Abstract
This article explores the influence of music on the composition of Milan Kundera’s novels, focusing particularly on how polyphonic thought influences his most recent published novel The Festival of Insignificance. This text exemplifies Kundera’s use of the principles of fugue – a form in which each voice, though independent and equal in status to the other voices, forms an integral part of a complete entity and helps to make meanings. The novel demonstrates an experimental thought process that opens up space for dialogue both within the text and outside it. In general terms, the principle of polyphony in literature is connected with the idea that nothing in the world is entirely unambiguous. It rests on the principle of plurality: there exists no single truth, no single viewpoint or perspective, so any thought or idea always exists in counterpoint with another thought or idea. However, the fact that we can hear more voices does not objectivize or relativize the meaning of a text; instead it creates a genuine polyphony of voices, each of which has equal status, which can exist in various relationships to each other, without any individual voice ever representing the definitive truth. This article also seeks to demonstrate how the polyphonic principle is a phenomenon existing on the boundary-line between music and literature; to do so, it draws on the concept of intermediality. From this perspective, polyphony can be viewed as an intermedia phenomenon, positioned at a point between intermedia reference (in the form of imitation) and transmedialization.
But in art, form is always more than form.
Introduction: The novelist and music
Thinking about the presence of music in Milan Kundera’s works means thinking about the very essence of his novelistic poetics. In other words: considering Kundera’s specific contribution to the poetics of the novel involves considering how he uses elements of musical composition in his texts.
In recent years, scholarly studies of Kundera have frequently posed the question of whether his works written in exile are in fact works of French literature, and whether he himself should be considered a French author. Addressing this question on a general level, Guy Scarpetta (2019: 15) claims that Kundera is confronted with three contexts: a small context (Czech, French), a medium-level context (Central Europe) and a global context (works existing beyond all borders). However, Jean Paul Enthoven (2019: 24) does not consider this to be a crucial question; 1 in his view, the real nationality of Kundera’s novels is that of music, or more specifically musical compositions. This is reflected in the fact that analyses of Kundera’s works frequently use musical terminology. 2 Scholars have found evocations of various musical forms in Kundera’s texts: dodecaphony, polyphony, symphonies, sonatas, jazz, rock and more.
Considering Kundera’s work as a whole (and critical responses to his work), it is evident that his attention is focused predominantly on the architecture of his novels’ composition. This architecture is strongly influenced not only by other literary models (e.g. Diderot, Rabelais, Cervantes, Musil, Broch), but also – consciously – by music 3 and its compositional principles, of which scholars most frequently mention the techniques of variation (e.g. in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) and polyphony.
In The Art of the Novel (Paris, 1986), Kundera expresses a positive view of how Broch loosened the form of the novel by incorporating essays, poetry, aphorisms and reportage into his novelistic texts. However, at the same time, Kundera criticizes Broch for his lack of thoroughness in integrating these diverse elements. In Kundera’s view, these elements exist alongside each other without becoming mutually interwoven and thus expressing the author’s own views (Kosková, 1998: 166). Kundera uses this criticism to explain his own concept of the novel, in which diverse elements of the text’s polyphony must form an integral part of the novel, enabling the work as a whole to express a coherent meaning. On one hand, Kundera dismantles the traditional novelistic form, suppressing causality and incorporating ostensibly incompatible elements (such as essays) into his novels, yet on the other hand, he strives to achieve homogeneity and to create an integrated whole.
In this regard, Kundera’s approach is strikingly similar to the musical concept of polyphonic compositions, in which each voice, though independent and equal in status to the other voices, forms an integral part of a complete whole and helps to make meanings (harmonies) by creating connections (between motifs and themes) and by forming a compact entity. A crucial feature of this polyphony is the emancipated nature of each individual voice. A novel conceived in this way no longer seeks to comprise a system of thoughts, 4 nor does it seek to convince readers of the existence of a single truth. Instead it demonstrates an experimental thought process which opens up space for dialogue both within the text and outside it. We can observe parallels between musical thinking and novelistic thinking: a musical idea finds its application in the structure of a novel.
In Kundera’s poetics, the polyphonic principle is a multi-layered phenomenon. Sylvie Richterová (2012) views his entire oeuvre as a polyphonic composition, in which the individual voices in the counterpoint (i.e. the individual novels) resonate with each other through their themes and motifs. Kundera’s first novels evoke his most recent novels, and his most recent novels further explore themes and situations that were first addressed at the beginning of his career. Eva Le Grand (1999) claims that a Kundera text consists of various autonomous discourses (historic, philosophical, political and so on), which could be read separately; however, such a reading would represent a single (monodic) melody, a single consciousness, a single truth and this would be directly at odds with Kundera’s goal, which is to create polyphony, plurality and ambiguity. This principle can also be observed on the level of genre. The juxtaposition of separate forms within Kundera’s novels (like the combination of the individual storylines) creates a polyphonic effect; for example, in Slowness, he juxtaposes essays, TV reporting, a tragic story and an evocation of a public opinion survey.
Milan Kundera’s essays address a question that is of key importance to this study: why music forms such an indispensable part of his attempts to capture the truth of the present moment, to show everything that can be thought about, to initiate a debate about the state of the world. Of particular relevance here is the essay On Music and the Novel, though all of Kundera’s other essays also touch on these issues.
