immortal

L'immortalité

People hope for immortality, but ignore the fact that immortality only makes sense when it is accompanied by death.
The hustle and bustle of life, the trap of self, the desire for immortality—a path of ever-shifting scenery. "Immortality" is Milan Kundera's masterpiece and a prime example of his musical novel. It tells three alternating stories: the first follows Agnes, a middle-aged woman living in Paris whose home is in Switzerland, as she resolves to break away from the mundane grind of her daily life and the tangled web of her past, preparing for a life of solitude; the second follows the relationship between the aging poet Goethe and his young lover Bettina; and the third, the dissolute life of a man nicknamed Rubens. These three stories, interwoven into one, evoke themes: self, homeland, happiness, freedom, necessity and contingency, greater immortality and lesser immortality, romance and debauchery, image, youth, and the eternal feminine cult.
Immortality is Kundera's last Czech-language novel, a masterpiece of his novelistic artistry. Kundera exhausts "all possibilities of his own form," "setting himself on an unexpected path, with changes in form as drastic as those in language." Immortality boasts a multi-pronged plot, with suspense, circuitous twists and turns, and a musical structure that emphasizes counterpoint, variation, and polyphony, offering further artistic value.
★ "Immortality" is rich in content and huge in capacity. The three story lines of Agnes's escape, Bettina's New Year's love, and Rubens' pursuit of women can be told separately or read in connection with each other.
★ When reading Kundera's "Immortality", one can think of Maugham's "The Painted Veil", because it is also about the difficulties of love and marriage, and about the spiritual awakening of women; when reading "Immortality", one can also think of Westover's "Fly to Your Mountain Like a Bird", because it is also about the original family, about self-salvation and self-growth.

2022-09-01

上海译文出版社

469

9787532789900