Of fidelity and betrayal

By Dilshan Boange

‘Fidelity’ would seem a poetic anomaly in the present world we live in, a beautiful notion worth romanticising, but distant to the socially prevalent norm, and almost a myth. ‘Betrayal’ would be the point of fidelity’s death, its antithesis. Though generally one would read the words ‘fidelity’ and in juxtaposition to it, ‘betrayal’ within the context of conjugal connotations or committed relationships between lovers, Czech born novelist Milan Kundera propounds a perspective on these two words in his highly acclaimed work The Unbearable Lightness of Being which transcends the common placement attributed to the notions of fidelity and in relation to it, ‘betrayal’.

Milan Kundera

In part three of the novel in the section titled ‘A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words’ Kundera presents a rendering of how these two words may be understood by explicating how two characters, a man named Franz and a woman named Sabina, perceive them subjectively in connection with their respective experiences in life. Franz and Sabina are lovers; he is an academic and she is an artist.

Cemetery

They are in an illicit love affair, and the understanding that each has of these words is not strictly built on the lines of sexuality as the demarcation where transgression from fidelity to ‘infidelity’ through betrayal is clearly visible. Rather it is an emotional landscape that Kundera presents related to the ‘world of experience’ each connects with and is shaped by.

Firstly, the author describes what fidelity means to Franz and how it came to be assigned its values and influence his life and perceptions. Franz’s conception of fidelity is rooted in his affections to his mother and how being a companion to her in her times of grief and cherishing her memory constituted the foundation of what he understands as fidelity. Kundera narrates it.

“He loved her from the time he was a child until the time he accompanied her to the cemetery; he loved her in his memories as well. That is what made him feel that fidelity deserved pride of place among the virtues: fidelity gave a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.” (p.86-87).

It appears that to Franz, the root of fidelity is of a filial basis. It is this filial love and devotion which forms his outlook of what fidelity could mean and be sourced it to his world of experience. When Kundera speaks of a ‘unity’ being the outcome or function of fidelity as a result of being in one’s life, it appears that ‘fidelity’ acts as an adhesive that instils and maintains cohesion in one’s life.

In that sense, fidelity is a ‘cement’ that holds a relationship, be they with a physically living person, or even something as metaphysical as a memory. Fidelity cements what would otherwise be estranged in the blink of an eye and renders our conceptions of ourselves in relation to others, as meaningless.

What then of ‘betrayal’? It is arguably ‘transgression’ in the act, given a physical dimension if one were to view it from a point of sexual indiscretion. Yet how does Kundera present a perspective on ‘betrayal’ narrating the lives of Franz and Sabina? While Franz believes that fidelity, based on his subjective understanding and interpretation of it would be charming to his paramour, it turns out to be the very opposite to Sabina. She finds the idea of fidelity unpalatable, and is not enchanted by it. The reason being, what became representations of fidelity to her, in her ‘world of experience’ was highly disagreeable.

Oppressive nature

What fidelity meant to Sabina was of a more oppressive nature which interestingly is also based on filial sentiments. However it is not of a positive nature unlike that of her lover Franz. Observe how Kundera presents the grounding of the term fidelity in Sabina’s world of experience.

“The word ‘fidelity’ reminded her of her father, a small town puritan, who spent his Sundays painting away at canvases of woodland sunsets and roses in vases. Thanks to him, she started drawing as a child. When she was fourteen, she fell in love with a boy of her age. Her father was so frightened that he would not let her out of the house by herself for a year. One day he showed her some Picasso reproductions and made fun of them. If she couldn’t love her fourteen-year – old schoolboy, she could at least love cubism. (p.87)

Thus it is evident that ‘fidelity’ connoted a negativism in Sabina’s mental track based on the oppressiveness she experienced, especially at a point in life when she was awakening a deep emotional aspect of herself. The paternal impositions that restricted her movements stood for ‘fidelity.’ The puritan attitude of her father, she very probably found disagreeable, was a strand in the larger fabric of fidelity. As was the lack of appreciating expressionism beyond the traditional forms, which is very arguably what the scenario with the Picasso reproductions is meant to convey. In this context Picasso’s expressionism would stand for the breaking of orthodoxy, and finding a freedom not allowed by the established order.

