Dennis H. Pulido
CZECHOSLOVAKIAN EXODUS:
An Archetypal Criticism of the Novel "Unbearable Lightness of Being"
by Nobel-Prize Winner Milan Kundera
In the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament is found the story of Moses and the Israelites. He liberated them from their captivity in Egypt and took them to the Promised Land of Canaan where Yahweh told Abraham that He will make his descendants as numerous as the stars on a moonless night.
A land flowing with milk and honey. That was how Canaan was described. The promised land.
But Canaan is a thousand miles away from the land of Goshen in Egypt. In order to get there Moses and the Israelites had to cross deserts, rivers, mountain ranges, and the Red Sea. The journey was not, as the cliche goes, "a walk in the park." It was a journey of epic proportions. It was a journey of a nation. It was a journey to freedom.
This archetypal story parallels the plot of the novel "Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera. If this is so, who is the parallel of Moses and who is/are the parallel of the Israelites?
"He had come to feel an explicable love for this all but complete stranger; she seemed a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed."
Part I, Chapter 3
That is how the omniscient narrator of the novel described the feeling of Tomas about the arrival of Tereza in his life. Tereza was compared to the child Moses who was the son of a Jewish woman who sent a basket that contained the infant Moses with the hope that someone will be able to raise him because during that time, male Israelite babies were killed. The princess of Egypt found Moses and she raised him like he was her own child. Tereza is the Moses in Tomas life.
On the other hand, Tomas was like the Israelites who were the servants and slaves of the Egyptians, because he is a slave of his libido. He is a promiscuous doctor in the city of Prague. Most of his female patients are also his sex partners. He even follows a rule for his "erotic friendships", the rule of threes, wherein he sees a woman for three consecutive days then never again or he maintains "relations over the years" but makes rendezvous three weeks apart. He finds his raison d’être in his affairs with other women. He was truly a slave of his libido!
After years of voluntary slavery, Moses came to the lives of the Israelites and told them that Yahweh sent him to liberate them and to take them to the Promised Land. It is perfectly logical to assume that his statement was not well received because the journey will require them to leave the comforts of their present homes, to travel a thousand miles of unknown terrain, to suffer the hardships of desert life, and to start their life again from scratch. Who in his equilibrium state of mind will participate in an arduous undertaking like that?
It was the same with Tomas. Tereza’s arrival in his life is like Moses to that of the Israelites. A drastic change is necessary, a leap into the unknown. From a life of promiscuity he would have to lead a life of fidelity. No more "erotic friendships" only Tereza’s. In Part One of the novel, the narrator described the adjustments he made.
"He never spent the night with the others. It was easy enough if he was at their place: he could leave whenever he pleased. It was worse when they were at his and he had to explain that come midnight he would have to drive them home because he was an insomniac and found it impossible to to fall asleep in close proximity to another person. Though it was not far from the truth, he never dared tell them the whole truth: after making love he had an uncontrollable craving to be by himself; waking in the middle of the night at the side of an alien body was distasteful to him, rising in the morning with an intruder repellent; he had no desire to be overheard brushing his teeth in the bathroom, nor was he enticed by the thought of an intimate breakfast."
Part I, Chapter 6
The exodus of the Israelites took them from Egypt, across the Red Sea, through the Sinai Peninsula and finally to Canaan. They traveled from one country to another, from a world of slavery to a world of freedom.
In the same manner Tomas and Tereza traveled from one place to another, from a communist country (Russia-occupied Czechoslovakia) to a democratic one (Switzerland). When the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, the couple decided to migrate to Zurich in Switzerland. There they found freedom from the oppressions that the Russians were enforcing on the Czechs. But their journey did not end there. Tereza returned to Prague and Tomas followed afterwards. They lived for a few years in the city and when the rules enforced by the Russians became unbearable for them, they migrated to the country and they lived there until they meet an accident that cost them their lives.
One of the strongest points of similarity between Moses and the Israelites, and Tomas and Tereza is their relationship to each other. Throughout those forty years of traveling in the desert, Moses and the Israelites have developed a love-hate relationship that is unique to them. Moses gave the Israelites commandments and rules that they have to follow so that they will not leave the grace of God. But what did the Israelites do? Every time they had an opportunity, they would break a rule and they would turn away from God. Moses will get angry, very angry! For example, with the first commandment "You shall have no other gods besides Me," when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai he saw the Israelites worshipping a golden calf! He shattered the tablets where the commandments were written, pulverized the golden calf and dispersed it into the river and made the people drink from that river. But despite the fact that the Israelites aroused the anger of Moses very often, he did not leave them. He remained with the Israelites until they reached the Promised Land. He was the faithful lover to an unfaithful people.
On the other hand, Tereza was the faithful lover to an unfaithful Tomas. Tereza knew right from the start that Tomas was a promiscuous man. This was evident in the dream that she had.
"I was at a large indoor swimming pool. There were about twenty of us. All women. We were naked and had to march around the pool. There was a basket hanging from the ceiling and a man standing in the basket. The man wore a broad-brimmed hat shading his face, but I could see it was you. You kept giving us orders. Shouting at us. We had to sing as we marched, sing and do kneebends. If one of us did a bad kneebend, you would shoot her with a pistol and she would fall dead into the pool. Which made everybody laugh and sing even louder. You never took your eyes off us, and the minute we did something wrong, you would shoot. The pool was full of corpses floating just below the surface. And I knew I lacked the strength to do the next kneebend and you were going to shoot me!"
Part I, Chapter 8
She knows that she is not the only woman in Tomas’ life and consequently she has to live with that fact. And she did. Even though Tomas had numerous affairs with other women while he and Tereza were living together, Tereza remained loyal to him. The love that Tereza felt for Tomas overruled the hate that his numerous affairs brought to her. They traveled together from Prague to Zurich, then back to Prague, and finally to the Czech countryside. Tereza’s loyalty to Tomas cannot be doubted. Though another man tempted her in Part Four, she still returned to Tomas and lived with him. The incident aroused feelings of abhorrence inside Tereza. What she did made her indignantly guilty inside.
Finally after forty years of travelling in the desert the Israelites resigned themselves to their fate, that they will find their own Promised Land and that things will be better. And they did. God delivered Canaan to them and it became their home, their nation.
The same resignation happened to the relationship between Tomas and Tereza.
"Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Tereza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that begun circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below."
Part 7, Chapter 7