Polyphony in the musical sense and in the literary sense
Polyphony denotes the simultaneous presence of multiple voices. The word is derived from the Greek polys (multiple), or indeed polyphonos (multiple sounds or voices). A polyphonic composition usually has two or more separate voices which are heard at the same time, differing in their melody and/or rhythm. The overall impression created by a polyphonic composition depends on the originality and appeal of its melodic and rhythmic components.
The voices may either contrast with the main theme (non-imitative polyphony), or they may merge with the main theme or imitate it (imitative polyphony). When two or more separate voices are combined in a musical composition, this is known as counterpoint (from the Latin punctum contra punctum – note against note). Counterpoint generally combines between two and five voices, though more voices may also be used (Hůla, 1985: 6). Linear counterpoint accentuates the melodic line of the voices, while vertical (harmonic) counterpoint accentuates the harmonic relations among the voices (Bláha, 2012: 37).
Considering the fundamental nature of polyphony, it is obvious that composers of polyphonic music have at their disposal various options for the individual voices. The basic melodic theme (cantus firmus) may be reproduced exactly (literally) in the other voices (the counterpoint), or it may be more loosely reproduced, altered, introduced at various time intervals, either in the same key or in a different key. The individual voices may meet or intersect and then return to their original pitch; they may move in the same direction or in different directions; they may hold a particular pitch for a longer time (in which case the vocal line is made up of longer notes), or they may move in a more dynamic way (with shorter notes) to accentuate their melodic and rhythmic power and originality.
Unlike vocal polyphony (which we essentially perceive in a horizontal manner, because the individual voices progress horizontally, i.e. as melodic lines), instrumental polyphony comprises voices which move as part of logical harmonic progressions, so the horizontal and vertical dimensions are in equilibrium. The key structure of a composition derives from its tonic key, in which the composition begins and ends; during the composition, the music may shift between closely related keys. In terms of rhythm, the individual voices may feature complementary rhythms (displaying a mutual similarity that creates motion in the same direction) or contrasting rhythms (Hůla, 1985: 146).
The pinnacle of instrumental polyphony is the fugue; 5 this form arises when the basic theme (cantus firmus), known as the subject, exists alongside counterpoint lines which present new motifs, without repeating or returning to the subject. The subject is the unifying element of the entire polyphony. It delineates clear boundaries for the counterpoint lines, and it is constantly quoted by various voices and in various keys, accompanied by new counterpoint lines, sometimes expressed by a single voice and sometimes by more than one voice forming a group. A fugue can be described as a fluent, constantly developing stream of music which directs and reinforces an unchanging theme (Hůla, 1985: 231). A fugue begins with the exposition (initial presentation) of the subject, whose content must be interesting. It then continues with the development of the subject and ends with the conclusion.
Vocal polyphony is the most sophisticated of all compositional styles (Petřvalský, 2003: 20). It emerged as a response to the evolution of the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of society, its shifting structures and values. It is no coincidence that the establishment and development of polyphonic music took place within the late medieval and early modern eras. Although musicologists have traced the roots of this style much further back in history (Černý, 2003), conditions that were conducive to its establishment and development only emerged during the Renaissance and Humanist eras, when explorers sailed the oceans to discover new lands and the Church underwent a process of reformation. The new style experimented with forms, broke with conventions, introduced provocative changes and brought a fundamental shift in aesthetic perceptions of music and its functions. Music became something that required listeners to think, it evoked emotions (often contrasting emotions), it manifested the complexity of human beings and it responded to people’s contemporary needs.
In summary, if we approach polyphony as a compositional principle not only in music, but also in other forms of art, this approach is based on the fundamental fact that a work can comprise one, two or more separate voices, present simultaneously, taking various forms, which may interact in various ways (repetition, imitation, modification, intersection, contrast, addition, gradation). One of the voices will always be more important than the others, as it expresses the main theme (cantus firmus), which is interesting in its content and plays a central role in the work. The other voices will supplement the main voice via counterpoint, relating to it in various ways, from a confirmatory or complementary relationship to a polemical or oppositional relationship). Polyphony can be perceived horizontally (if we observe the development of the individual voices in a horizontal direction, as they gradually unfold), or vertically (if we observe the harmonic progressions in a vertical direction); these modes of perception may be applied, for example, to a fugue, which features a constant subject that is developed as the polyphony progresses.
In literature, the principle of polyphony in literature is connected with the idea that nothing in the world is entirely unambiguous. It rests on the principle of plurality: there exists no single truth, no single viewpoint or perspective, so any thought or idea always exists in counterpoint with another thought or idea. However, the fact that we can hear more voices does not objectivize or relativize the meaning of a text; instead it creates a genuine polyphony of voices each of which has equal status, and which can exist in various relationships with each other (contrast, mirroring, development, addition and so on), without any individual voice ever representing the definitive truth. Human beings, with their thoughts, ideas and emotions, can be conceived as complex and complicated simultaneous structures; the totality of a human being (i.e. the complete entity that is a human being) consists of a nexus of interlinked questions and answers (involving relations of contrast, paradox, confirmation, expansion, development), a constant dialogue. 6
Literary texts whose style incorporates the polyphonic principle draw inspiration (whether consciously or unconsciously) from music. In its literary form, polyphony usually does not exist as a strict, stable and highly sophisticated style such as that which can be found in the mature works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Instead, it is more reminiscent of the free polyphony which developed following Bach’s death (from the mid-eighteenth century); this style of polyphony placed greater emphasis on the harmonic aspects of the composition and on the vertical perception of the music. As polyphony developed, evolved and assimilated new elements (in an attempt to achieve originality and monumentality), it became accepted as an integral part of the multi-faceted development of music from the nineteenth century onwards – becoming one of the most respected compositional techniques, prized for its balanced nature.
