Customer Reviews

Immortality

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First of all - don't read this if you haven't read either "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" or "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." "Immortality" is more difficult than both of them and should therefore be read later; but not only that, the allusions to some of Kundera's earlier ideas (the border, the unbearable lightness of being) will missed if you read this first.

Second - how much you put into will be how much you get. Don't read this as a novel; read it as a treasure buried under 350 pages of prose - you'll find many nuggets, but it will take work to grasp them and they won't combine to form a fully-formed unified slab of gold.

Third - it's not really about immortality. It's about life, existence, and so on - the essential human themes.

Fourth - it suffers from Kundera's fatal flaw, his refusal to use the literary technique of a book's climax to make the sharpest point. The effect on the reader (and the point of literature, in my opinion, is to make the largest possible effect on the reader) would be much greater if the ending of part five ended the actual novel. I have nothing against Kundera briefly giving away the end in the middle of the novel, which he does in "Being" as well. It's a technique that he uses very well. But how much more so if the characters' ending came at the *book's* ending!

Finally - I'm not sure which rating to give to "Immortality." I first put 4 stars, as it has serious flaws (namely, it doesn't truly form exactly one work and the experimentalism does not always work - put at the climax where it belongs!). But I'd be kidding myself if 20% percent of the books I read are better than "Immortality," I think. I'll end up giving it five, but with caution. The more I reread it, which I have done recently, the more I like it. Five it is, barely. However, I think I hold Kundera to a higher standard - he has such talent; he could use it better.

This was the first Kundera I read, as a result of a friends recomendation, and I was extremely immpressed.
Mr Kundera creates a novel of that rare species here: essentially I am unable to classify it, yet it made me think more deeply than usual and consider the entire world in an entirely different light when I managed to drag myself away from its pages.
The novel opens with Kundera himself witnessing an old woman making a gesture which he believes belies her age: quickly Kundera considers the fact that gestures themselves are immortal: many people have lived throughout history but they have utilized relatively few gestures.
Surprisingly, Kundera weaves an entire character out of this simple gesture, invents friends, relatives, thoughts and feelings for her, and eventually manages to intertwine her life with his own, projecting himself into his own novel, although so subtely do the two stories interlock that when we suddenly realise what has occured slow and joyful understanding blossoms upon our faces.
Along the way, Kundera uses the tale of the great German poet Goethe and the woman Bettina Von Arnim as a kind of historical paradigm for his modern tragedy, paints us a brief but fantastical picture of Hemingway and Goethe conversing beyond this worlds boundaries and, of course, muses upon the nature of Immortality, as well as tackling serious world issues with characteristic Kundera informality.
Kundera is witty and profound: many of the social and cultural observations included in this book made me laugh out loud. His discourse on such diverse subjects as music, world government, sex and the paths gossip take are so wonderfully woven into the primary story they seem to creep into your brain and only surface later, at which point one can nod admiringly at Kundera's wisdom.
Undoubtedly, a book I would not heitate to recommend, this novel should be read carefully and lovingly by eveyone.
Rabidly intelligent, astonishingly well written, ambitious, experimental and indispensable to the thoughtful reader.

If you like straightforward books with straightforward plots, straightforward characters and straightforward beginnings, storylines and conclusions, this book may not for you.

The novel takes place in the present, in the past, in the afterlife & in the surreal world of Kundera's imagination. The work has several different seemingly separate stories that Kundera somehow weaves into a coherent whole. We meet people that we are led to believe actually exist who talk with the author during "intermissions" of the novel. Later, we learn that Kundera was discussing topics with the characters in his novel.

The book has sundry marvelous sections which brood over just about every intellectual topic associated with immortality. We see an eloborate (although fictionalized) glimpse of Goethe's historical meeting with Napoleon. We get an impression of how many great artists look upon their craft as mementos of their immortality. We even get an answer to the $60,000 question: WHAT would happen if Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Earnest Hemingway met up in the afterlife? (Wow! What a thought!)

As I mentioned earlier, this book does not have the standard structure of most other novels. That said, however, it was quite enjoyable to read. It did not go off the deep end of Faulkneresque stream-of-consciousness psycho-babble. An excellent and entertaining postmodern effort.

