The Kunderian narrative voice

By Dilshan Boange

The growing interest in postmodernist writings and literature as well as postmodernist narrative styles and techniques amongst writers and literature enthusiasts in Sri Lanka may benefit significantly by exploring the work of Czech born novelist Milan Kundera.

Although not entirely of the populist literary traditions of the West, this writer who is domiciled in France has become very much a name of the mass market main stream in Western Europe.

The themes his work explores range from politics to sexuality to norms and conventions that govern society and people in their everyday lives, and much more. Sometimes thought of as a somewhat lurid portrayer of matters related to sex and eroticism, by those with more conservative outlooks, Kundera’s approaches may at times seem unorthodox or unusual to the reader whose tastes are set on the more traditional types of novels.

What I wish to discuss in this article is not so much the themes and storylines/plots of Kundera’s fiction but the narrative voice he builds in his style of ‘storytelling’ and how his fictions have a marked uniqueness in terms of narrative technique. I wish to refer to three novels of Kundera in this article, namely –The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Immortality and Slowness.

The essay in the novel

One of the main features that will distinguish this mater of postmodern writing is how he has stretched the boundaries of the novel as a work of fiction by devising means to make space of attributes of an essay.

As we generally would conceive ‘the essay’ is a form of writing which is very distinct to the types of writing that we call a work of ‘fiction’ (be it a short story, novelette, novella or novel). An essay would generally not be intended as purely for entertainment but would have a more educational purpose ingrained in it.

The outlaying of facts and analysis in a formal and pronounced manner would distinguish an ‘essay’ as opposed to the general form of a work of fiction. Looking at the two separate genres traditionally, one would think it is highly unlikely the two forms (and for that matter the contents) could be successfully merged to be a single piece holding the integrity of a harmoniously flowing singular narrative.

When one speaks of ‘the essay in the novel’ relating to Milan Kundera’s works it must be understood that the idea of the essay and its objectives is what is most focal and not the detailed intricacies such as souring and referencing that is found in standard academic essays.

If the objective of the essay is to impart factual details to further the knowledge of the reader on the topic it presents, deals with then one can say Kundera’s approach has found great success in terms of fictions that can also perform the role of an essay rather pronouncedly.

When dealing with, for example, themes like ‘politics in Europe’ one may find the narrative of the text which is presumed to be a novel (and thereby purely ‘fictional’) performing an educative role spelling out historical incidents and facts and also elaborating the author’s own analytical perspectives on the given matter(s).

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting which is a quasi-biographical work has several subplots along with its central plot and theme.

The essayist mode Kundera has built into the text of this novel achieves the objectives of educating the reader about the plight of the city of Prague under communist oppression by the Soviets while narrating very compellingly fictional stories of characters located within such political landscapes.

Kundera’s own plight as a victim of communist persecution is brought out with biographical sketches narrated alongside the fictional to present a thematically common ground.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting in my opinion is a great accomplishment of how themes of politics and political history can be presented in the essay mode within the larger construction of the narrative of a novel which meanders with its own host of characters and their lives and the numerous plots and subplots.

The novel Slowness is one that carries a central theme of love and sensuality and how they translate as in the modern context of society compared to how it was in relation to French society in the latter part of the 18th century.

What is relevant in terms of ‘the essay in the novel’ is how Kundera embarks on his story by making references to a French novella titled No Tomorrow which has a very simple plot of a night of courtship and lust shared by an aristocratic lady (known as Madame de T.) and a young Chevalier (a French Knight) who both in their union commit indiscretions –the woman to her husband and the young man to his ladylove.

The essences of this novella is what spins into a pathway for Kundera to begin his own analysis and commentary of the work and further the story of No Tomorrow by speculating what would have happened between those characters and what may have been going on in their minds that the text of that novella does not overtly say.

Kundera gives the reader much insight about the novella and what its origins were from its publication in 1777 with its author’s real identity being withheld and over time even being obscured with different ‘nom de plumes’ being associated with different editions.

