Slowness

by Milan Kundera

  The feeling of being elect is present, for instance, in every love relation. For love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you’re intelligent, because you’re decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don’t chase women, because you do the dishes, then I’m disappointed; such

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  love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I’m crazy about you even though you’re neither intelligent nor decent, even though you’re a liar, an egotist, a bastard.

  Perhaps it is as an infant that one first experiences the illusion of being elect, because of the maternal attentions one receives without meriting them and demands with all the more determination. Upbringing should get rid of that illusion and make clear that everything in life has a price. But it is often too late. You have surely seen some ten-year-old girl who is trying to impose her will on her little friends and who, suddenly finding herself short of arguments, shouts with astounding arrogance: “Because I say so”; or: “Because that’s how I want it.” She feels elect. But one day she is going to say “Because that’s how I want it,” and everyone around her will burst out laughing. When a person sees himself as elect, what can he do to prove his election, to make himself and others believe that he does not belong to the common herd?

  That is where the era founded on the invention of photography comes to the rescue, with its stars, its dancers, its celebrities, whose images,

  projected onto an enormous screen, are visible from afar by all, are admired by all, and are to all beyond reach. Through a worshipful fixation on famous people, a person who sees himself as elect serves public notice of both his membership in the extraordinary and his distance from the ordinary, which is to say, in concrete terms, from the neighbors, the colleagues, the partners, with whom he (or she) is obliged to live.

  Thus famous people have become a public resource like sewer systems, like Social Security, like insurance, like insane asylums. But they are useful only on condition of remaining truly beyond reach. When someone seeks to confirm his elect status by a direct, personal contact with someone famous, he runs the risk of being thrown out, like the woman who loved Kissinger. In theological language, that is called the Fall. That is why in her book the woman who loved Kissinger describes her love explicitly, and correctly, as “tragic,” because a fall, despite Goujard’s jeers, is tragic by definition.

  Until the moment she realized she was in love with Berck, Immaculata had lived the life most women live: a few marriages, a few divorces, a

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  few lovers who brought her a disappointment as regular as it was tranquil and almost agreeable. The latest of her lovers is particularly worshipful; she finds him somewhat more bearable than the others, not only because he is submissive but because he is useful: he is a cameraman who helped her a great deal when she started to work in television. He is a little older than she, but he has the quality of an eternal worshipful student; he finds her the most beautiful, the most intelligent, and (especially) the most sensitive of all women.

  His beloved’s sensitivity seems to him like a landscape by a German Romantic painter: scattered with trees in unimaginably contorted shapes, and above them a faraway blue sky, God’s dwelling place; each time he steps into this landscape, he feels an irresistible impulse to fall to his knees and to stay fixed there, as if witnessing a divine miracle.

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  The room fills gradually; there are many French entomologists and a few from abroad, among them a Czech in his sixties who people say is some prominent figure in the new regime, a minister perhaps or the president of the Academy of Sciences or at least a member of that academy. In any case, if only from the standpoint of simple curiosity, this is the most interesting figure in the assembly (he represents a new period in history, after Communism has gone off into the mists of time); yet amid this chattering crowd he is standing, tall and awkward, all alone. For a while, people were rushing up to grasp his hand and ask him various questions, but the discussion always ended much sooner than they expected, and after the first four sentences back and forth, they had no idea what to talk to him about next. Because when it came down to it, there was no mutual topic. The French reverted quickly to their own problems, he tried to follow them, from time to time he would remark, “In our country, on the other hand,” then, having seen that no one cared

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  what was happening “in our country, on the other hand,” he would move off, his face veiled in a melancholy that was neither bitter nor unhappy, but reasonable and almost condescending.

  As the others crowd noisily into the lobby with its bar, he enters the empty room where four long tables, arranged in a square, await the start of the conference. By the door is a small table with the list of the participants and a young woman who looks as left behind as he. He leans toward her and tells her his name. She has him pronounce it again, twice. Not daring to ask him a third time, she leafs vaguely through her list for a name that might resemble the sound she has heard.

  Full of fatherly goodwill, the Czech scientist leans over the list and finds his name: he puts his finger on it: CECHORIPSKY.

  “Ah, Monsieur Sechoripi?” says she.

  “It’s pronounced Tche-kho-rjips-qui.’”

  “Oh, that’s a tough one!”

  “And incidentally, it is not written correctly, either,” says the scientist. He takes up the pen he sees on the table, and above the C and the R he draws the little marks that look like inverted circumflexes.

  The secretary looks at the marks, looks at the scientist, and sighs: “It’s awfully complicated!”

  “Not at all, it’s very simple.”

  “Simple?”

  “You know Jan Hus?”