These days, it's hard to come across a book which is really innovative, since all sorts of experiments have been conducted in literature. This is one original work. It is a beautiful novel that the reader writes along with the author. It's kind of "interactive", just like some by Machado de Assis and Calvino, extremely different authors. Starting from the gesture of a mature woman, Kundera invents fictional characters who interact with other characters, supposedly real, as well as with the author himself. These characters are the excuse Kundera uses to conduct an acute reflection on our age and, in particular, on our cult of technology and image. Besides Agnes (the spirit) and Laura (the body), other memorable characters are Rubens, Agnes's ocasional lover who is sad and melancholic, and Prof. Avenarius, for whom the world is only an object for diversion. This novel transforms all aspects of the modern world into metaphysical issues, and its form is polyphonic: the story is alternated with that of Goethe and Bettina Brentano, which serves to explain and reinforce some reflections by Kundera. There's also a digression about the emergence of "homo sentimentalis" in Europe, as well as a witty dialogue between the spirits of Goethe and Hemingway (interesting, isn't it?). The novel is extremely inspiring, it's beautiful in spite of some paternal and lecturizing passages.

I flew through this book, enchanted.

It's scintillating gravity drags you in, swirls you around, and leaves you hovering, like a moon about a planet.

Kundera's genius is that he writes novels structured more like symphonies or string quartets than novels. He dispenses with the direct approach to action, allows characters and themes to intermingle in sonata-like freedom and splendor. His sections function like orchestral movements; they differ completely, often feeding on new thematic material; each can function seperately, yet all compliment the whole.

Witness how Agnes' story is studied in some depth. We long for more, but Kundera drags in Gothe, Bettina and Hemmingway; how magical. We are in suspense, waiting to find out about Agnes. Then, back to Agnes and her sister... But what about Gothe? What's the trial both Hemmingway and he are facing in the afterworld? Then there's the stories of the girl who's dead inside because the world won't respond to her, and Ruben's, dead to life in the now, exiled to the Land Beyond Love. And, just where do Avenarius and Ruth fit into this? Or Kundera, the author, who shows up in an Eischerian recursiveness. Strangely, all these stories fit together, and drive the novel; the compulsion to follow these characters draws us further in. This is storytelling at its artful best.

Another thing truly remarkable about Kundera is his subtle use of ideas; his is a novelistic universe where ideas, stated or mused about in the first person (Yes... you know its Kundera, not a character, thinking these thoughts) become themes in a fugue that runs paralell to, though distinct from, the action.

The voices in this fugue are quite charming, insightful as Vonnegut's, yet never clumsy as, say, Robbins' can get; in fact, these idea-themes raise more questions than they answer. Love is examined; from the passionate, almost hysterical loves of Bettina and Ruth, to the detatched, though honest love of Agnes, to the empty, loveless physical eroticism of Reubens that fails to resonate because he gives nothing of himself to his lovers, and takes none of them in. Another idea-theme is image versus substance. Modern culture is obsessed with image, not substance. Where is the boundry between real and imagined? This leads to an examination of immortality; how we live on only through those we touch, yet, of course, their images of us are not us. What, if anything, lays beyond? Heavy stuff with a light touch.

Kundera succeeds where a lot of structural modernists fail because he seems intoxicated with life, love, people and their foibles, and thus draws engagingly real characters, not the shadowy half-things of Pynchon, or Joyce's labrynthine characters, in extremely complex structures... In this case, a structure arguably more complex that "Ulysses" or "Gravity's Rainbow".

Yet I don't want to scare readers off. Those are books I read like medicine; they taste bad, but someone told me its good for me. "Immortality", I'll re-read because I love it; It's the very best book I've read in a long, long time, if not my whole life.

Milan Kundera states it best midway through his novel: 'Dramatic tension is the real curse of the novel, because it transforms everything, even the most beautiful pages, even the most surprising scenes and observations merely into steps leading to the final resolution, in which the meaning of everything that preceded it is concentrated'.