The concept of the polyphonic novel is now well-established in literary theory thanks to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1973, 1980), who identified and described the polyphonic principle in the novels of Dostoyevsky. Numerous literary theorists have drawn on (and continue to draw on) Bakhtin’s observations when exploring polyphonic elements in novels (Chvatík, 1996; Kristeva, 2008; Robinson, 2011). However, the notion of polyphony has a much wider reach and is not restricted solely to the novel.
Bakhtin’s concept appears to be very close to Kundera’s concept of the novel as presented in The Art of the Novel (1986). However, the genesis of their interest in polyphony has different origins. Bakhtin’s interest in polyphony is rooted in issues of language, the notion of heteroglossia, that is, the diversity of languages within a single language (novels are microcosms of heteroglossia), high and low genres, dialogicity, folk culture and unofficial utterances. He views the heteroglossic text of a novel as being rooted in carnivalesque culture. By contrast, Kundera’s approach to polyphony emerged from his study of music, his thorough understanding of the principles of musical composition and his lifelong interest in the oeuvres of several major composers (including Janáček, Schoenberg and Stravinsky). Music inspired Kundera with ‘its polyphonic architecture of themes, which are developed in parallel with each other, the contrapuntal and variational arrangement of motifs, different instrumentations of themes and motifs, alternation of tempos, and the clear and comprehensible structuring of the text’ (Chvatík, 2008: 151).
Bakhtin and Kundera are linked by their association of the novel with laughter (in Bakhtin’s case, the culture of popular laughter). Like Bakhtin, Kundera too was inspired by Rabelais and Gogol. However, in his approach, laughter is not so much ‘a subversion of the dominant voice of power’ but rather a form of higher knowledge, a liberating insight (Hodrová and Trávníček, 2012: 76). In his essay, The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes, Kundera states that the art of the novel arrived in the world as an echo of divine laughter (Kundera, 2005: 37).
A further difference between Bakhtin’s and Kundera’s concept of polyphony has been described by Chvatík. Although his 1980 study does not directly refer to Kundera’s work, Chvatík’s conclusions are nevertheless valid for Kundera’s concept of polyphony. Chvatík notes that Bakhtin characterizes a novel by Dostoyevsky as open, ambiguous, polyphonic (multi-voiced), an endless dialogue without a final synthesis. However, Chvatík disagrees with Bakhtin (1980: 171–172) with regard to whether polyphony is a deliberate or non-deliberate manifestation of a certain ideological concept; he claims that it is possible to discern a final synthesis of meanings, a clear authorial evaluation, though this evaluation is not explicit and it does not consist of definitive ideological or religious truths. The implicitness of the authorial evaluation determines the polyphonic structure of novels, which present fundamental human and societal issues openly but do not engage in explicit discussion of these issues.
Polyphony as an intermedia phenomenon between imitation and transmedialization
The characterization of polyphony presented above highlights one fundamental problem that must be addressed when polyphony is employed in literature: the problem of simultaneity. In music, more than one voice can be heard at the same time, whereas in literature only one voice can be ‘heard’ at any given point (unless two characters on the stage are engaged in a dialogue and they both speak simultaneously). This problem of simultaneity in literature is of relevance to the reception of texts; readers are likely to be incapable of following (and understanding the meanings of) two utterances that are spoken at the same time. The difficulty of understanding simultaneous utterances will be further exacerbated if more than two voices are speaking at the same time, which will result in an incomprehensible tangle of sounds. For this reason, the principle of polyphony can be applied in literature, but only in the form of imitation. This is evident when we view literary polyphony from the perspective of intermediality. The originator of this theoretical concept, Werner Wolf, describes imitation as an implicit form of reference by one medium to another. According to Wolf (2011: 70), the principle of imitation consists in the fact that ‘the medium of the investigated work imitates signs from a different medium using its own (usually formal) resources, and based on similarity, it iconically refers to the other medium’.
This intermedia phenomenon brings challenges of typology; if we were to consider the polyphonic principle as a general structural principle that is transferrable to any other form of art (not only to literature), then we would also have to accept a phenomenon that Wolf terms transmedialization. This phenomenon similarly involves a transfer of formal concepts (or concepts related to meaning) from one medium to another. Indirect relationships among the different media are thus created, though these relationships do not affect the creation of meanings in a particular artefact. However, this transfer is only possible if the transferred phenomena are unspecific in nature, that is, if they function universally (e.g. the principle of variation). It is a matter for debate whether the polyphonic principle is a specific phenomenon (i.e. one which belongs first and foremost to the domain of music) or whether we can imagine it as a phenomenon that can occur universally, in other forms of art too.
