Although the mechanization of life by a deity is not a new idea, in Kundera's hands it takes on a more modern and original meaning as he describes life as a program in which specific events happen according to "a play of permutations and combinations." Human experiences are differentiated by the uniqueness of the face--the "serial number"--that determines one's fate. Kundera's notion of fate is intimately connected with another value he associates with modernity: imagology over ideology.
The conception of fate and its implication of faith as dispensable to the self are running themes in Immortality. Kundera clearly perceives modern times, with its emphasis on the secular, as lacking in the more natural, abstract notions of God which characterized the past. Agnes's belief that "God's eye has been replaced by a camera," is key to the concept of imagology as well as Kundera's anti-religious stance on the world.
Kundera, however, while longing for systems and mechanisms to explain the mystery of life, ultimately seems to find them unfulfilling. Agnes's struggle to escape life is symbolic of Kundera and "Everyman's" struggle to survive. Agnes is the prime example that totally rational views do not lead to inner peace.
Laura, who lives by mystical means, is better able to survive than is Agnes. Upon meeting Paul for the first time she hears "an invisible someone saying to her, 'There is a man! A real man. The only man. No other exists.'" This passage ties into Kundera's conception of fate. For Laura, this fate is determined by some mysterious, foreboding power. Kundera later affirms his belief in fate in the resolution of Laura's story.
Interestingly, Laura is more connected with her body than with her soul. She, like her historical counterpart, Bettina, strives to attain immortality. Kundera clearly identifies "immortality" as independent of the religious ideas of an "immortal soul." Instead, it is a "different, quite earthly immortality of those who after their death remain in the memory of posterity." This kind of immortality serves as a distraction from death, giving humans the illusion that they can control something not only in their lives, but beyond it. Bettina's desire for immortality in intimately tied with history as it is "an incarnation of God." Kundera assigns her mystical qualities and gestures in her quest to "enter into direct, personal contact," with this God. He describes her feelings for Goethe as being "planted in her heart" by "somebody above both Goethe and herself; if not God, then at least one of those angels...a divine hand."
The veneration of the soul is an enduring Kunderian motif. In the rational systems he creates throughout this novel, he seems to be fighting emotions with reason and logic. The battle between Laura and Brigitte (an ardent adherent to logic, herself, as evidenced by her distaste for arbitrary German grammar) over music (Laura's emotional Mahler versus Brigitte's loud and soulless rock) symbolizes the age-old struggle between emotion and reason. To Kundera, music is "a pump for inflating the soul," capable of achieving "time out of time." Kundera openly acknowledges this human struggle through Goethe, when he tells Hemingway, "To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly."
The inadequacy of logical systems to depict human life culminates in the chapter regarding Rubens. Having abandoned his former linear view of time in The Joke, Kundera now opts for a circular view represented by the "Dial of Life." The culminating phase in the systematic story of physical love of Rubens life, like the relationship between humans and immortality, is a "mystical period." It is during this mystical period that Rubens is most content and that his relationship with Agnes becomes an enduring one. This is, perhaps, Kundera's strongest hidden statement: Agnes, in opposing the arbitrary fate imposed on her, is unable to survive in the earthly world that Laura, her polar opposite, thrives in; yet, through her deeper contact with spirituality, she represents a much more enduring truth, the culmination of Kundera's mystical thread.
Through the delicate craft of Immortality, Kundera has shown that "the really important things are those which are hidden from the eyes."
Some people dont's like this book, they say that it's pretentious. If you start reading this book expecting a phylosophical lecture, surely you will be dissapointed. Kundera just takes normal everyday thoughts (that can go through the minds of everyone of us, nothing so special), does a little analysis of them and puts it into paper using his talent of expressing thoughts into written words. The result: see the title of this review. This makes me think of another possible analogy: Inmortality to literature as Seinfeld to TV sitcoms. Clever, entertaining and of great quality. However, i want to enfatize that this book is not superficial at all, it is profund and very interesting.
For me "Inmortality" is better than "unbearable lightness of being" (i loved both). Kundera himself wrote somewhere in this book that he made a mistake with the titles, that this one should have been name "the unbearable...." (really)
Reading this book is like having a great conversation. Kundera's best.