Indeed, the novel Immortality is not concerned with plot or with structure, with character descriptions or sweeping narrative. No, Kundera has set himself both an easier and a more challenging task than that. His novel deals with themes; the theme of immortality and the theme of eroticism form the bulk of the work, but there are many lesser themes throughout. Take away the themes and you have taken away Kundera's novel. He eschews plot, dramatically and emphatically, because to rely on plot means that 'The novel is consumed in the fire of its own tension like a bale of straw.'

The novel is both framed and included within the story of Milan Kundera's life during the writing of the novel, Immortality. This could be a confusing device, but it is not. He is at a swimming pool where he is watching an older woman as she swims. He is entranced by her 'touchingly comic manner', but his attention is soon diverted. But then, as she leaves, his eye catches her again, and she waves to another man. 'It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly coloured ball to her lover.'

From this gesture, Kundera creates a character, Agnes. She uses the gesture at times, understanding the impact it has on males. Agnes' sister, Laura, adopts the gesture and perfects it, which means we now have two characters. Leisurely, Kundera adds more, rounding out Agnes' life by giving her a child, a husband, a feuding sister, an occupation.

But the message of the novel is not told through Agnes' trials and tribulations. While she is arguably unhappy in her life and wishes to escape to Switzerland, this detail is simply that - a fact in her life. What Kundera is more concerned with is the machinations of her erotic and emotional existence and through that, the erotic and emotional interplay between male and female. He does not limit himself to Agnes and her husband, rather he seeks to speak on behalf of every woman and every husband, every seducer and every nervous girl, every amorous lover and every bewitched man.

Kundera uses a thought, an action, an episode in his character's life to digress philosophically on any number of topics. 'Imagology' is a significant topic, which recurs throughout the novel. Kundera considers that ideology has passed, to be replaced with imagology, or the importance of images and symbols above all else. Politicians speak in repetitive, emotionally charged statements designed purely to be picked up by reporters as sound bites. Millions of pictures of Lenin exist throughout the Communist world, not because he is loved necessarily, but because the image of Lenin is important beyond the ideology.

Recurrence is a strong theme of the work. The wave described on the first page of the novel comes back through every aspect of the novel. Metaphors and descriptive tropes return again and again, to further enhance and explain a philosophical digression or a nuance of character.

Immortality, or the concept of existing beyond your own death, is dealt with through the sub-story of Goethe and Bettina. At first it seems a shocking digression - Just when the novel seems to be developing a plot, we are taken back to 1811, to the time of Goethe and the Weimar Republic. Goethe, an author known for his constant striving (and achievement of) literary immortality, is confronted with a much younger woman, Bettina, who seeks her own assured immortality through association with Goethe. Over forty pages or so, Kundera recounts their lives together, and then over the rest of the novel he uses the themes and ideas put forth in that section to further explain the narrative whole. In 1811, Bettina's glasses were struck from her face by Goethe's jilted wife; in the 1980s, Agnes fingertips forced her sister's dark glasses from her face to shatter on the ground.

At times, Kundera inserts himself into the text. He interacts with the major characters of the novel, and is surprised when they do not act the way he has envisioned in his text. His friend, Professor Avenarius, is having an affair with one of the characters, which Kundera did not expect. These meta-textual of post-modern touches do not take away from the novel, rather they enhance the over-arching theme of the work, which is that of philosophical and erotic problems and discussion, not that of character cohesion or plot strength.

We need not believe the characters as people, which allows Kundera to focus explicitly on the areas of their created lives that matter most to him. Part 6, near the very end of the novel, deals with an entirely new character, Rubens, and his realisation that his erotic adventures are over. Kundera is discussing with Avenarius, 'I am really looking forward to Part Six. A completely new character will enter the novel. And at the end of that part he will disappear without a trace. He causes nothing and leaves no effects...Part Six will be a novel within a novel, as well as the saddest story I have ever written.'

Rubens sphere of interaction with the other characters in the novel is extremely low, but his story is thematically adjacent and complimentary to the previous sections of the novel. We do not need to know about him as a character, but his existence as a theme is necessary for the completion and culmination of the novel as a thematic work. That Rubens and Agnes have a mild connection in no way cheapens the force of Part Six which is, as Kundera says, very sad.

