Between human melancholy and animal paradise. Thesis on 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Milan Kundera

Abstract

This outline is devoted to the reflection of the human-animal interactions depicted in the last chapter of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It describes the strategies of species differentiation derived especially from the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Cartesian concept of machina animata which the author calls into question, which in turn corresponds to the trend of modern Human-Animal Studies. The experience of melancholy and the associated with it repetition figure (Pascal, Bieńczyk), longing for Arcadian reality (Eliade) and the contraposition of the cyclic and linear experience of time (Bielik-Robson) is made by Kundera the dividing point between the man and the animal. The analysis of these relationships is the main subject of this study.