Kunderian conception of immortality

By Dilshan BOANGE

Despite all that one achieves either individually or collectively, within one's life time or the entire narrative of human civilisation, man can be defined essentially through one word -'mortal'. It is what effectively differentiates man from what is conceived as divine and eternal. Death, and the erasure from human memory, through the passage of time is painful to man, yet it is the one thing that man is powerless to stop in spite of all the technological conquests accomplished over millennia.

The novel Immortality

It is this concept of mortality and its antithesis -'immortality' which Czech born writer Milan Kundera grapples with in his highly celebrated novel Immortality. Written originally in Czech, this novel is more philosophical than some of his previous works which have more marked overtones of politically themed schema. Kundera develops his thesis in the course of the novel's narrative that alters between different characters (and storylines) who are not always linked through a cohesive spectrum of time and space. While the main plotline in Immortality is based on the character of the woman named Agnes, there are subplots that run a course that doesn't contribute to the direct development of the principal storyline yet is bound thematically; the theme being of course the concept that rings out loud from the one worded title -Immortality.

The freedoms that Kundera has afforded himself in the course of crafting his novel need to be noted for the many boundaries broken in terms of the more conventional form(s) of the novel. And it is this very laxity in conventionalism one may suppose has allowed him to develop a bold technique of story narrative. Kundera's appropriation of historic characters to serve the purposes of his narratives can be noted in more than one of his works, and Immortality is one such example that deftly employs this method of resurrection of historic figures and placing them in scenarios to serve his novel's purpose.

The German playwright and poet Johann von Goethe is considered one of the greatest figures in European art and culture who no doubt occupies an inerasable place. The American Nobel laureate in literature Ernest Hemingway is one of the foremost figures in defining the age of modernist fiction writing who cannot be disregarded in terms of modern literature. Can anyone conceive any possible scenario where these two figures may meet and discuss matters of great philosophical depth in real life? Yet imagine what possible great dialogues could arise were such historic figures, whose lives were wide apart from each other's place in chronology, were to meet? This is the kind of transgressions that Kundera presents in Immortality to build his thesis through dialogues between two colossal figures in the world of art and literature.

Dialogues of Goethe and Hemingway

The conversations of Goethe and Hemingway take place in the afterlife and are in my opinion one of the most central elements that expound the author's conceptions of immortality spoken through two persons whose legacy is virtually immortal.

The diverse narrative of storylines in the novel bring out subtle indications of how the author presents his notions of what elements of a person would remain unaffected by the ravages of time, yet none make these conceptions as pronouncedly felt and delivered as the storyline that deals with the last phase of Goethe's life when his edification is being planned by his townsmen which runs alongside the love affair the great poet embarks on with a young woman by the name of Bettina whose advances were for the purpose of gaining some semblance of immortality herself via Goethe. It is this storyline that progresses to the afterlife of Goethe who presents philosophical dialogues with the great American novelist Hemingway.

A number of tenets are presented through what are the sentiments of artists who may become daunted (after a certain point) of society's claim over them even once they are no more amongst the living. Hemingway confides in Goethe how disturbed he is over the untruths that are being said of him in the world and in effect rewriting his life through books being written about him. And the obvious inability of Hemingway to set the 'record straight' being in the afterlife, becomes a matter that is not only infuriating but also oppressive. The judgmental ways of the world over his image, his reputation, his legacy, haunts him. Goethe having listened to Hemingway's short outburst speaks as a pacifier and explains to Hemingway that is the nature of 'immortality' and says -"Immortality means eternal trial."

Becoming possessed by the public

When Hemingway objects to the way in which this eternal trial that is going on in the world of the living seems to have no fair judge but a "narrow-minded school teacher with a rod in her hand" Goethe points out that as the unfortunate state of immortality, which has no fair judgment. Goethe too adds to the conversation by confiding in Hemingway his own experience of being made fearful of the judgmental gazes of society, by narrating a dream he had once had. In it he says he was performing the role of a puppeteer presenting a puppet theatre rendition of his famed play Faust. What is remarkable in this scenario is that Goethe says the audience had at one point vacated their seats and was later seen at the back of the stage inquisitively staring at Goethe and his movements and seemed utterly disinterested about the play.

Then the crowd had begun following him home and was staring at him through the window to his room with their faces pressed against the glass. The actions sound very much like fanfare that had obviously turned bothersome and evidently unnerving. The lesson this story teaches us is that the characters of Goethe and Hemingway (who vehemently confesses in the conversations that he did not seek 'immortality') desired their works, creations, to be appreciated but not for themselves to become the 'objectified' and be made the curiosities of a public that can at times become mercilessly censorious.

Clearly they are artists who sought appreciation for their works and not glorification of them which would be the case of modern day commercialization related to art -the artists is 'marketed' as an object of public attention just as much as the work of art!

The price of 'immortality'

Goethe explains to Hemingway that the price he has been made to pay for writing so many books is 'immortality'. It is in effect becoming a victim of one's own fame where the ownership of how one's identity is crafted in the eyes of the public tends to be taken well out of the hands of the artist and takes on a socially controlled scheme. In the course of the conversations between Goethe and Hemingway one of the chief truths about human nature is revealed by Goethe as man not knowing how to be 'mortal'.

This may come as somewhat ironic seeing as hot it is after all one of the most basic definitive aspects of the being human. The crux of the argument lies in what the novel's narrative expounds in the course of its main plot and subplots, which is man's obsession to perpetuate himself in the memory of people to ensure something of himself will continue once the physical being is no more.

Kundera goes on to say that it is artists and politicians who are obsessed with the need to edify themselves in some way, which is a pursuit of 'immortality'. What is the price of seeking immortality? The novel appears to suggest that involuntary surrender of one's self to the great continuum of human memory seems a plight that is unavoidable to ones such as Goethe and Hemingway. And society after taking possession of such a person's 'image' will make it an object of marvel and wonder and thereby seek to (in time) shape it in newer moulds to keep it public attention worthy -an object to be handled.

Perhaps that is the price of immortality as Kundera seems to suggest. It is the state of losing the right to one's self.

And I cannot help but feel that some notion of this advocacy must have been felt by the great European film maker Ingmar Bergman who once said in an documentary interview that he wished, like the builders of the great European cathedrals (whose names have been lost to history though their creations continue to marvel generations) he too could have remained in anonymity.