The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of those books that I will always return to and associate with a specific period of my life. I buried myself in it the fall of my senior year of high school and upon completing it, spent one very depressing evening in my basement watching the nearly three hour long film adaptation.
Every fall since I think of the story of Tomas and Tereza. The change in weather, the drop in temperature and the falling leaves remind of Kundera's philosophical musings on love and fidelity. Though I don't like the movie nearly as much as the book (it's too hard to translate all of those abstract ideas into a plot-driven film), I still think its trailer is one of the greatest ever made.
When I make my annual revisit to the novel, there is one part in particular that I read. It is the same section that I inevitably share with new people in my life. It is a very short chapter where Kundera breaks down everyone in the world into four distinct categories. As silly as I feel admitting that I demand people I am just getting to know to identify themselves as belonging to one of these four categories, I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider it a relatively accurate gauge of a person.
The chapter begins with this sentence: "We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under."
I will give a brief synopsis of each type, only because I think classification is so much fun.
"The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public" This category usually contains celebrities and people seeking fame and public glory.
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"The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes" These people, according to Kundera, are happier than the first category of people, because they can always come up with a large group of friends and acquaintances with whom they can interact and entertain.
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"Then there is a third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love." This is a dangerous category, and it is probably the one I belong in. I consider myself a combination of this and the next category...
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"And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present" I think of this category often, when I am moving around, interacting with certain people in a certain way, or engaging in a behavior I know one person would have a strong reaction to... Usually the person I'm imagining in the same person who would be doing the looking in the third category.
It is a troubling combination at times.
So, which are you?
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What about the category of people who don't want to be looked at by any eyes? For some reason I am thinking of hermits, but I bet it can be applied to others, such as people who feel alone (not "lonely," but "alone"). Those categories are interesting, though, because I think we often perceive ourselves in relation to others, and a great deal of that goes with how we want to be seen and by whom.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably closest to the fourth category. I imagine what I do, even in private, as being analyzed by parents, or friends, or my significant other, often when they are not there. Odd, that.
Man. I feel like I got to the Unbearable Lightness of Being at a bad time in my life (which, oddly enough, was the exact same time you read it) because it definitely didn't resonate with me as much as it could have. Kundera (and I guess whoever translated the text) is a wordsmith for sure. There's just some sort of eternal and ubiquitous truth that he manages to point out in the air, and god damn, I wish I could do it too. Despite that, I think the text was overhyped by the time I got to it, and I was just inclined not to be terribly impressed. I was also miserably asexual at the time, so I guess I should try rereading it now and seeing if I understand more truths.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know which category I fall into. There's the way I perceive myself, and there's the way others perceive me, and I'm certain there are miles between the two. Which is the more truthful response? A hard question to answer, especially when talking about who I want to look at me and how I want them to do it.