Insignificance and the ephemeral nature of existence is a recurring theme in the first part of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Milan Kundera opens the part with Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of eternal return. If we take this to be true, a life that does not return is “dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing” (3). In other words, life is empty because it never lived to begin with. And transitory things cannot be condemned because they are inconsequential. So, in this world resting on “the nonexistence of return”, everything morally reprehensible is permitted because it does not matter in the end (4).
If an event were to infinitely recur, it becomes inane and solid. Kundera uses the example of the French Revolution occurring eternally. It is only because Robespierre does not return that historians can form theories and discuss him. He becomes “lighter than feathers, frightening no one” and “becoming only half real” (4, 5).
Kundera then defines lightness and weight. Eternal return is the “heaviest of burdens”. Our lives contrast this in “splendid lightness” because this state of being does not return. Similar to this line of thought, Parmenides defines lightness as positive and weight as negative. Yet, by the logic of love poetry, weight brings us close to the earth, grounds our lives and makes them more “real and truthful”, while lightness and freedom make existence insignificant and “half real” (5). Kundera explores the dichotomy between these two lines of thought through his narrative.
Tomas, a libertine bachelor, unexpectedly falls in love with Tereza. He has trouble deciding whether to ask her to come live with him, but she shows up unprompted, making the decision for him. In this moment of indecision, Tomas references a German saying, “Einmal ist keinmal” — once is never, or, as the narrator states, “What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all,” alluding to the half-realness of being (8).
While he marries her and stays with her for seven years, he cannot help but be unfaithful, continuing his erotic friendships. After moving to Sweden, he experiences lightness after Tereza leaves him to go back to Prague. However, after a few days, he feels the weight of compassion, for “there is nothing heavier than compassion,” his curse, as the narrator calls it (31). Initially working within Parmenides’ framework, we experience a reversal into Beethoven’s definition of weight, where “necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value” (33). Thus, Tomas’s compassion has value, and he chooses to return to Prague to be with Tereza.
Yet, as soon as he returns, his feelings for her cool rapidly. His love for her was a mere series of chance, and she is the “personification of absolute fortuity”. He feels “the despair of having returned” (35). His love is empty. So which is more splendid, lightness or weight?