The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a well-made Czech novel written by Milan Kundera, one of the most prominent names of the Czech and French literature. Published in English in 1984, its plot is closely linked to the 'Prague Spring' in 1968. It depicts the love between 4 men and women who show different attitudes toward life around the backdrop of the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968; thus, this piece explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society.

Here is a brief description of the characters for those who have not read it yet.

from the Movie <Unbearable lightness of being> in 1988 by Philip Kaufman. — *From the Movie “Unbearable lightness of being” in 1988 by Philip Kaufman.*

Tomáš is a young surgeon in Prague. He enjoys a freewheeling life that has physical relationships with several women and is not bound by any one. This womanizer runs into Tereza, a waitress in a hot spring town where he visited a patient. Tereza, who came to Prague in search of Tomáš as if she were led by fate, stays with him at his house. Although Tereza gradually adjusts to life in Prague by getting a job as a photographer through Sabina, another of Tomáš's lovers. Life in Prague is very light and unbearable itself, Tereza suffers from Tomáš's lightness.

One day, tanks from the Soviet Union come in to stop the "Prague Spring" and Tereza becomes involved in activist photojournalism showing the Soviet army's oppression and the citizens resisting it. Disenchanted with the disastrous reality, Tomáš and Tereza escape across the Czech border to neutral Switzerland. Meanwhile, Sabina, who defected to Switzerland earlier than Tomáš and Tereza, falls in love with a married professor named Franz. However, she runs away when he finally leaves his wife and comes to her. Sabina lives her life as an extreme example of lightness, taking profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal.

As time goes by, Tereza realized that she could no longer afford Tomáš's light lifestyle, so she returns to the Czech Republic on her own. Below is the famous line from the novel that Tereza wrote to Tomáš when she left him behind in Switzerland.

I know I have to help you. But I can't do that. I'm not helping you, I'm becoming a burden. Life is too heavy for me. But it's too light for you. I can't stand this lightness, this freedom. I'm not that strong. In Prague, I only needed your love, but in Switzerland, I relied on you for everything. What would happen if you abandoned me? I'm a weak man. I go back to the country of the weak. Bye

Tomáš quickly realizes that he wants to be with Tereza and follows her home. However, at that time, the political situation in Prague is more rigid, and the lives of the two gradually erode amid political turbulence. So, fed up with life in Prague under the communist regime, they move to the countryside and where their social circumstances plummet (Tomáš from surgeon to window cleaner and farm truck driver, Tereza from photographer to farmer). This reflects the typical social decline of the Czech intellectuals in the 1970s.

This story, while mainly dealing with the "Prague Spring," is also about the philosophical story in multiple dimensions including love, sexuality, the complexity of the being, and politics.

As described, the main four characters embody the lightness and weight of being — Tomáš's hesitation between the faithfulness for Tereza and freewheeling relationships with many women; Tereza entirely devoted to his husband Tomáš but exhausted later; Sabina (Tomáš's lover) does as she pleases and faces no consequences; and Franz (Sabina’s other lover) is an idealist and seeker of meaning— all perfectly symbolize the weight of being. In the whirlwind of love, sex, history, and ideology, they realize that human beings are intolerably light only after a long period of wandering. That is to say, Milan Kundera wanted to reveal the limits of human existence ultimately by revealing the contradictory and dual nature of love; the seriousness and lightness of love, the responsibility, and freedom of love, and the eternal love and instantaneous love through the four contrasting and stereotyped characters.

Furthermore, throughout the lives of these four intellectuals, who were the main instigators of the "Prague Spring", thus suffering from the soviet counter-attack, writer Milan Kundera tells us his own story as well, that Kundera and thousands of other Czech intellectuals had to face and endure 'the exile'(Like Tomáš, Tereza and Sabina fled to Switzerland after the soviet invasion). As Milan Kundera said, "ideas had the force of a bomb exploding" quoted from the novel, he was considered one of the instigators around those events and eventually was forced to emigrate to France in 1975(he still lives at almost 90 years of age in France). He saw no difference between communism and Nazism, believing that they both deprive the individual in favor of the primacy of the collective.

Here is the movie trailer, too.