As the example of Kundera’s novel demonstrates, the polyphonic principle is universal and non-specific (i.e. it can be applied in various forms of art and is thus a transmedia phenomenon). This is the reason why this study’s title mentions the polyphony of form and ideas. The polyphonic principle reflects a certain way of thinking about a problem, a way of approaching a problem that potentially enables us to arrive at new insights by comparing and contrasting various stances and perspectives, questions and answers. In the polyphonic architecture of the text, no one voice is preferred over the others (nobody owns the truth) and all the voices are of equal status (everybody has the right to be heard and understood). At the same time, the text’s architecture is coherent, to imbue this polyphony and plurality with a degree of order that is so important if the text is to be comprehensible and convincing and to create a ‘harmonious system of the complete entity’. The presence of ‘a polyphony of values and a structural polyphony’ is thus one of the constitutive features of Kundera’s novel (Chvatík, 2008: 162, 163).
The art of the fugue in the novel The Festival of Insignificance
The Festival of Insignificance as the pinnacle and synthesis of Kundera’s oeuvre?
The Festival of Insignificance is Kundera’s last novel. Its Czech translation was published in 2020, quite some time after the appearance of the original version of the text; until 2020, Czech readers could only read the novel in other languages. Fortunately, in the same year, Jan Novák published his highly controversial monograph Kundera (Český život a doba) [Kundera (A Czech Life and Time)] – a book which paradoxically attracted considerably more attention in the Czech media and among Czech readers than the translation of Kundera’s last novel. 7 This echoes Kundera’s central theme of the inviolability of the private sphere – a notion that is bound up with his view of the novel’s function as a defence of the European cultural heritage. Also connected with this is a theme that is explored, for example, in the novel Immortality, that is, the notion that people take a sensationalist interest in the author, but that they are less interested in his work.
Kundera’s novels have always acted as catalysts for opinions on modern art and the novel; since the beginning of his career, criticisms of his work have reflected various prejudices, which are present to various degrees – whether these prejudices are ideological, moralistic, artistic or aesthetic in nature (Haman, 2014: 290, 302). It is, therefore, natural that Kundera’s later work has met with (at best) bafflement primarily among more conservative Czech readers, who are used to the lengthier format of his Czech-language novels – and indeed scholarly critics have sometimes questioned whether these later works are novels at all. Besides the usual objections to Kundera’s works (their cold rationality and intellectualism, the impossibility of identifying with the characters, misogyny), we can now witness criticisms of his excessive emphasis on form and style, or his lack of humour or entertainment value. 8 However, his critics’ arguments reveal more about their superficial reading of the texts and their neglect of how Kundera’s poetics (including his novels’ musicality) have evolved over the course of his career. These critics are unaware that this long process of poetic evolution – encompassing Kundera’s constant refinement of his thoughts (motifs and themes) and forms, his life experiences and observations, his thorough self-examination (self-ironizing) and his objective stance – enabled him to reach new heights of mastery in his last novel, manifested in musically inspired formal perfection as well as the synthesis and creative re-evaluation of the motifs and themes that appeared in his previous works.
Kundera’s work underwent a constant process of evolution and development in all its aspects. According to Chvatík (2008: 149), the constantly changing form of his novels was rooted in his close interest in the intellectual concerns of the given era, not only reflecting the intellectual development of modern humankind but also functioning as an active force which helped co-create the image of the world that prevailed in each era. Analysis of these texts shows how complex and yet precise is Kundera’s polyphonic modelling of the novelistic fugue, and how he constantly and actively thinks about his themes, exploring their validity, creatively reshaping them, synthesizing them and striving to reach a higher perspective – a striving that is also reflected in his treatment of the theme of insignificance. We are constantly rooted in the context of Kundera’s concept of the novel – in which, as he himself noted, form is never merely form. The form must be precise enough, its structure comprehensible enough, to enable it to reveal new aspects of human existence. That is the aim of all his novels.
A challenge for reception: the novel as a musical score
Massimo Rizzante (2012: 202), who has translated Kundera’s novels into Italian, describes the author’s penultimate three novels (La lenteur, 1995; L’identité, 1997; L’ignorance, 2000) as specific examples of novelistic fugues: ‘The novelistic fugue is the unifying polyphonic form, a carefully balanced construct in which the structural deliberateness does not detract from the improvisational nature of the novel’. It appears that Kundera has reached the zenith of this art of the fugue in his most recent novel The Festival of Insignificance (Italian La festa dell’insignificanza, 2013, translated by Massimo Rizzante; French La fête de l’insignifiance, 2014; Czech Slavnost bezvýznamnosti, translated by Anna Kareninová, 2020).
This novel has several features in common with the three preceding (French) novels: its relatively short length; its subdivision into short, motivically interrelated chapters in which motifs are repeated and modified (variations on a theme); and its topic, signalled already in the title of the novel. Helena Kosková (2009: 31) additionally notes ‘the economy and poetic density of the language, which in each situation – via a complex game of motifs, metaphors and allusions – mirrors countless possible deeper meanings evoking the main theme’. Kosková also states that Kundera’s novels written in Czech can be compared to symphonies, while his French-language novels are more akin to chamber music. This is (inter alia) a reference to the relatively short length of the French novels – a quality that also applies to The Festival of Insignificance. The seven-part structure of this novel is further subdivided into shorter chapters, each with a title that provides a brief synopsis of the chapter’s content.
