“La dernière fois, à cet endroit il y avait un petit jardin de roses.”
The last time, at this place, there was a small garden of roses.
I read the original French version of La Lenteur – The Slowness, of Milan Kundera. (I’m not very sure whether its available in English, though I think it must be.) It is the first attempt of Kundera at a short novel, after a number of works of ’largesse’ such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, or Immortality.
In order to create a background, Kundera brings in an autobiographic touch, and describes philosophically the essential difference between the slowness – La Lenteur and the speed – La Vitesse. “The degree of the speed or velocity (of life) is directly proportional to the volatility of remembrance.”
He then introduces a number of characters to accord some velocity to the slowness. Apart from himself and his companion Vera – who recounts: “You’d once expressed a desire to write a novel where not a single word would be serious, and I’m afraid that moment shouldn’t have arrived.” - there are others typically French, and inevitably one Czech, a few of them from the XVIIIth century, and others from the XXth, or rather the turn of the century.
The Czech etymologist seems to be an attempt at a reproach for the communist nature of their intellectual slavery and the craving for freedom, liberty, in their own homeland. The liberty to live, to express.
The Countess from the 18th century – The Madame T, and her two lovers make the reader feel the need to hide from the world’s eyes, and the characters from the 20th century, the celebrated ones, on the contrary, crave for societal approval and applause. All his characters live throughout their roles, the readers’ pervert desires, fear, bliss, craving for recognition, and the voyeur in him.
And Kundera doesn’t mince words in order to hit where it hurts the most. He seems to have a knack to shatter down the readers’ conscience. What’s more, he doesn’t do so standing at a safe distance. He himself is a part of the novel.
I here recall a verse I’d read somewhere:
When you tell your wife,
and children:
“I’m leaving for work”
and end up
in a brothel of your town -
What d’you feel the most?
The freedom?
Or the Pride of your deception?