Someone asked me what I think about, while driving long distances (across the highways)…
For eight days I had been scrapping my shoes on the stones of the roads…writes Rimbaud.
Road: a strip of ground over which one walks. A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and waste of time.
Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: Man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and to enjoy it. What’s more, he no longer saw his own life as a road but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow. Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that has to be overcome by ever greater speed.
Road and highway; these are also two different conceptions of beauty. When Paul says that at a particular place the landscape is beautiful, that means: if you stopped the car at that place, you might see a beautiful fifteenth century castle surrounded by a park; or a lake reaching far into the distance, with swans floating on its brilliant surface.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty, connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
In the world of roads and paths, beauty is continuous and constantly changing; it tells us at every step: “Stop!”
The world of roads was the world of fathers. The world of highways was the world of husbands. And Agnes’s story closes like a circle: from the world of road to that of highways, and now back again. For Agnes is moving to Switzerland. That decision has already been made, and this is the reason that throughout the last two weeks she has been feeling so continuously and madly happy.
---‘Immortality’ (1990), Milan Kundera
Sunday, February 07, 2010
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3 comments:
When I came to know that you were Kundera fan, I did not realize how much deep Kundera has influenced you. You are too deep yaar. And you've read him very well.
Yea. We tend to appreciate something when it closely matches with our innate thoughts and priorities. What attracted me into Kundera, was the inherent dissent in his writings, towards the 'alienation' of man from nature (and subsequently from himself), by his own creations (the highways, in this case). This indeed is the core idea of Marxism, and let's recall that Kundera, was a member of the Czech communist party until he was expelled, the reasons for which are very apparent. This personal experience of Kundera, is again an epitome for the ironic contrasts between Marxism and Soviet Communism.
Blog response: Roads and highways: another view
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