We can never know what to want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
On July 11, Milan Kundera, the Czech writer who revoked his citizenship and became a French citizen, died at the age of 94. It was The Unbearable Lightness of Being that became his most enduring and popular novel, soaring him to global literary fame.
When I first read this novel in my 20s, my thinking about the novel cracked wide open because it contained sentences like this. In fact, many sentences like this because Kundera invokes a first-person omniscient voice, which may or may not be Kundera, stepping in and out of the story, ushering in intelligence, confidence, and what some may call philosophy.
It’s a sentence saturated in the absolute, an apodictic statement; it refuses to tremble with doubt or submit to pondering; it’s not looking to be debated. It’s a type of sentence that I had found in essays or philosophy, a la Nietzsche. In a Paris Review interview, Kundera said he saw the novel as something that brings together “every device and every form of knowledge in order to shed light on existence.” He sought to create a “novelistic counterpoint,” uniting philosophy, narrative, and dreams into a single music. He extends the musical metaphor to the novel by invoking the term polyphony and goes on to say that philosophical statements in a novel are improvisations rather than assertions of a philosophy.
I chose this sentence because it is emblematic of many of his sentences in this novel. It opens with the base clause, “We can never know what to want” and it’s the word “never” that creates the unshakeable confidence. To convey a truism the diction in this sentence is abstract: a general “want,” a general “life.” S.I. Hayakawa in his book, Language in Thought and Action, coined the term, “Ladder of Abstraction.” The language in this sentence is at the top of the ladder.
The subordinate conjunction follows, “because,” which is interrupted by the phrase, “living only one life.” This phrase refers back to the base clause, elaborating on why we can never know what to want.
Then we come to the dependent clause that was introduced by the subordinate conjunction: “we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” More unequivocal language comes in with the correlative conjunction, “neither/nor.” It echoes the earlier “never,” not only through alliteration but also negation. What I love about the correlative conjunction is that it introduces balance or parallelism, with similar grammatical structures, inviting an elegant rhythm:
Compare it with our previous lives
Perfect it in our lives to come
An implicit antithesis is introduced through the comparison: our previous lives (the past) and in our lives to come (the future).
Your Turn:
1. Open with your base clause and use the word “never” to create an unchallengeable tone. Can you use abstract diction? Abstraction is that which exists in thought or as an idea, rather than a physical or concrete existence: love, time, freedom, power, justice…
2. Add a subordinate conjunction and follow with a present participle phrase that elaborates upon your base clause and interrupts the dependent clause.
3. Now complete the subordinate clause introduced by your subordinate conjunction and use the correlative conjunction neither/nor. Check to see if you created parallelism. Can you include antithesis?
Tell me how it goes!
What else do you see?
Here is the link to The Paris Review interview with Milan Kundera:
About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. I’ve watched my writing and my students’ writing blossom with this practice of paying close attention to the sentence.
Please visit my website to find all of my books: ninaschuyler.com (including “How to Write Stunning Sentences” and “Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal).
My new novel Afterword is available now! If your book club chooses my book to read, I can Zoom in and talk to the group. If you’ve read my novel please consider posting an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!
Order links:
Upcoming Events:
On July 17, 6:30-8:00 pm PST, I’ll be teaching online How to Write Stunning Sentences for Maker Mentor Muse. As you know by now, it’s one of my favorite subjects to teach. The class is sliding scale, $20-$50.
Here’s the registration link:
Publicity News and Upcoming Readings:
AFTERWORD was a June favorite pick for Towne Center Books!
On July 19, 6:00 pm PST, I’ll be at Telegraph Hill Books in discussion with the District 3 Democratic Club. It’s free. Please RSVP at marcabruno@yahoo.com.
These substack posts never fail to excite me, even if, lazing about in an unwriterly way, I neither make the effort to imitate your stunning sentence of the week, nor comment on the worthy efforts of others. Thanks for brightening my Saturdays.
Nina, I loved your analysis so much that I said to myself, why not give it a shot:
Complicity is never the evil because, imbibed by the everyman in the shade of evil, it has neither the countenance for a wanted poster nor a countryman willing to bring it to trial.