Kundera's work is one that reads fast, but should be savoured slowly. There are large, important themes at work here, just as Kundera introduces large, important philosophical questions into his text. 'If a reader skips a single sentence of my novel he won't be able to understand it', we are told, and that is true. Savour and enjoy the philosophy and the wit. Learn from the erotic truths. Kundera is in his element. He shines.

What an influential and meaningful book to read, explains the desire of immortality, and the different ways people take to reach the unreachable. It all starts with a simple gesture of a woman saying good-bye leaving a swimming pool, and then Milan Kundera's style, choice of words, and the relation he introduces between two different stories (which took place in two different centuries) takes you to a more complicated but very enjoyable concept.

There are many characters in the book, but Kundera was able to describe each ones mind and intentions in the best humanness way, we do learn something from each of them, and it does teach one or two things about this life we are living, and how real it is!!!

A book very well written, captures all your attention because of the little twists that Kundera introduces, and it makes you wonder even more about things you already knew...

The chief pleasure of reading Kundera comes from the music of his writing (in this case, translated by Peter Kussi). His sentences are like melodies and, like Nabokov, it is easy to simply get carried along by their flow. He does not write "novels" in the classic sense - he writes "pieces" which have just as much to do with philosophy as creative writing. The journey is all about little insights, philosophical ideas, and musings on history.

I must warn the newcomer, however - this is NOT a straightforward novel. This is a classic example of "metafiction" - that is, writing about writing. The book begins with Kundera seeing a woman's wave which inspires him to write a story. Immortality is that story, PLUS Kundera's writing that story, PLUS random digressions about Goethe and Rubens. I have to impress upon the reader that THERE IS NO PLOT in this book. That is Kundera's point, and yet the absence of a plot does not encourage the reader to keep going back to it (as it is not headed anywhere).

If you are looking for a book that is out of the ordinary, with very poetic philosophical digressions, than this is the novel for you.

Milan Kundera reaches artistic nirvana with a work which perhaps sums up his ouevre. A sad, utterly compelling novel about life, love and how in our attempts to be immortal we forget about our current existence. A perfect balance in meeting the intellectual with the romantic; rarely achieved in novels even larger in scope. The story is even honest in that it is intertextual. A dazzling work by master craftsman.

Milan Kundera is one of the most important writers in post war Europe. Each of his novels is playful, philosophical, digressive in a style reminiscent of Sterne and tries to make sense of the difficulties of human life in a playful and erotic manner. Immortality ranks as one of his best novels and perfectly fulfils Kundera's definition of a novel as a feast of many courses - a banquet for the brain to be savoured in many sittings, not a race to the denoument at the end.

Only some minor flaws. Kundera is an exemplary novelist of ideas. Themes considered in Immortality include the notion of 'Imagology' - the musings on the role of the image - in advertising, politics, the image of Lenin proliferating and dominating the ideology of Communism is perfectly attuned to our modern times, bombarded as we are by the sinews of consumerism. However some of the ideas here come across as a little strained. The notion that Bettina - with her attachment to Goethe to pursue immortal love with the great man - subsumed his literary reputation makes for playful, intelligent writing, but it is true? Nah. Goethe's reputation remains, I had to look up Bettina on wikipedia. The whole thesis is like a beautiful flower of many beautifully shaped petals that crushes instantly in the hand as it is so insubstantial.

Also, am I alone in tinging a strain of fretful, excited sexual deviance in Kundera's work, not just this novel, but in his books as a whole? Through out Kundera's work images of female humiliation occur such as the opera singers in 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' being trained with pencils up their rectums, girls having their skirts hoisted up in public, girls standing bare breasted and shamed in public, musings on 'Miss Elsa' - the heroine of an obscure Arthur Scknitzler novella who is forced to show herself nude to repeal her father's debts. Images like this clearly swirl throughout Kundera's mind on hot writing afternoons so that he comes on like Philip Larkin in his sweating, fervid 'Willow Gables' pornographic mode, getting a fretful thrill from imagining women degraded. Perhaps Kundera's sexual excesses might have been tempered by a few cold showers? Or maybe that would ruin something vital in the essence of the work? Worth a ponder.