The short length of the novel has frequently been criticized. However, viewed in the context of Kundera’s previous novels, its length clearly reflects a natural course of development in his late-career poetics, an evolution towards stylistic compression, density of meaning and linguistic precision. Indeed, the novel represents a culmination of this course of development, reaching a high-point of elaboration and complexity – as the analysis of the novel will show. One of the foremost scholars of Kundera’s work, Květoslav Chvatík (2008: 129), convincingly argues that the length and style of the late novels recall the eighteenth-century French prose tradition, characterized by its aphoristic brevity and concentrated expression of meanings; Chvatík also notes that despite their brevity, Kundera’s late novels attain a degree of complexity found in his earlier Czech-language novels (2008: 140).
When interpreting the novel, we are faced with a task of similar complexity as if we were analysing a complex musical composition. Our interpretative approach may accentuate the compositional structure; it may analyse the individual parts of the novel and trace how the theme is gradually developed and how the voices (characters) function in counterpoint to each other; it may trace the gradual development and trajectory of the themes regardless of the composition; or it may focus on the individual voices as bearers of themes, showing how these voices interact (in counterpoint) with other voices and illuminate the themes from various perspectives, as well as exploring how these voices – despite being separate and separable from each other – complement each other and co-construct ‘a melodic, semantic and referential complex’ (Żurawska, 2012: 294).
When interpreting a polyphonic musical composition, it is essential to study the individual voices; this enables the interpreter (and later also the listener) to appreciate the progression of the individual vocal lines as well as the harmonies co-created by them. The situation is similar when interpreting and seeking meanings in a polyphonic text; this process will depend on the reader’s memory and ability to discern the relationships among the individual motivic lines of the text on various levels (chapters, subchapters, paragraphs). The reader may be assisted in this task by the title of the novel, which may indicate a central theme that unifies all the novel’s individual parts.
The progression of the polyphonic voices
The five heroes of the novel, who are all introduced in the first part of the text (Introducing the Heroes) are Alain, Ramon, D’Ardelo, Caliban and Charles. They are entirely controlled by the authorial narrator, who also comments on their behaviour. In the narrator’s hands, the characters function as the basic voices in the novel’s polyphonic thinking; they create counterpoint, appearing in various relationships to each other depending on the theme that they carry. They may be in opposition or conflict with each other, they may mirror (imitate) each other, or they may develop and intensify (amplify) a theme carried by a different voice.
These mutual relationships can be observed in all the chapters of the novel. In the first part, the heroes are presented in succession (first Alain, Ramon and D’Ardelo), and in the rest of the novel they are frequently present in a 1:1 ratio (e.g. Ramon and D’Ardelo, Ramon and Charles), though more voices are gradually added as the novel progresses, until all the voices are present simultaneously. For example, at the cocktail party (in the fourth chapter, They Are All in Search of a Good Mood) all the voices are present, and the novelistic fugue thus reaches a climax.
One of the key characteristics of musical polyphony is the simultaneity of the voices: more than one voice can be heard at the same time. As has been mentioned, literature is not capable of such simultaneity. However, Kundera imitates the simultaneity of the novel’s events by repeatedly giving information about the point in time at the beginning of the chapters: ‘At about the same time’ (Kundera, 2016: 4, 6) or elsewhere: ‘At about the same moment’ (2016: 63).
Besides imitating simultaneity of voices, the text also imitates the principle of stretto in the links between the individual chapters. In a fugue, stretto is the repetition of the subject soon after it is stated; this creates a close connection. In the novel, for example, the beginning of the fifth part immediately refers back to the text at the end of the fourth part: ‘In an excellent mood, Ramon glimpsed Charles behind the long table, looking oddly absent, his gaze set high above him’ (end of the fourth part; Kundera, 2016: 68); ‘. . . Charles . . . oddly absent, his gaze set high above him . . . ’ (beginning of the fifth part; Kundera, 2016: 71).
Because the chapters are only short, readers have no problem imagining this temporal simultaneity or close situational connection, even though this repetition is in fact merely an imitation of simultaneity. We can imagine that we are watching several storylines play out on a theatre stage; this is in accord with Kundera’s method of presenting his characters to us in such a way that we can observe where he is moving each character and how he is making the character interact with others. This is not the first time in Kundera’s career that he has used this approach (see e.g. The Farewell Waltz, first published by Gallimard, Paris 1976).
Kundera uses these voices to present the themes which fascinate him. In this sense, we can observe a high degree of intertextuality in the novel, which confirms the thesis that Kundera is in fact writing a unique novelistic opus, displaying a unique art of the fugue, by which he is exploring various ways of investigating human existence. Rizzante (2012: 202) describes this as ‘the polyphonic game of human existence’.
The concentrated plot of the novel is communicated in an essentially laconic manner. More space is devoted to passages exploring ideas, which are structured very similar to Kundera’s essays: a question is asked, the arguments are presented and considered, an appropriate illustrative example is given and a conclusion is reached. This lends the novel’s text the quality of a philosophical disputation.
