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"When
the poet's mother wondered where the poet had been conceived, there were only
three possibilities to consider: a park bench one night, the apartment of a
friend of the poet's father one afternoon, a romantic spot outside Prague one
morning."
That is how the first page of this smart, witty, and funny
novel begins. I deliberately quote that first paragraph to show that even the
first page of the book has already given us hint that the whole book will be
filled with interesting stories to read.
"Life is Elsewhere," is a novel by famous
Franco-Czech novelist, Milan Kundera. It deals with the story of a poet name
Jaromil. In a nutshell, the story begins with how Jaromil comes into existence
and ends with his death.
Jaromil was brought to life when his mother was a student
at a university. She was a typical of rebellious woman, who found her
upbringing not so pleasant. Thus going to school was her way of rebelling her
family's fate. One day her mother fell into a newly graduate engineer, and had
an intercourse with him outside marriage. She was pregnant. When the young
engineer reacts to the news not quite as what the mother has expected, she
curses every rebellious attempt she had committed. She was hoping that the
lover would take her pregnancy as a good news and they would have a happy life
together, without her rich family. Quite contrary the young engineer suggested
to abort the child which broke her heart even more. At the end, she decided to
abuse her family's power and that worked to get the two to get married. Alas,
love is no longer part of the marriage. The burn of love has been put out by
the father's reaction and also the mother's dareness to make herself pregnant
(as if the young engineer has not contributed to the process.) Making love for
the young engineer is not equal to living with the woman for the rest of his
life. For him at the time, making love is just a part of his sexual journey. As
consequence, the two feel that the other has ruined the other's life.
She disgusts her husband for his reaction to the pregnancy.
To react to this she prefers to think that the son will resemble Apollo, Greek
god whose picture happens to be hanging at her room, not her husband. She
believes with the saying what one's think and feel during the pregnancy is what
the child will eventually become when he or she grows up .
Jaromil was born and mama, that is how this novel prefers
to call the mother, was obsessed with her son. She records every words Jaromil
has uttered. She finds Jaromil's words very poetic. Hence she calls her son a
poet. That obsession is one of the things that this novel has been constructed
with. The mother's obsession, and the mother's possession what bring Jaromil to
his downfall.
When Jaromil was still young, he paint a picture and Mama
takes that as a sign that her son is an artist. Mama praises Jaromil
extensively and makes Jaromil believes he is a great painter. He was deluded
for sometimes that he was one. But life proves that he is not particularly a
great painter, for he is just able to paint one object, an almost sphinx-like
object. And mama, again, takes that talent as her own contribution because she
was thinking about Apollo when she was pregnant with him. It's her secret where
the son gets its inspiration.
Jaromil has grown up, but he still cannot go away for his
mother's shadows. Particularly when it comes to the facial formation. He finds
his face and hair too feminine-like, which he takes as a reason why girls don't
find him attractive. So he tries his best to be as masculine as possible by
doing his hair so differently.
Jaromil's love story doesn't stream so smoothly. His first
actual crush was with a one year older girl than him. They met at a Marxist
group meeting. At this particular time he was trying to fit himself in life in
terms of political choices. He seems to be in agreement with Marxist ideology.
At this meeting he made an interesting argument. It catches a girl's attention,
particularly a girl with eye glasses. They were very close for some times, but
Jaromil's inexperience with woman drives the girl with eye glass away. He does
not know how to consume love and it upsets the girl.
Another time he meets a girl with red hair, who comes from
working class. By this time he was still inexperience but the girl helps him to
explore his sexual life. Now Jaromil turns into a possessive man, just like the
mother, who often treats his girlfriend very badly. He once said that he would
not see her the same again if other men lay a finger on her, not even doctor.
One day, Jaromil was very angry because the girlfriend was
late. Her excuse was that she was meeting her brother who intends to go out of
the country illegally. She lied. But Jaromil has already taken her words very
seriously. As he was a big supporter of the communist, he reported the news to
local police and from then on the girlfriend was arrested. It went on for three
year.
When she was released, she figures that Jaromil had died.