In the novel Immortality Kundera presents his essayistic elements in several ways. The famous German poet Johann Von Goethe is a central character who is portrayed with some biographical aspects in the novel.

When Kundera explores this element in Immortality the reader is provided with notable facts and figures that enhances the reader’s historical knowledge from a narrative style (and structure) that keeps the reader moving along a narrative of a story which also pronouncedly takes on the tone of presenting details and focuses which extra to the interplay between characters and the events and incidents they are involved in.

The mode of the essayist is one key characteristic which defines the form and structure of a Kunderian work and its narrative. Exploring this avenue within the folds of literary studies in universities can certainly help advance the understandings of what purposes postmodernist writers and their work(s) seek to accomplish through literature.

Philosophising

Kundera is a philosopher as I see him (through his work) and has clearly found a medium of disseminating his beliefs through the literary form of fiction. As a practitioner of the craft of fiction writing, his works of non-fiction–The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and the latest (published in 2010) Encounter are essays that expound his experiences with literature and how he developed his outlooks as a writer.

These works also bring forward Kundera’s views and beliefs of the novel and its historical background and how it has evolved into an art form. To an extent there is some sense of good advice given to those who may wish to develop newer styles of writing and explore new ways to devise narratives that allow greater freedom for the authorial voice to course the form of the narrative.

Milan Kundera is a literary philosopher who has brought out his views on many issues ranging from art to politics to love, sex and society to the individual and conceptions of reality and rationalism and much more.

In a Kunderian work one is very likely to see that the narrative is not merely constructed to ‘tell the story’ of a given set of characters and the roles they play through a series of dialogues and events.

The essayist mode takes on a significant role that seems to imply that when the writer’s consciousness conceives a story it connects with numerous aspects that provide an understanding of how exactly the story came into being in the writer’s head, and what meanings may be read into the characters and their doings when they are placed in a larger context of aspects such as society, politics history which weaves the larger fabric in which the work will find its place in the literary sphere.

In Immortality the central theme of the novel is immortality which Kundera believes is the obsession of artists and politicians who wish to eternalise their names after their demise.

The use of literary figures like Goethe and Ernest Hemingway as characters in this novel builds stimulating episodes, (especially when Goethe and Hemingway meet in the afterlife) and also brings out much philosophical discussion which is still worded in very mundane sort of easy to approach language. Another noteworthy matter discussed is the concept of ‘Imagology’ which Kundera presents in one chapter of the novel.

The impact of media and commercial advertising in shaping the outlooks and politics of the present age is what Kundera elaborates to the reader relating to how the soviet propaganda machinery replaced Marxist ideology with symbols and signs to create ‘images’ that were meant to ‘represent’ to the masses certain ideals and political goals.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting builds a marked line of philosophical ponderings which finds most of its ground in the author’s own life which is presented as vignettes (and not so much a biography per se) and philosophises much on what the ‘past’ means to him and the characters he builds in the novel who have similar socio-political backgrounds and thereby similar experiences linked to communist oppression in eastern Europe. One of the most memorable lines I came across in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting –“We want to be masters of the future only for the power to control the past.”

Unabashed appropriations

What may be seen as a salient tenet in Kundera’s novels is the ease with which personalities and objects are appropriated for the purpose of the story. Speaking along the conventional forms of novels one finds works of fiction based on historical figures, but rarely is it seen where a historical figure is brought into the present day context and made to act out episodes that play a part in the larger scheme of the novel’s narrative.

In part five (titled Litost) of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Kundera presents the reader with several venerated figures of literature whose diverse nationalities and more importantly the difference in the respective time periods of the existence of each in history would make it impossible (from a point of ‘realism’) for all of them be sitting down together at a Writers Club.

Yet it happens in a tone most naturally as though it could be the most simple of things to happen on a given day. Lermontov, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Voltaire, Goethe are ‘appropriated’ in a very ‘unhistorical’ context for the purpose of the novel’s narrative as they have become intermingled with the storyline of a graduate student whose research for his MA thesis benefits by being invited to the meetings at the Writers Club.