Whereas in his first novel The Joke (1967), Kundera introduces the polyphonic situation gradually, as he reveals the narrative mode of the work (the individual chapters are introduced by their narrators); in The Festival of Insignificance, the polyphony is presented to us in a more striking manner, as the first part introduces us successively to the complete cast of characters that will feature in the novel (Introducing the Heroes). 9 Kundera shows us his working method: he does not abandon his role as the narrator by passing this role to one of the characters, but instead uses the characters as voices and shows us how each voice carries a theme, as well as showing us how these themes (and thus the individual voices) are interrelated and undergo variations. He does not dilute his discourse with any superfluous word or sentence; he always goes directly to the key question that is to be discussed and then considers this question. As has been mentioned above, this technique is very similar to the technique Kundera uses in his essays.
Working with motifs in counterpoint
Several central motifs in the novel can be used to illustrate how Kundera works with them to create counterpoint. In the introduction to the novel, the motif of the navel appears. In the first part of the first chapter, this motif is carried by Alain. It is presented as an erotic and aesthetic theme, as Alain looks at women whose short T-shirts leave their bellies exposed. This motif is further developed in the third part, when the narrator begins by consciously repeating a passage of text from the first part of the first chapter, to remind readers of this motif: ‘Do I repeat myself? Am I starting this chapter with the same words I used at the very beginning of this novel? I know’ (Kundera, 2016: 35). He then displays the motif from the perspectives of two voices – that of Alain (the original bearer of the theme) and that of Charles (who enriches and develops Alain’s perspective). Both protagonists associate this motif with their mothers, causing the motif to lose its original erotic dimension. The motif is further developed and elaborated in the story of Alain’s mother: when pregnant, she wanted to commit suicide; but when being rescued from this situation, she deliberately killed her rescuer, thus paradoxically gaining a new lease of life. This evokes additional questions, such as how quickly suicide can turn into murder, or how quickly the desire to hide nothing can turn into a desire to hide everything. The motif develops further (horizontally): when Alain meets his mother, his navel prompts her compassion and contempt, thus introducing other motifs of struggle, guilt and innocence (Alain’s need to constantly apologize) and the angel (a sexless being without a navel).
Kundera develops the related motif of the mother in the fourth part of the novel, through the voice of Charles, who is afraid for his sick mother. Alain is moved by Charles’s filial love, and (prompted by a photograph of his own mother) he remembers how he and his mother met long ago at a swimming pool (the navel motif) and he recalls the story of his conception (the motif of struggle), after which he was born as an impostor who in his later life would have the habit of apologizing (the motif of guilt and innocence).
The navel motif comes full circle in the fifth part of the novel, where it forms part of a chain: navel – angel – mother – life – death. The motif begins with Charles and ends with Alain and Ramon. It also recurs at the very end of the novel, where it is recast as a discussion about the right to life and uniformity versus illusory individuality (Kundera, 2016: 89).
Counterpoint demonstrating conflict in a 1:1 ratio (one voice versus a second voice) can be seen, for example, in the characters of D’Ardelo (D) and Quaquelique (Q). Q is a seducer, but he does not attract women’s attention; he speaks like a virtuoso, but cannot be heard. D is obsessed with women and attracts their attention; he is narcissistic and snobbish, though he is capable of kindness; he sees his own image in the eyes of everyone else. He draws on the fear of death and displays his emotions: ‘tears glistened in D’Ardelo eyes’ (Kundera, 2016: 8); he lies about his death, creating an image of himself in Ramon’s eyes: ‘the face of a man already old but still good-looking, marked by a sadness that made it even more appealing’ (Kundera, 2016: 9). Both characters are linked by the theme of women (seduction, eroticism, Don Juanism), but their natures and approaches are opposed to each other, representing different perspectives on the same theme.
Variation as part of polyphonic thought
Kundera’s use of variation can be illustrated by the way in which the novel depicts a park in Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg, with its prominent motif of the statues of queens. The Jardin du Luxembourg is the place where the heroes meet at the beginning and the end of the novel. First, Ramon’s view of the garden becomes a basis for a train of thought inspired by the indifference that passers-by show to the park’s statuary. To Ramon, this indifference appears to be a form of consoling calm: ‘farther along, in an immense circle, stood great white statues of the queens of France’ (Kundera, 2016: 5). D’Ardelo projects into the scene his joy at discovering that he does not have cancer, so the image is more upbeat and optimistic: Walking amid the greenery brought back a nearly giddy good humour, especially when he rounded the great ring of statues of the onetime queens of France, all of them carved from white marble, standing in solemn postures that struck him as humorous, even jolly, as if these women meant to cheer the good news he had just learned (Kundera, 2016: 6, 7).
Here we can clearly see how Kundera repeats the same theme in different voices, almost citing the text verbatim depending on the perspective of the particular voice, its momentary motivation and the situation in which it finds itself: Ramon is heading for an exhibition of paintings by Chagall, but he does not want to queue outside the gallery, so he goes to the park instead; D’Ardelo returns from the doctor with good news and takes a stroll in the park.
