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Judy Tan

Isabel Sperry

ENGL 1B-11

24 February 2012

NO RUNNING FROM KITSCH

“Kitsch,” Milan Kundera asserts, “is the stopover between being and oblivion” (Kundera

278). In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera identifies kitsch as an aesthetic

ideal which bridges the gap between the overarching dichotomy of ‘lightness’ versus ‘weight’

(which in itself encompasses being and oblivion) that is presented in the work. Kundera asks the

reader to question the opposition of lightness and weight—which is better and which is worse?

However, by the end of the novel, we are confronted with the fact that this is an unsolvable

paradox. The concept of kitsch is used as a means to explore the lightness/weight relationship,

but because Kundera intricately links the two, kitsch arrives at a paradox as well.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being overtly discusses the nature of kitsch using the

political circumstances experienced by the characters, as well as using the characters themselves

to illustrate the various types of relationships humans have with it. Used in these contexts, kitsch

is presented as an unavoidable reality to the characters, and extrapolating outward, as a reality of

the human condition.

Tomas, the main character, is told by his favorite mistress Sabina that he is opposite of

kitschy. This is mainly in reference to his many sexual relationships with women, but

characterizes the lack of sentimentality in Tomas’s personality and values. His belief that

“making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely

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different, but opposite” runs counter to the traditional and sentimental (and therefore, kitschy)

belief that sex is reserved for couples in love (15). This, coupled with the fact that Tomas’s

affairs are extramarital in nature, suggests a sort of lightness in that he does not idealize love and

sex, which gives him freedom in his relationships. However, his love for his wife Tereza

introduces heaviness into the mix; Tomas cannot bear the pain his infidelity causes her, yet he

continues to see other women. Though Tomas himself is not a follower of kitsch in his erotic

pursuits, he can’t escape it since Tereza subconsciously subscribes to its idealistic view of sex,

which impacts them both. Thus, kitsch plays a role in creating the paradox between lightness and

heaviness in Tomas’s relationships.

Similarly, kitsch is a driving force in Sabina’s life, although she outright rejects it.

Sabina, it can be said, prefers to see the world as it is, rather than with the idealized layers of

meaning that people place on it; she is the character that epitomizes the idea of the ‘unbearable

lightness of being’. To this end, her war on kitsch has caused her to adopt a life of lightness, in

an effort to escape kitsch. Eventually, she realizes too late that “one could betray one’s parents,

husband, country, love, but when parents, country, and love were gone—what was left to betray”

(122)? Because Sabina sacrifices all those things, she is left with feelings of loneliness and

isolation. The finality of that realization is weighty, and yet “in the mind of a woman for whom

no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable” (125).

In contrast, Sabina’s Swiss lover Franz most nearly embodies the idea of kitsch. Their

relationship is built on a foundation of misunderstandings caused by their widely different

beliefs:

Franz felt his book life to be unreal. He yearned for real life, for

the touch of people walking side by side with him, for their shouts.

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It never occurred to him that what he considered unreal (the work

he did in the solitude of the office or library) was in fact his real

life, whereas the parades he imagined to be reality were nothing

but theater, dance, carnival—in other words, a dream (100).

In other words, Franz embraces the meaning kitsch gives, regardless of whether that meaning is

real or imagined. The meaning kitsch gives lends a sense of heaviness which grounds Franz to

his actual life and obligations toward his wife, but in a way, it is also meaningless because the

‘meaning’ it provides isn’t real. Because it is meaningless, it is fleeting and light, as evidenced

by Franz’s relatively easy betrayal of his failing marriage. Still, regardless of how much meaning

can be derived from kitsch, it is still a powerful force; it is this that drives Franz to go to

Cambodia, with grand hopes for providing its war- and famine-stricken citizens with medical

care. And it is this adherence to his fantasy of the “Grand March…on the road to brotherhood,

equality, justice, happiness…obstacles notwithstanding” that spells his end (257). On his

deathbed, Franz realizes that he was perfectly content with the realities of his mundane life after

all.

For Tomas, Tereza, and Sabina, their reality (for a majority of the book) is that of Soviet-

occupied Czechoslovakia, and the reign of totalitarian kitsch wearing the mask of Communism.

According to Kundera, if kitsch is “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the

figurative senses of the word,” then Communism embodies it (248). Here, kitsch illustrates yet

another paradox: the ideals of Communism do not necessarily reflect the realities that they bring.

Sabina recalls the May Day parades of her childhood, everyone marching in time together, their

fists raised, each person in step with the others in perfect conformity. This is the face that

Communism put on, and yet, this is also the same political force that encouraged:

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“organized letters-to-the-editor campaigns demanding, for

example, the extermination of all pigeons within city limits. And

the pigeons would be exterminated...Only after a year did the

accumulated malice…find its true goal: people. People started

being removed from their jobs, arrested, put on trial” (289).

This, it would seem, is a very heavy reality, where the individual is silenced, the dissenters are

persecuted, and absurdity reigns; the front it puts on is merely a disguise, a light cover that can

be pulled off at a moment’s notice (and keep everyone in line) and put back on just as easily (to

fool the world).

Still, the Communists are not the only ones guilty of kitsch; Kundera asserts that all

political parties, religious groups, and ideological movements are essentially very similar. Being

that kitsch is an unavoidable part of the human condition, and that “the brotherhood of man on

earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch,” these groups are all guilty of using it. Both the

dissident Prague intellectuals and Prague’s Soviet-controlled government attempt separately to

use Tomas to further their political own ends. Sabina is unable to partake in a Parisian protest

march after seeing how “fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans,” much like

how the Communists they were protesting against, did” (100). For her, the “image of evil was a

parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison,”

regardless of political or ideological belief (ibid). Without kitsch, there would be no focal point,

no idealizations around which people could rally, for better or worse; this would well and truly

separate groups into isolated individuals, with no reason to band together nor act on any

collective belief.

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By the end of the novel, Franz, Tomas, and Tereza are dead; however, they each were

able, towards the end, to get a taste of true happiness—Tomas with Tereza, and Franz with his

student mistress. Interestingly enough, Sabina, who is the sole survivor, is the only one that is

wracked by feelings of loneliness and isolation. She is the only one who has not found an

equilibrium in her life between lightness and weight; she has drifted away, a victim of an

unbearable lightness of being.

In using kitsch as a means to analyze the lightness/weight dichotomy, Kundera goes

beyond the philosopher Parmenides’s belief that lightness is good and weight is bad (or vice

versa, for that matter). In the end, the answer—if there is any—is unknowable to us. If it were

knowable, it wouldn’t matter, as knowing would not change the fact that both lightness and

weight coexist; this was exemplified previously. Similarly, kitsch exists, regardless of however

we might view it. Kitsch serves as the middle point between lightness and weight; it is anchored

to reality, whereas lightness and weight float somewhere around it. In other words, kitsch is

easily identifiable in the world around us, but the concepts of lightness and weight are not—their

meanings vary greatly from person to person.

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Works Cited

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999. Print.