Soviet Kitsch, Regina Spektor, & the Unbearable Lightness of Being

Just finished reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I felt like praising the book by giving a short write-up. Because of the 50-peso book bought at Booksale, I became familiar with some concepts in philosophy and religion. 

Here are the ideas I’ve learned from the book:

·         1.)  Nietzsche’s argument of eternal return that everything recurs once we experienced it and that the recurrence itself recurs and ad infinitum! Das Schweste Gewitch (the great burden), as Nietzche puts it.

·        2.)  the last movement of Beethoven’s last quartet wherein he inscribed “Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es Muss sein!” (Must it be? It must be! It must be!). I thought that every time I’d be caught making major difficult decisions, I might as well just remember to utter these phrases.

·        3.)  how the character Tomas used the story of Oedipus to criticize Czech communists. Communists claimed they didn't know what they were doing and thought that this absolved them of their guilt over the atrocities they’ve done to the people. But unlike them, Oedipus held himself responsible for his action and punished himself to suffer in the end.

·       4.)   the rather funny idea of shit in religious discourse: does God have intestines? did Adam emptied his bowel on Eden? did they have intercourse in paradise? Lol. Or as Kundera puts it, “Either/or: either man was created in God’s image – and God has intestines – or God lacks intestines and man is not like Him."

The best chapter for me in the book was Part 6: The Grand March. I loved how Kundera defined the word kitsch as “the absolute denial of shit” as quoted in these lines:

“Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

From reading this chapter about kitsch, I now understand why Regina Spektor named her album as Soviet Kitsch. Like Sabina in the story, Regina moved to America wanting to escape kitsch – to hide the fact that she comes from the former Soviet Union. She perhaps feared that people might ‘over sensationalize’ her struggle as an artist persecuted back home. But the more rational explanation would be Regina Spektor’s approval of Kundera’s definition of soviet kitsch as “the vacuous aesthetics of communism".

I had the ‘eureka moment’ when I read that part because it was overwhelming to know that your favorite musician actually read the exact same book you’re reading and you realized that this may be the reason why you understood her way of thinking.

Lastly, I thought that the book Soviet Kitsch had a really beautiful ending. I was moved at how the couple, Tomas & Sabina, (now old) put their dog to "sleep" also because of old age.  This is a beautiful passage from the book:

"She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness was content."

It was perfect, the book's ending.. as when the couple was about to sleep, "a large nocturnal butterfly began circling around the room". Wow what beautiful read. 


(For more information about Regina Spektor's take on Soviet Kitsch, visit this link.) 

30 minute poem written inside XU library

Palm Trees

To be swayed by the wind
and yet remain standing --
your grace is mending

my thoughts: how I have legs
of those size but are plagued
to take a step, to go
with the flow of gushing air

That invisible push
you resist from the roots 
and you grip the earth
without mashing its crust.

My world is made of dust
and the wind sings the sound
about us on the ground

blown to wander, lost
and without roots.

First Stanza of an Unfinished Poem

Wrote this "poem" after I first got 70% of my teaching salary. I felt it's not yet done... or is it? I don't know.

In my Wallet

A pen that marks blood and love

to lined yellow surfaces

is crushing my paper bills

like stacked leaves lying below

the school pavement, creeping

for the color of the soil.

Haiku Speech.

Last night, I attended a culmination activity for Sulat Dula 2 -- a playwriting workshop held at Xavier University. I was there to support kapwa Davaowenyos and former Davao Writers Workshop Fellows Hanna (from Ateneo de Davao) and Heny (from UP-Mindanao).

Anyhow, during the activity, one of the panelists Ametta Taguchi (Palanca Awardee for full length play) gave a short yet memorable message to all writers. She said:

"Love to write.
Write to Love.
Love".

It was like listening to a short yet meaningful haiku speech. ^_^ (Bow.)

Within and Without.

Because sleep did not serve its purpose last night, I sought refuge in our old shelf. I looked at what was left there. My old books in order: Twain, Maugham, Wilde, Baker, Gogol, Sartre, Kafka, Miller, Austen, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Walker .. side by side with Japanese dictionaries, Spanish - English books, Dansk-Engelsk, Engelsk-Dansk, and my old, old Thesaurus.

I did not pick out any one of them. Instead, I stared blankly at a pocketbook of short stories. I freed it out from the dusty shelf. I started reading in random.

Knut Hamsun's "The Call of Life" about a young man wandering on the dark streets of Copenhagen where he met and made out with a woman who had just been widowed. 

"A man marries. His wife is thirty years younger than he. He contracts a lingering illness. One fair day he dies. And the young widow breathes a sigh of relief"

Ivan Bunin's "Sunstroke" about a fleeting romantic encounter of a lieutenant and a married woman on a ship.

"The breeze had died down, the room was stuffy and dry, as in a wind furnace... And he remembered yesterday and this morning precisely as if they had been ten years ago."

Johannes V. Jensen's "Lost Forests" about the relationship between the owner and his slave who sought freedom in the forest. 

"In such wise the slave's spirit was deepened. As his longing brought infinity into time, so his world became infinite, and his thoughts boundless. Every evening the slave  stared thoughtfully into the distant west, and each sunset brought more and more depth into his soul."

Then there's Herman Hesse. Oh yes, how could I forget. After many years, I reread one of my favorite stories: "Within and Without". 

"There, in Erwin's beautiful script, he read the words: 'Nothing is without, nothing is within; for what is without is within'."

That  phrase caught me anew. Nothing is without, nothing is within; for what is without is within. I lingered at my favorite line, repeating it over and over. Finally, I acquired new understanding of the phrase which I found in the words of the character named Frederick:

"'Take this with you as my parting gift. When this thing that I am now placing in your hands ceases to be outside you and is within you, come to me again! If it remains outside you, the way it is now, then this parting of yours from me shall also be done forever!'" 

It was Hesse who once said, "There is no reality except the one contained within us". Very true. My life is my reality. What I am searching for is already within me.  I tried to alter that once... failed as I might... and as fleeting as it was...  within and without ---

there's love, I carry on.