Life is Elsewhere
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Form the group:
Imagine Sisyphus
Life is Elsewhere
“What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.”
Reference: Arthur Rimbaud. (1873).
— Une Saison en Enfer: Nuit de L’Enfer.
A Season in Hell: Night in Hell
Inspiration and goal:
“Un Coin de table,” oil painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, 1872; in the Louvre, ParisGiraudon/Art Resource, New York
Dissect the potential duality of reality
Kundera. (1978). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Kundera. (1969). Life is Elsewhere.
Kundera. (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Kundera. (1990). Immortality.
Preparation
Weekly Reading and discussion
Organizing the results
How we operate:
…….
…….
Schedule:
Date: 2023-10-23
Venue: Bench outside
First meeting:
Progress: First part of
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The core idea of this novel is the polarity of “lightness” and “heaviness”, and how it relates to how one lived their life. Beck and Krishna immediately agreed that the character Tereza symbolized “heaviness” and Tomas “lightness”. Joanna, on the other hand, rejected the idea that Tomas is fully “lightness”. Joanna further explained that Tereza is searching for “lightness” in her life, and similarly Tomas for “heaviness”
Lightness and Weight
Date: 2023-10-23
Venue: R3402
Second meeting:
Progress: P.39-P.127
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The idea of a body as a metaphorical “cage” is a notion that Beck disagree with. Beck stated that it is something that people in the past would rather agree, as they have the distinction between soul and body; our soul is the essence of one’s being and body is the confinement.
Soul and Body
Book review
“A grand and glorious life is not better than a simple and humble one. Life exists in the Poet’s journey to be great, but it also exists in the sixth part of the book, where a middle-aged man simply tries to live his peaceful life. It is important to have an image of our ideal self, but it is equally important to slow down, or even take a step back, and re-evaluate ourselves, what we want and where we are; what we will obtain and what we will relinquish.”
Life is Elsewhere:
Reference: Milan Kundera. (1969). Life is Elsewhere.
‘Elsewhere’
“A nostalgic sensation for a so-called ‘Golden age’; a trip that you long for and will never have, an envisioned form of living; always near, yet not able to reach…a life forever waving at us, fooling us even, and we are willingly drunk for a beautiful dream weaved to evade us from the dissatisfaction in reality, to steer away from the fears of being little and small. In the end, it is only a coping mechanism to this senseless world full of nihil. ”
Krishna. Life is not Elsewhere
Joanna. Life is Elsewhere
‘‘Existence’’
We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can never compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
“This endless search for uniqueness, and small differences from others, is proof that Tomas, as light as he tries to be, unknowingly, sorrowfully bears the burden of life. The weight falls on him as well.”
The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
Reference: Milan Kundera. (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
“It seems we cannot escape our destiny, or rather, we easily get confused by our inner projections. Rebellion and obedience, kitschy and anti-kitschy, seem to lose their significance in the river of history. Life, like a burdensome feather, becomes unbearable.”
Beck. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Joanna. Inevitable Weight in Life
‘‘Love’’
“What made love complex is the complication of finding the balance. And what made love beautiful is the willingness of both parties to suffer for the other, to comply, to adapt, and together transform themselves in this pursuit of balance..”
Reference: Milan Kundera. (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Krishna. A Guide to Live
‘‘Litost’’
A state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
“Litost is a sudden sight. At the beginning one would think that they are capable, but then reality hit them and broke whatever they believed before……
Humans are animal driven by purpose. This purpose can be anything, as great as becoming a political-poetical figure as in Life is Elsewhere, or as simple as being a window washer to provide for his loving family like in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. What purpose we want to have in our life is an arbitrary, entirely up for us without other’s consideration. And once we have decided on this purpose, any hardship and suffering are bearable..”
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
Reference: Milan Kundera. (1978). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Krishna. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Milan Kundera. (1978). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
“That’s immortality. Immortality means eternal trial.”
Immortality:
Reference: Milan Kundera. (1990). Immortality.
Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.
Kundera. (1990). Immortality.
‘‘Mortal’’
Experience and reflection sharing
Reflection sharing
Thank you for listening