  The secretary glances quickly over the list of guest conferees, and the Czech scientist hastens to explain: “As you know, he was a great Church reformer in the fourteenth century. A predecessor of Luther. Professor at Charles University, which was the first university to be established in the Holy Roman Empire, as you know. But what you do not know is that Jan Hus was also a great reformer of orthography. He succeeded in making it marvelously simple. In your language, to write what you pronounce ‘tch,’ you must use three letters, t, c, h. The Germans even need four: t, s, c, h. Whereas, thanks to Jan Hus, all we need in our language is a single letter, c, with that little mark above it.”

  The scientist leans again over the secretary’s table, and in the margin of the list, he writes a c, very big, with an inverted circumflex: C; then he looks into her eyes and articulates in a very clear, sharp voice: “Tch!”

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  The secretary looks into his eyes too and repeats: “Tch.”

  “Yes. Perfect!”

  “It’s really very useful. Too bad people don’t know about Luther’s reform anywhere except in your country.”

  “Jan Hus’s reform,” says the scientist, acting as if he had not heard the French girl’s gaffe, “is not completely unknown. There is one other country where it is used … you know where, don’t you?”

  “NO.”

  “In Lithuania!”

  “In Lithuania,” the secretary repeats, trying vainly to recall where in the world to place that country.

  “And in Latvia too. So now you see why we Czechs are so proud of those little marks over letters. [With a smile:] We would willingly give up anything else. But we will fight for those marks to the last drop of our blood.”

  He bows to the young woman and moves to the quadrangle of tables. Before each seat is a small card bearing a name. He finds his own, looks at it a long while, takes it up in his fingers

  and, with a sorrowful but forgiving smile, brings it to show to the secretary.

  Meanwhile, another entomologist has stopped at the entrance table to have the young woman circle his name. She sees the Czech scientist and
tells him: “Just one moment, Monsieur Chipiqui!”

  The Czech makes a magnanimous gesture to indicate: Don’t worry, mademoiselle, I’m in no hurry. Patiently, and not without a touching modesty, he waits beside the table (two more entomologists have stopped there), and when the secretary is finally free, he shows her the little place card:

  “Look, funny, isn’t it?”

  She looks without much understanding: “But, Monsieur Chenipiqui, see, the accents, there they are!”

  “True, but they are regular circumflexes! They forgot to invert them! And look where they put them! Over the E and the 0! Cechoripsky!”

  “Oh yes, you’re right!” says the secretary indignantly.

  “I wonder,” the Czech scientist says with increasing melancholy, “why people always forget them. They are so poetic, these inverted circumflexes! Don’t you think so? Like birds in

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  flight! Like doves with wings outspread! [His voice very tender:] Or butterflies, if you prefer.”

  And he leans again over the table to take up the pen and correct the orthography of his name on the little card. He does it very modestly as if to apologize, and then, without a word, he withdraws.

  The secretary watches him go, tall, oddly misshapen, and suddenly feels suffused with maternal fondness. She pictures an inverted circumflex in the form of a butterfly fluttering around the scientist and finally settling on his white mane.

  As he moves toward his seat, the Czech scientist turns his head and sees the secretary’s tender smile. He responds with his own smile, and along his way he sends her three more. The smiles are melancholy yet proud. A melancholy pride: this would describe the Czech scientist.

  name, anyone can understand. But where did he get his pride from?

  This is the essential element in his biography: a year after the Russian invasion in 1968, he was driven out of the Entomological Institute and had to become a construction worker, and that went on until the end of the occupation, in 1989, that is, for about twenty years.

  But aren’t there hundreds, thousands of people losing their jobs all the time in America, in France, in Spain, everywhere? They suffer from it, but they derive no pride from it. Why is the Czech scientist proud and not they?

  Because he was driven from his position not for economic reasons but for political ones.

  Fine. But in that case, still unexplained is why misfortune from economic causes should be less serious or less noble. Should a man dismissed because he displeased his boss feel shame, whereas one who loses his position over his political views is entitled to boast of it? Why is that?

  Because in an economic dismissal the dismissed person plays a passive role: there is no courage in his stance to admire.

  This seems an obvious distinction, but it is not.

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  That he should be melancholy after seeing the circumflexes incorrectly positioned over his

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  For the Czech scientist, who was driven from his position after 1968 when the Russian army installed a particularly loathsome regime in the country, had accomplished no act of courage, either. Chief of one of his institute’s divisions, he was interested only in flies. One day, with no warning, a dozen notorious opponents of the regime surged into his office and demanded that he give them a room where they could hold semi-clandestine meetings. They were playing by the rules of moral judo: turning up by surprise and making a little audience of observers all by themselves. The unexpected confrontation put the scientist in a complete bind. Saying “yes” would immediately entail disagreeable risks: he could lose his position, and his three children would be barred from the university. But he hadn’t enough courage to say “no” to the micro-audience who were already taunting him in advance for cowardice. He therefore ended up agreeing and despised himself for his timidity, his weakness, his incapacity to resist being pushed around. So, to be accurate, it was timorousness, not courage, that eventually got him driven from his position and his children driven from school.

