From May 24 2007, Xanga blog pick for here (For Loki, because of the word 'impetus')
Currently ReadingThe Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics)By Milan Kundera
I can't write the chapter without writing all the chapters before it, and if I did that then I would be writing a book that's already been written... and it occurred to me I would never even be able to get across what I wanted to tell you about the chapter I want you to see anyhow. Not unless you see it the same as me, which you can't. And also, not without writing about all the chapters that follow which I haven't even read yet. So here is what I wll do. I will write little sentences from the chapter, chapter 11, and perhaps they will be enticing ones that may make you want to read the book. Or maybe they won't, maybe it will annoy you so much that you will lock the book's cover, the one you've put to memory, you will push it away into the attic forever with the intent that it will never be seen or heard from again... until one sunny day you get an idea about being tidy and you have a massive notion to give away all your books that you haven't looked at in years, you may find that you want to box them and give them to the downtrodden one day, or perhaps just to a neighbor or a poor student. You will rifle through a box and find the book with the cover you suddenly remember that you'd forgotten, and you throw it carelessly into a box marked, "Irritating excerpts I never want to read again..."
Never mind all that. I'm going to go ahead and write them down, a few sentences I mean, and have faith that the written word.... at least a few selected words will be the impetus, just what is needed, for you to get yo' ass up 'dere in that old attic full of echoes of snores and old literature waiting.. no rather, expecting to be re-read. If not by the original reader, then by you, Mr. I Really Don't Have Time to Read a Suggested Novel Right Now:
"Our day to day life is bombarded with fortuities, or to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events..."
"Co-incidence means that two events happen at the same time, ..."
"We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences..."
...the radio was playing Beethoven."
"But her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty.."
"Whenever she heard it she would be touched..."
"Everything going on around her at that moment would be haloed by the music and take on it's beauty.."
"This symmetrical composition -- the same motif appears at the beginning and the end.."
"Human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion."
"They are composed like music."
"Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of the greatest distress."
"...it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidence in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty...."
(note: I love the words "symmetrical composition" in reference to the idea of meaningful coincidence)
(Loki said: I still like the part about her clutching his hand the best. )
I can't write the chapter without writing all the chapters before it, and if I did that then I would be writing a book that's already been written... and it occurred to me I would never even be able to get across what I wanted to tell you about the chapter I want you to see anyhow. Not unless you see it the same as me, which you can't. And also, not without writing about all the chapters that follow which I haven't even read yet. So here is what I wll do. I will write little sentences from the chapter, chapter 11, and perhaps they will be enticing ones that may make you want to read the book. Or maybe they won't, maybe it will annoy you so much that you will lock the book's cover, the one you've put to memory, you will push it away into the attic forever with the intent that it will never be seen or heard from again... until one sunny day you get an idea about being tidy and you have a massive notion to give away all your books that you haven't looked at in years, you may find that you want to box them and give them to the downtrodden one day, or perhaps just to a neighbor or a poor student. You will rifle through a box and find the book with the cover you suddenly remember that you'd forgotten, and you throw it carelessly into a box marked, "Irritating excerpts I never want to read again..."
Never mind all that. I'm going to go ahead and write them down, a few sentences I mean, and have faith that the written word.... at least a few selected words will be the impetus, just what is needed, for you to get yo' ass up 'dere in that old attic full of echoes of snores and old literature waiting.. no rather, expecting to be re-read. If not by the original reader, then by you, Mr. I Really Don't Have Time to Read a Suggested Novel Right Now:
"Our day to day life is bombarded with fortuities, or to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events..."
"Co-incidence means that two events happen at the same time, ..."
"We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences..."
...the radio was playing Beethoven."
"But her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty.."
"Whenever she heard it she would be touched..."
"Everything going on around her at that moment would be haloed by the music and take on it's beauty.."
"This symmetrical composition -- the same motif appears at the beginning and the end.."
"Human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion."
"They are composed like music."
"Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of the greatest distress."
"...it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidence in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty...."
(note: I love the words "symmetrical composition" in reference to the idea of meaningful coincidence)
(Loki said: I still like the part about her clutching his hand the best. )
posted by SPOA | 9:08 PM
3 Comments:
Yeah, that hasn't changed. Thank you for re-posting it!
I shivered, seeing that. I think I watched the movie of the book many years ago (?), and didn't like it at all: pretentious-arty, etc.
My eyes also watered recently, hearing some Shakespeare. In The Tempest for example, a line "From no hope, such great hope comes".
Like a warm fragrant bath, powerful beautiful words are something in which to be enveloped, a refined pleasure.
I'll have to check out Kundera some time, K.
Meanwhile, in the same spirit, I invoke the poet ee cummings with an exquisite micro observation:
"no one, not even the rain, has such small hands".
OK, I'm going to howl at the moon now ....
J
I've never seen the movie. Only having discovered the books of Milan Kundera this year, I still always thought over time that I ought to read the book "Unbearable Lightness." I'm so glad I did. I found "Immortality" the more inspiring though. Please read that one if comes up in your life again. You'd love it.
Kundera sort of writes that way, though; in pieces. I'm so pleased you saw it and liked what I selected :)
Keep howling...
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