Laughable loves

Laughable loves (in Czech: Směšné lásky ) is a collection of seven news of Milan Kundera written between 1959 and 1968, that is to say before and during the drafting of its first novel, the Joke . Of Czech expression , it was written in Bohemia. The collection is published in 1970 on a translation of François Kérel, this one is re-examined by the author for the edition of 1986.

The writing and topics

It is often recognized that this collection is “the starting point of all the romantic company of Milan Kundera”. Indeed, the main themes, even theses, developed in the novels of Kundera are approached here. Risibles loves would constitute a kind of laboratory for its first novels.

It is also at the time of the writing of the collection and in particular from the first news, Nobody will laugh , which the vocation comes from the writer, he declares with the journalist Lois Oppenheim: “Until the thirty years age, I wrote several things: music, especially, but also of poetry and even a play. I worked in several different directions - seeking my voice, my style and seeking me myself. With the first account of Laughable loves (I wrote it in 1959), I had the certainty of " to be to me trouvé". I became prosator, novelist, and I am not anything else”

The main themes are the Amour and the Fidélité, the Identité, the to be and the Paraître, etc, all the broad topics suitable for Kundera. The author wants to throw a glance " lucid and désabusé" on the company, like it specifies it in the betrayed Wills : “the only thing that I wished then deeply, greedily, it was a lucid and disillusioned glance. I finally found it in the art of the novel. This is why to be a novelist was for me more than to practice a " littéraire" kind; among others; it was an attitude, a wisdom, a position. ” Kundera draws up a disillusioned portrait of the erotism. The characters are in shift compared to the comic and light situations in which they are plunged and the serious one with which they approach these situations.

The collection

The collection has a coherence, it is of a structure complexes and balanced and the interest of work does not lie exclusively in the fact that it is an early work. François Ricard will say qu'" besides; one hardly noticed at which point this book is built, at which point his composition is at the same time balanced and complex

François Ricard establishes an analysis of the structure of work in triangle, of ABC type.

the news is symmetrical, thus, in the first and last news, Nobody will laugh and Edouard and God , the two characters are vis-a-vis a world where the laughter is not allowed, whereas they discover the comic one of their situation.
the second and sixth news, the apple of gold of the eternal desire and Doctor Havel twenty years later , present two Don Juan, i.e., according to the definition that in fact Kundera, two characters who attach more importance to the play of the seduction than to the final act.
the third and fifth news, the play of hitch-hiking and That old deaths yield the place to young deaths, give an account of the erotic meeting of a couple on bottom of illusion, with an sex act with half caused, half agreed.
This construction emphasizes the new power station, the conference , which is also the most segmented longest news and. They are mainly dialogs concerning the evoked topics, as if this news could have been the account enchasing the remainder. But Kundera decides to make the heart of work of it, the news becomes the keystone of the account then, giving its coherence to the collection.

Nobody will laugh

An assistant who writes some articles in a review of art refuses to write a note on the work of certain Mr. Zaturecky, work which it finds extremely bad besides. This one insists during several weeks, the character, exceeded, shows it to have slept with his/her partner. Thinking of being disencumbered about it, it is made show calumny.

“ We cross the present the bandaged eyes. At most can we have a presentiment of and guess what we are in the moment of living. Later only, as is untied the stringcourse and that we examine the past, we realize of what we lived and include/understand we feel ”.

“ According to the way in which one presents it, the past of any among us can as well become the biography of a Head of beloved State as the biography of a criminal ”.

“ It still took me a moment to understand that my history (in spite of icy silence which surrounded me) is not tragic kind, but rather comic. What brought a kind of consolation to me”.

The gold apple of the eternal desire

In one transfered in the car, Martin explains to the narrator the bases of the dredger, using practical applications.

“ a too burning faith is worst allies. As soon as one takes a thing with the letter, the faith pushes this thing with the absurdity ”.

Play of hitch-hiking

A couple invents an erotic scenario in which the man plays a motorist and the woman a hitch-hiker. The sex act will become an obviousness, not that it wanted there of each partner, but because the scenario can be concluded only with this act, " love without feeling and amour".

“ In the play one is not free, for the player the play is a trap ”.

The conference

The news is strongly distinguished from the others because it resembles a play, with a light comedy. 5 characters are brought together in the staff waiting room of a hospital to discuss with joke the love. The action, which characterizes the other news, leaves room to the comments.

“ the erotism is not only desire of the body, but, in an equal measurement, desire of honor. A partner that we had, who holds with us and who loves us, becomes our mirror, it is the measurement of our importance and our merit ”.

“ If one were responsible that things which one is aware, the imbeciles would be exonerated in advance of any fault. the man is held to know. The man is responsible for his ignorance. Ignorance is a fault ”.

“ Uriner in nature is a religious rite by which we promise with the ground to go back there, one day, entire ”.

That old deaths yield the place to young deaths

A man meets a woman whom he had not seen for fifteen years. He was in love with her, but she aged. He will be pulled about between the intense desire which he had fifteen years before and the current old age of the woman.

“ all the value of the human being is due to this faculty to be exceeded, to be apart from oneself, to be in others and for others ”.

Doctor Havel twenty years later

Doctor Havel, whom one had already seen in the conference , old and is married with a young actress. He must make a cure in an establishment of province for health issues. There, a young person to defer who carries a certain admiration to him seeks to interview it.

“'' it was excessively talkative, which could pass for a painful mania, but also for a happy provision which made it possible its partner to be given up with his own thoughts without risk to be surprised ”.

Edouard and God

The news is anchored in incipient socialist Czechoslovakia. Edouard, in love with a girl very believing, does not perceive immediately that the belief or the not-belief as a God is something of very serious. To pick up the young girl, it starts to play the insane one of God. That is rather dangerous in communist Czechoslovakia and he is noticed by the director, then by the caretaker of the school in which he is teacher, he then is convened and questioned on his religious convictions. He then denies to be believer. In conclusion, the principal and Edouard envisage to see themselves from time to time, more especially as it has sights on him. The style can make think of Jacques the fatalist of Denis Diderot.

“ it made the deal of its fellow-citizens who, as each one knows, adore the martyrs, because those confirm them in their soft inaction in their showing that the life offers only one alternative: to be delivered to the torturer or to obey ”.

“ it is always what occurs in the life: one thinks to play his part in a certain part, and one does not suspect that you were discreetly changed the decorations, so that one must, without suspecting it, to occur in another spectacle ”.

“ Suppose that you meetings insane which affirms that it is a fish and that we all are of fish. Will you dispute with him? Will you strip yourself in front of him to show him that you do not have fins? Will you say to him opposite what you think? " His/her brother keep silent himself, and Edouard continued: " If you told him only the truth, that what you really think of him, that would like to say that you agree to have a serious discussion with insane and that you are yourself insane. It is exactly the same thing with the world which surrounds us. If you were obstinated to tell him the truth opposite, that would like to say that you take it with the serious one. And to take with serious something the not very serious one, it is to lose oneself any serious sound. Me, I must lie not to take with serious the insane ones and not to become myself insane . ”

Adaptations

the first news, Nobody will laugh was adapted out of film by Hynek Bočan in 1965: Nobody will laugh ( Nikdo nebude smát , 1965).
Jacques Lassalle adapts the collection to the theater in 1977 with the Studio-Theater of Vitry.

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