  If that is so, then why in hell does he feel proud?

  The more time passed, the more he forgot his initial aversion to the opponents and got into the habit of seeing his “yes” back then as a voluntary, free act, the expression of his personal revolt against the hated regime. Thus he has come to count himself among those who stepped onto the great stage of history, and it is from that conviction that he draws his pride.

  But isn’t it true that countless people are perpetually involved in countless political conflicts and can therefore take pride in having stepped onto the great stage of history?

  I should clarify my thesis: the scientist’s pride is due to the fact that he stepped onto the stage of history not at just any random moment but at the exact moment when the lights came up on it. The lighted stage of history is termed a Planetary Historic News Event. Prague in 1968, floodlit and observed by cameras, was a Planetary Historic News Event par excellence, and the Czech scientist is proud to feel its kiss upon his brow unto this very day.

  But a great trade negotiation, or summit meetings of world powers, these too are important

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  news events, also floodlit, filmed, discussed; how is it they do not arouse in their participants that same thrilled sense of pride?

  I hasten to add a final distinction: the Czech scientist was touched not by the grace of just any random Planetary Historic News Event but by the sort termed Sublime. A News Event is Sublime when the man at stage front is suffering while gunfire clatters in the background and the Archangel of Death hovers overhead.

  So this is the definitive formulation: the Czech scientist is proud to have been touched by the grace of a Sublime Planetary Historic News Event. He knows full well that this grace sets him apart from all the Norwegians and Danes, all the French and English, present in the room with him.

  five sheets of his brief paper, which he knows is no great shakes: having been at a remove from scientific work for twenty years, he could do no more than summarize what he had published when, as a young researcher, he had discovered and described an unknown species of fly which he named Musca pragensis. Now, hearing the chairman pronounce the syllables that must surely signify his name, he rises and moves toward the speaker’s seat.

  In the twenty seconds his journey takes, something unexpected happens to him: he is overcome by emotion: good Lord, after so many years, here he is again among the people he respects and who respect him, among scientists who are kindred minds and from whose midst fate had snatched him; when he stops at the empty chair meant for him, he does not sit; he wants for once to obey his feelings, to be spontaneous and tell his unknown colleagues what he feels.

  “Excuse me, my dear ladies and dear gentlemen, for expressing my emotion, which I did not anticipate and which has caught me by surprise. After an absence of twenty years, I am once again able to address a gathering of people who

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  At the head table is a seat where the speakers succeed one another; the Czech scientist is not listening to them. He awaits his own turn, from time to time reaching into his pocket to touch the

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  think about the same problems as I do, who are stimulated by the same passion as I am. I come from a country where, merely for saying aloud what he thought, a man could be deprived of the very meaning of his life, since for a man of science the meaning of his life is nothing else but his science. As you know, tens of thousands of men, the entire intelligentsia of my country, were driven from their positions after the tragic summer of 1968. Just sis months ago, I was still a construction worker. No, there is nothing humiliating to that, a person learns a lot, earns the friendship of simple, honorable folk, and comes to realize also that we scientific folk are privileged, for to do work that is also our passion is a privilege, yes, my friends, a privilege my fellow construction workers have never known, because it is impossible to be passionate about carrying a girde
r. This privilege denied me for twenty years I have back now, and I am fairly drunk with it. That, dear friends, is why I see this moment as an enormous celebration, though it remains a somewhat melancholy one.”

  As he speaks these last words, he feels tears welling in his eyes. That bothers him a little, he

  sees again the image of his father, who as an old man was continually in an emotional state and wept at every turn, but then he says to himself, why not let go for once: these people should feel honored by his emotion, which he proffers them like a little gift from Prague.

  He is not mistaken. The audience too is moved. Hardly has he pronounced the final word than Berck rises and applauds. The camera is there in an instant, it films Berck’s face, his hands applauding, and it films the Czech scientist as well. The entire room rises, slowly or swiftly, faces smiling or serious, everyone is clapping, and they enjoy it so much that they do not know when to stop; the Czech scientist stands before them, tall, very tall, awkwardly tall, and the more awkwardness radiates from his figure, the more he is touching and feels touched, so that his tears no longer hide beneath his eyelids but roll solemnly down around his nose, toward his mouth, toward his chin, in full sight of all his colleagues, who start applauding still harder, if possible.

  Finally, the ovation thins, people sit back down, and the Czech scientist says in a trembling voice: “I thank you, my friends, I thank you with all my

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  heart.” He bows and moves toward his place. And he knows that right now he is living the greatest moment of his life, the moment of glory, yes, of glory, why not say the word, he feels grand and beautiful, he feels famous, and he wants his walk to his seat to be long and never-ending.