The novel returns to the park in its seventh part, in which the past (a story about Stalin) intersects with the present (the statues of the queens in the Jardin du Luxembourg). At the moment when D’Ardelo points out the statues: ‘then, with a light playful irony, he pointed to the white statues of the great ladies of France-queens, princesses, regents-each standing on a tall plinth, in all her grandeur from foot to head’ (Kundera, 2016: 109), a hunter runs into the park (evoking the character of Charles – the present) in pursuit of an elderly man who is urinating on one of the statues (the man evokes the character of Kalinin, i.e. the past); the hunter shoots at the statues and the scene ends with laughter and a general contentment shared by all those present. In one of his essays, Kundera (2014: 27) comments on this as follows: ‘This conjunction of two melodies, each of which belongs to a different epoch (one separated from the other by the lengths of centuries), has something miraculous in it: as reality and parable’.
The theme of insignificance
The theme of insignificance is the unifying element in the entire polyphonic flow of the novel. It delineates clear boundaries for the counterpoint lines, and the foundations for its treatment at the end of the novel are laid by the author’s highly sophisticated and complex counterpointing of the individual voices (characters) who are the bearers of Kundera’s essentially stable themes and motifs. However, this time the theme is presented in a very distanced manner, with brevity and concentration, yet also with clarity and lucidity. This confirms the thesis that Kundera’s entire oeuvre can in fact be viewed as a polyphonic composition in which the individual voices (the novels) resonate with each other as part of the counterpoint.
The ever-topical theme of the relationship between humans and history is evoked by the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev (a grotesque story about Stalin and 24 partridges), and it is the main theme of the novel’s second part. Again Kundera juxtaposes and confronts the past with its seriousness (Stalin’s story was not interpreted as a joke, and thus it ushered in a new era in ‘history’) and the present with its lack of seriousness (the story makes Caliban laugh, and the lack of seriousness is underlined by the motif of the toilets). As in The Joke, the theme is accompanied by the motif of forgetting ( ‘And who was he, this Khrushchev?’) and the motif of confusion: Stalin’s politburo laughs at him on the toilet; Stalin listens to them and laughs at them (Kundera, 2016: 21). Another perspective is reflected by the gradual shift in how the character of Stalin is depicted: hero – criminal – puppet. His memoirs are described as a puppet theatre – so in the end, the past merely causes laughter. Here we can see on one hand humanity (Kalinin did not leave during Stalin’s speech, and wet himself) and on the other hand the absurd and the bizarre (the city of Kaliningrad is named after Kalinin, who had problems with urination). The confrontation of the past and the present culminates in a high-spirited story about absurd things, illustrating the jokes of history and helping to bolster a sense of solidarity with humankind.
Another of Kundera’s typical themes, that of hoaxing and tall tales, is particularly dominant in the fourth part of the novel (They Are All in Search of a Good Mood): Caliban is an actor, but Charles hires him as a waiter for a cocktail party; Caliban plays a joke on those around him by claiming to be a foreigner (from Pakistan), and he even invents his own language. This motif is developed in the form of counterpoint during the fifth part of the novel, though here it takes on an entirely different meaning than in other works by Kundera. 10 The joy of hoaxing – as a form of self-defence and an expression of the desire not to take the world seriously (the Pakistani language) – has vanished; jokes have lost their power and all that is left is boredom and fatigue: ‘We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush’ (Kundera, 2016: 75).
The fourth part of the novel also contains motifs of Don Juanism (the desire to dazzle and conquer), old age, solitude, gestures, faces and imagology. All these motifs become ridiculous and unserious – for example, at the cocktail party, when La Franck is guzzling canapés and at the same time declaring: ‘Human existence is nothing but solitude’ (Kundera, 2016: 62), which causes Ramon to smile. In the fifth part, there is a passage discussing how the seriousness has vanished from all big words (clichés) and that those who say these words are at the same time chewing canapés or swallowing cakes – such as the character of La Franck, who again eats and at the same time says: ‘Life is stronger than death, because life is nourished by death’ (Kundera, 2016: 68).
The polyphony of the voices continues to become denser, more elaborate and complicated in the final two parts of the novel, and this makes it increasingly necessary to perceive the voices not only horizontally, but also vertically. The motifs come together in the harmonies created by the voices which co-exist in a lively interaction, representing the culmination of the novel’s dialogicity. The tempo of the narrative becomes faster and the rhythm becomes more complicated. The transitions between the individual parts are almost indiscernible and the ground is laid for the final presentation of the theme of insignificance.
This presentation begins with the completion of the ‘Stalin’ theme. After recalling this theme, the text then discusses Schopenhauer’s notion of a single idea, a single will, which is set in contrast with a discussion about the weakening of the will: a dream which is not supported by the will is bound to collapse, as nobody will believe in it. Khrushchev declares Stalin to be guilty and everybody agrees (as they did previously when laughing at Stalin on the toilet). However, Kalinin once again has to urinate, so this momentous series of events in the 1950s becomes merely an insignificant, forgettable and ridiculous episode. The question of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim loses its meaning.
