once doesn't count, but you really only live once. The current world is briefly disillusioned and meaningless, but you can't deny your strong sense of existence at the moment.
The unbearable lightness of life is a dilemma for all of us. One's own nothingness causes people to leave the earth as light as a feather.
In the end, Teresa died with Thomas, which I believe is a comfort. The article mentions that Karenin once gave birth to two croissant and suppressed bees and thought croissant was Thomas and Teresa, and the bees may be their peaceful and long-lasting love at last.
I was shocked when I first read it at the age of 16. I was relieved to read it again at the age of 20.
Life has an unbearable light, and we still live to the next second.
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