Milan Kundera

A New York Times Notable Book Irena and Josef meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match."

A Novel

Ignorance

“So who've you got to talk with? Who thinks the way you do?" 

I'd forgotten who they had been; they weren't interested in who I'd become.

"…but I feel let down: there is no ecstasy in our encounters. It terrifies me to imagine our life together." And farther along: it's so tiring, faithfulness that does not spring fromn true passion."

When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their neanings. The fact that today's boyfriend bears a strange resenmblance to yesterday's makes him even more exceptional, even more original, and she believes that he is mysteriously predestined for her.

You told me love was only about bodies. Dear girl, you would run off in a minute if a man told you he was only interested in your body. And you would come to understand the dreadful sensation of loneliness.

something about trying to rekindle old friendships only to find out you’ve walked different paths, lived different lives, speaks so strongly to me. the ignorance of irena to assume they would like wine because of her experiences, only to find out they are simple, beer drinkers.

She leafed through her old address books, lingering over halt-forgotten names; then she reserved a room at a restaurant. On a long table against the wall, alongside platters of petits fours, twelve bottles stood in neat rows. In Bohemia people don't drink good wine, and there is no custom of laying down vintage bottlings. She bought this old Bordeaux with all the greater pleasure: to surprise her guests, to make a party for them, to regain their friendship. She came close to ruining it all. Awkwardly her friends eye the bottles until one of them, full of confidence and proud of her plain-and-simple style, declares her preference for beer. Emboldened anew by this outspokenness , the others go along and the beer lover calls the waiter. Irena blames herself for having committed an act of poor taste with her case of Bordeaux, for thoughtlessly underscoring everything that stands between them: her long absence from the country, her foreigner's ways, her wealth….Rejecting the wine was rejecting her. 

, and their own verb; the most moving Czech expression of love: 

 ("I yearn for you", "I'm nostalgic for you", "I cannot bear the pain of your absence.").

In that etymological light, nostalgia seems like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you.

. Algos means "suffering". So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Magda 

And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions.

The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

michaela bakajsova

Hudba sa stala obyčajným hlukom,hlukom medzi inými hlukmi.

Ale tí, ktorí sa nestretávajú so Svojimi krajanmi, ako Irena a Odyseus, sú nevyhnutne postihnutí amnéziou. Čím je ich nostalgia silnejšia, tým väčšmi sa z nej spomienky vytrácajú. Čím väČšmi Odyseus prahol po domove, tým väčšmi naň zabúdal. Lebo nostalgia nezlepšuje činnost pamäti, neprebúdza spomienky, vystačí si sama so sebou, s vlastnou emóciou, celkom zaujatá jediným utrpením.

Všetky predpovede sa mýlia, to je jedna z výnimočných istôt, ktorú človek dostal do vienka. Ale ak sa mýlia, hovoria pravdu o tých, ktorí ich oznamujú, nie o ich budúcnosti, ale o ich prítomnom čase. 

Dimitris Papastergiou

So, next book of Kundera and I'm waiting to not like it as much as his classic and most known one, and of course he did it again, it's a page-turner, I don't even like this kind of genre, and that pretty much is saying how good of a writer Kundera is.

The whole analyzation of the Odyssey every now and then was just so good to read.

Recommended!

i read this while in prague and it was a core memory.

I enjoyed this, but I think I potentially read it too quickly and in too many small parts. I'd like to go back and read it in a couple of sittings, but more slowly. 

Doug Belshaw

Claudia

real rating: 3.5/5

ah kundera what magic you do with your writing; so conversational, yet so packed with so many detailed, poignant observations of the emigre experience and communist prague. i really wish i could have rated this higher but the pace really went down after the midway point + wish he’d developed irena/josef’s relationship more. nonetheless, this is a title that’ll stick with me + many observations in here that i’ll come back to for years to come.

Ignorance A Novel

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