This serious (weighty) theme from the past is placed in counterpoint with the good mood that characterizes the novel’s contemporary events, which is bolstered by an element of eroticism (dreams about Julie’s bottom). Kundera continues to imitate the simultaneity of voices when he introduces this contrasting atmosphere with the words: ‘At the moment, at the other end of Paris’ (Kundera, 2016: 94). The clash of the two contrasting voices intersects with a bad omen; the breaking of the Armagnac bottle intersects with the fall of the angel: ‘Indeed, what is that a sign of? A murdered utopia, after which there will never be any other? An era that will leave no trace? Books, paintings, flung into the void? A Europe that will no longer be Europe? Jokes that no one will ever laugh at again?’ (Kundera, 2016: 93)
Through this counterpoint, Kundera arrives at the final section of the novel, in which he explains his concept of insignificance. Insignificance is liberating for us; it rids us of the need for prudence and it does not require our presence of mind. Insignificance can be considered the foundation of existence; it is all-pervasive and we must love it because it is the key to wisdom and contentment. However, at the same time, Kundera does not view this theme as the most important, as he claims: ‘The Art of Fugue: the famous theme is the core out of which (as Schoenberg said) everything is created, but the melodic basis of The Art of Fugue is not in this theme; it is in all the melodies which rise up and contribute to the counterpoint’ (Kundera, 2014: 29).
In the novel, Kundera displays his passion for form; not only does he skillfully present his themes, which he develops and illuminates from different angles (as well as introducing new themes – insignificance), but he also displays his own art of the fugue, showing how his individual themes are developed over time and in counterpoint with each other. There is no doubt that The Festival of Insignificance represents the pinnacle of Kundera’s novelistic career.
Conclusion: The polyphonicity of novelistic thought
The Festival of Insignificance can be viewed as the pinnacle of Kundera’s novelistic development. Genetically, it is a direct continuation from the preceding French-language novels, but as has already been noted, in its complexity it recalls his earlier Czech-language works. In the novel, Kundera has attained a pure form, unencumbered by redundant ornaments, with an even more intense focus on each word, on achieving a concise, factual and accurate mode of expression. He no longer needs ‘background detail’, however attractive this may be for readers – such as the descriptions of key historical events with which individuals are confronted (1950s Czechoslovakia, the August 1968 invasion and the subsequent abandonment of reforms and imposition of a hardline regime, issues of exile and the impossibility of returning after 1989 and so on). Instead, Kundera’s focus is directed towards individual, relatively banal life situations, which are wittily and accurately analysed to explore twists and turns in human relationships, reactions and emotions that are rooted in more general models of human behaviour. Although the heroes’ stories are set in twenty-first-century Paris, they could in fact take place at other times and in other places. As a consequence of this, the novel becomes more universal in terms of its reception.
In the philosophical sense, certain elements suddenly lose their central importance – such as the conflict between history and the individual, meditations about the seriousness or ridiculousness of the era, its errors, jokes, revenge or lightness and heaviness. It appears that at a certain stage in the evolution of Kundera’s general human knowledge, these themes may be rendered unimportant, opening up substantially more freedom of thought and expression for both the author and the reader. Artistic creation itself can then become an act of liberation. This whole process, which involves ridding the text of superfluous elements (in both form and style, the accumulation and recapitulation of themes), can be viewed as a search for life wisdom.
Polyphony plays an important part in this process, revealing the bipolarity of all judgements and situations, and even relativizing the conclusions arrived at in Kundera’s previous novels by accentuating their ‘lightness’ and downplaying their ‘heaviness’ – though the author is well aware of this heaviness, as can be seen not only in the recapitulation and synthesis of motifs, but also in their creative re-evaluation, Kundera’s distinctive authorial re-interpretation of his previous motifs (e.g. the motif of guilt is no longer viewed as originating in historical events, but is purely a personal matter). 11 The time has come when it is perhaps more important to gain a higher perspective, to laugh at stupidity (as laughter swallows up meaning 12 ), to be entertained by the paradoxes of history and the present day, in each situation we experience and to find reconciliation.
Kundera’s novel can be compared to a challenging musical score, and indeed this is the way in which we should read it. It requires a more demanding process of reading; an ordinary reading cannot access the full potential of the text and it cannot fully explore the novel’s argumentation, which uses counterpoint to present a multifaceted picture of the theme of insignificance. If an informed recipient wants to approach this fictional world, they must meet one condition: they must be capable of accepting the authorial method, and even of applying this method in all their literary thinking. However, this can only be achieved by engaging in a dialogue with the work, in which the recipient is at the same time ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ the story, viewing the text not only as an object but also as the scenario for their own imagination. This approach helps us to change our opinion of literature in its entirety (Poslední, 2009: 84).
Polyphonic structure is fundamentally important for Kundera’s oeuvre; it reflects the polyphonic nature of reality, in which ‘the ego disappears and we touch on the general possibilities of human existence’ (Kosková, 1998: 179). Understanding (along with Cervantes) the world as ambiguous; instead of facing one absolute truth, facing a multitude of relative, mutually contradictory truths (truths embodied in the various forms of imaginary ‘I’ that we call characters); and thus having as our only certainty the wisdom of uncertainty: that does not require a small degree of effort (Kundera, 2005: 13).
The exceptional quality of polyphonic musical compositions is directly proportionate to the creative genius which imbues the framework with original approaches to themes in counterpoint and chooses themes that are serious enough to represent a challenge that remains undiminished over time. The same applies to literary polyphony: merely applying a particular creative principle does not necessarily mean that the result will be original and authentic. The manner of polyphonic thought employed by Kundera in his novels demonstrates not only his musical approach to formal aspects, but also his ability to work with his themes in a highly personal and original way, inclined towards the universality of musical utterances and the ‘ambiguous semantic gesture’ Chvatík, 2008: 6, 18).