Readers are told that her arrest was partly her fault and I would argue that it
was also the man in his forty's fault who let her lie. Man in his forty is her
other lover. Her deed has caused her family a great trouble. In fact her
brother has not been released yet by the time she was released.
How di Jaromil die? He died of cold or pneumonia. A very
poetic death isn't it? I personally think that what this novel tries to show is
the classy and poetic-sound life of the poets, especially the romantic poets.
Jaromil's personal life is considered very poetic because he lived very short
life, just like the romantic poets, and his romantic obsession with love. I
can't help but think of Robert Browing's dramatic monologue when I read the
part where the narrator describes Jaromil's obsession over the red hair girl.
He once had the thought of strangling the girl while she is sleeping, very
Browing's dramatic monologue like, isn't it?
What's so special about this book:
- Metafiction
There are parts in the novel that
breaks our focus from the fictional realm of the novel, such as in the part six
"The Poet in His Forty" where the narrator tries to tell us the
reasons behind his decision in constructing the story as such. The narrator
also tries to theorize the life the characters are living.
"The first part of this novel encompasses fifteen years
of Jaromil's life, but the fifth part, which is longer, covers barely a year.
In this book, therefore, time flows in a tempo opposite to the tempo of real
life; it slows down."
This is not an analysis of the novel
but part the novel. It's so interesting that the narrator who is supposed to
tell the story but he the narrator also comments on the story.
- A work of literature that provides discussion on literary movement or style
Jaromil is the mouthpiece here. His
status as a poet allows Kundera to employ theoretical preference or the
perspective the characters have about arts are.
".... was no longer at all
convinced that everything he thought and felt was solely his, as if all ideas
had always existed in a definite form and could only be borrowed as from public
library."
"....: for a poem to be a poem
it must be read by someone other than the author; only then can it be proved
that the poem is something more than simply a private diary in code and that it
is capable of living its own life, independent of whoever has written it"
"That there were progress in
the arts, he said, was indisputable: the trends of modern art represented a
total upheaval in a thousand-year evolution; they had finally liberated art of
obligation to propagate political and philosophical ideas and to imitate
reality, and one could even say that modern art was the beginning of true
history of art."
"He referred to Marx's ideas
that until now mandkind had been living its prehistory, and that its true
history only began with the proletarian revolution, which was the transition
from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom…………"
""A revolution is an act
of violence," said Jaromil, "that is well known,and surealism itself
knew very well that old-timers have to be brutally kicked off the stage, but it
didn't suspect that it was one of them"" - Modernist mentality
on Realist movement. Yes, Jaromil is both a modernist and a Marxist.
(see part three no 15)
- Psychology
I would say that there is a sort of
stream of consciousness in this novel but not quite as complicated as in
Woolf's case. He the narrator goes to the character's inner mind but it is
still in a tolerable amount.
The second type of psychology is the
relationship between mother and son. Here the mother is the one who seems to
suffer a mental disorder, since she is very possessive towards the son. She
finds every woman tries to separate Jaromil from her. It's almost like the
mother in D.H Lawrence's "Son and Lovers", in which the mother also
has an over-obsessive feeling on the son.
- Politics
This novel is set in Czech when
communism was first came to the country. Jaromil was part of the crowds who see
communism as a solution for the social and economic gap in society. But the
political tension was not so much discussed. Perhaps we can take girl with red
hair's case as an example. There seems to be imposition of ideology happening
in society at the time. Though Jaromil did take political action in his life,
we can't see where is the narrator's stance on this. But still, politics is a
big part of this novel. In fact the life of the main character, Jaromil, built
up in sequence to the political tension upon which he has live his life.
- Jaromil's life is being compared to other prominent poets such as Shelley, Baudrillard, Rimbaud etc
(see: part four no 18)
Final thought:
This novel is so dear to me. I am so
interested in the novel that talks about writer's life and his or her creative
writing. How he or she comes about to become a writer. What makes this novel
even grander to me is the characters' discussion on literature, arts and
politics. It's the best recipe for my reading, really.
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