The restrictiveness would have been her father’s way of holding fidelity within their folds. To prevent a possible transgression was to be ‘faithful to the old ways,’ and thus the ‘fidelity’ her father had to his ideals was like Franz’s attachment to his mother and after her demise, the memory of her.

Clearly there is a great contrast in the way in which the two have had their conceptions shaped on the meaning of the same word owing to the difference of filial associations that epitomised to each an ethos of ‘fidelity’. And it is through Sabina’s revulsion to ‘fidelity’ that a perspective is brought to the reader on ‘betrayal’.

Conception of betrayal

Firstly, in the section of the novel that is discussed in this article, Kundera says that Sabina was “more charmed” by the notion of ‘betrayal’ than by fidelity. And the author enters the line of discussion on expounding Sabina’s conception of betrayal by saying that when she left her parental home for Prague she was euphoric that she could then betray her home. This feeling of wanting to betray the establishment and thereby derive some satisfaction is clearly rooted in the desire for ‘sweet revenge’. The young girl who felt oppressed and deprived of pursuing her heart’s desires feels there would be gratification for blatantly and unapologetically transgressing the borders that were imposed by ‘fidelity’.Kundera provides us a brief theorem on ‘betrayal’ by looking at what it means at a conventional, mundane understanding and then the subjective perspective of how it is perceived by the likes of Sabina.

Betrayal

From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offence imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking the ranks. Betrayal means breaking the ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.”(p.87) Therefore, in relation to what she understood as ‘fidelity’, ‘betrayal’ would be far more appealing as it would break the bonds imposed by fidelity and allow a sense of liberation by ‘breaking the ranks’ as phrased by Kundera.

The sense of adventure and liberation that was desired by Sabina could not be found in what would probably be seen as ‘the confines’ of fidelity. And so she was not enchanted by Franz’s professing of fidelity, for it was what ‘betrayal’ had allowed her in life, as an artist who had a rebellious leaning in her that she found fulfilling. She found her rebelliousness an alluring trait in herself. However this does not say that through ‘betrayal’ Sabina found the satisfaction she was longing for.

After the death of her mother, Sabina’s receives news that her father had taken his life out of grief, only a matter of days after the funeral. It is at this point that she questions her stance on fidelity and betrayal from a point of emotion driven contemplation.

Pangs of conscience

“Suddenly she felt the pangs of conscience: was it really so terrible that her father had painted vases filled with roses and hated Picasso? Was it really so reprehensible that he was afraid of his fourteen-year-old daughter’s coming home pregnant? Was it really so laughable that he could not go on living without his wife?” (p.88)

This reviewing of her beliefs incited by the loss of the father shows Sabina’s latent fidelity to her father from a point of filial affection despite his restrictiveness in her youth which impelled her to seek joy through betrayal. And the father’s suicide can be viewed as indicative of his fidelity to his wife, without whom his life would probably seem to lack unity and cohesion. The effect this dilemma causes Sabina to seek betrayal once more, this time of what she had founded for herself.

“And again she felt a longing to betray: betray her own betrayal. She told her husband (whom she now considered a difficult drunk rather than an eccentric) that she was leaving him.” (p.88) In such a case as what Kundera presents in the afore lines, it seems evident that out of guilt and remorse Sabina now believes that betraying herself will punish her the same way she believed she exacted revenge from her father through ‘betrayal’.

It is probable that through such means she seeks to repair the damage done and rekindle fidelity. Her second betrayal may have seemed to her a manifestation of fidelity. But, it is to the contrary that Kundera views the actions of the impetuous Sabina.

“The life of a divorcee painter did not in the least resemble the life of the parents she had betrayed.

The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal” (p.88) Thus it is evident that Sabina cannot redeem herself through another act of betrayal, but only deepens her enmeshment in the chain reaction that may in a way binds one to live in a continual betrayal of one’s ideals.

In the context of this discussion it may seem that fidelity poses its share of restrictions and impositions that would be definitive of ‘fidelity’. And the need to oppose this ‘bondage’ to explore beyond the boundary, results in ‘betrayal’ which may be a liberating act.

Yet one must realise that once committed, ‘betrayal’ cannot be undone to restore fidelity. Thus the liberation one may seek from the folds of ‘fidelity’ (as conceived by Sabina) comes at a great cost, which cannot be recovered.