In Immortality the appropriations of Goethe and Hemingway are not in any way for the purpose of a historical novel. The very incongruity such a scenario with conceptions of reality seem to be the very boundaries of imaginative writing that Kundera pushes and does very successfully I believe.

The novel one may suggest, in Kunderian conceptions is an art form that need not necessarily be reined with restrictions of realism. In Slowness the Chevalier who is spoken of having spent a night of sensual pleasure with Madam de T., is described at the end of the novel as walking in the garden of the château (where Kundera with his wife Vera spend a night) and meeting Vincent (another central character who presents another storyline) before each part ways, the former in a chaise and the latter in a motorcycle.

The sheer absurdity of such a scenario would show, if one were to compare these episodes within the context of realism, suggests that Kundera is unabashed in his ways of experimenting with the possibilities of fictionalising events that may possibly offer a ‘rereading’ of historical figures, events and history in general, which in fact is very much an objective of the postmodern movement.

Conversational tone and authorial presence

One does not find a tonal disjointedness in a Kunderian fiction narrative that alters between the story and the essay.

How does Kundera weave a textual narrative that harmoniously blends the ‘essayistic’ with the ‘storytelling’ elements? Looking at the ‘whole’ of a Kunderian novel it is evident that the author constructs the narrative within the realm of the authorial (author’s) ‘voice’, meaning that the ‘tone’ of his fictional narratives take a highly conversational tone.

The reader will find that the author does not ‘hide’ his presence by presenting a text that narrates from the third person or the first person voice of a character; but rather the author presents himself very overtly as the voice that narrates the story to the reader.

The common ground therefore which blends the story with the essay to create a unitary narrative is the author’s own consciousness creating its voice of a speaker who addresses his reader/audience as though he were imagining a conversation with you.

This liveliness in the narrative approach offers a novelty that achieves much the conventional narrative modes may not be able to when looking at what are perhaps the objectives of a Kunderian narrative voice.

A conversationalist approach to storytelling that impresses on the reader of an almost interactive sense build up between the reader and the narrative voice which bares its identity as that of the author himself may be almost an absurdity from the concentional perspective on fiction. Yet it is very much a prominent feature in Immortality, Slowness, and The Book of laughter and Forgetting that defines the essence of the story.

In Immortality the story begins with Kundera narrating how he sees a woman of a somewhat matured vintage at his health club waving in a youthful exuberance to the young lifeguard at the swimming pool, and how it sets off a chain of thoughts that gives rise to create the central character of the novel –Agnes, and even posits himself –Milan Kundera who has dealings with some of the characters in the story.

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting he tells the reader how he sees from his apartment in Paris how the poets in the Writers Club argue amongst themselves. And Slowness is a story narrated as Kundera and his wife Vera go on an excursion to spend a night in an old château where even the conversations he has with his wife are part of the narrative to the extent that Vera even asks him if he is developing a novel?

The presence of the author in the narratives of the three novels referred to in this article all carry the presence of the author in a way much more than signature stylistics in diction and phraseology and such.

The presence of the author is one that crosses the boundaries between fiction and reality (one might even say) to the point the author both plays the role of telling the story to the reader as well as becoming a player in the scenes.

How acceptable are the Kunderian narratives which are structured with the elements that were discussed afore? Can a text which attempts to blur boundaries of genre between essayistic writing and fiction narrative, present characters known in history in contexts that negate the demarcations of time (and space), assigns himself roles in the interplay between characters in the story really qualify as a novel? Kundera has been labelled amongst other things as a ‘dissident writer’.

From a point of political commentary certainly he appears to be one who rebels against oppressive, institutionalisms that injure the spirit of individual liberty.

However on another level perhaps Kundera is a dissident when it comes to the prevalent norms and forms of fiction narrative styles? Perhaps the technique he devises is the only way to reach a reader to convey what he has to communicate through the art of the novel.

Certainly his boldness of technique in allowing himself liberties that may make him seem utterly ridiculous have show how the primacy of the consciousness of a writer becomes very much the ground that manifests itself unselfconsciously as a narrative voice with its own distinct identity.