Milan Kundera is one of my dearest writers. Because in the last days I had a debate with two of my friends about the street dogs in Romania, I want to end the debate with an extensive quote taken from “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. Please do read this. The quote is taken from here, and you can find it on pp. 289-290
“The first years following the Russian invasion could not yet be characterized as a reign of terror. Because practically no one in the entire nation agreed with the occupation regime, the Russians had to ferret out the few exceptions and push them into power. But where could they look? All faith in Communism and love for Russia was dead. So they sought people who wished to get back at life for something, people with revenge on the brain. Then they had to focus, cultivate, and maintain those people’s aggressiveness, give them a temporary substitute to practice on. The substitute they lit upon was animals.
All at once the papers started coming out with cycles of features and organized letters-to-the-editor campaigns demanding, for example, the extermination of all pigeons within city limits. And the pigeons would be exterminated. But the major drive was directed against dogs. People were still disconsolate over the catastrophe of the occupation, but radio, television, and the press went on and on about dogs: how they soil our streets and parks, endanger our children’s health, fulfill no useful function, yet must be fed. They whipped up such a psychotic fever that Tereza had been afraid that the crazed mob would do harm to Karenin. Only after a year did the accumulated malice (which until then had been vented, for the sake of training, on animals) find its true goal: people. People started being removed from their jobs, arrested, put on trial. At last the animals could breathe freely.
Tereza kept stroking Karenin’s head, which was quietly resting in her lap, while something like the following ran through her mind: There’s no particular merit in being nice to one’s fellow man. She had to treat the other villagers decently, because otherwise she couldn’t live there. Even with Tomas, she was obliged to behave lovingly because she needed him. We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions—love, antipathy, charity, or malice—and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
One of the heifers had made friends with Tereza. The heifer would stop and stare at her with her big brown eyes. Tereza knew her. She called her Marketa. She would have been happy to give all her heifers names, but she was unable to. There were too many of them. Not so long before, forty years or so, all the cows in the village had names. (And if having a name is a sign of having a soul, I can say that they had souls despite Descartes.) But then the villages were turned into a large collective factory, and the cows began spending all their lives in the five square feet set aside for them in their cow sheds. From that time on, they have had no names and become mere machinae animatae. The world has proved Descartes correct.
Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin’s head and ruminating on mankind’s debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears.
That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications:
Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.
And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, “the master and proprietor of nature,” marches onward.”
Beautiful! I lived in Romania for 3 years and love animals, Romania, the book by Kundera!
[…] Czech novelist Milan Kundera writes about the incident in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in a passage about humanity’s relationship with […]
hi there
sint ovidiu din apuseni,in aus de ceva ani ,sotia mea e veg ,
eu sunt de acord cu parerile ei chiar daca mananc carne,
de cand suntem casatoriti am mers odata in rom dar nu am avut puterea morala
sa o duc la noi la moti,stii cum expun oamenii porcii si mieii la noi
ea ma refer la sotia mea e din brasil ,si acum 2 zile mi a trimis link ul asta
si a zis vezi ca nu esti singurul din rom care are simtaminte fata de animale
ma bucur sincer ma ficior ca am cu ce ma mandri din rom ca m am saturat sa iau peste nas fiindca sunt romanescu
with respect ovidiu bordea din campeni jud alba
alias tony montana putana
the people in aus they like to call me like that because i have steel cohones
personally i preffer Motul
P>S chiar daca nu o sa mi raspunzi ma bucur ca mai exista in rom post decembrista o entitate morala ca tine
pps acuma sper ma ficior ca nu ti o iei in cap ca te
am laudat atata
Păi Gutten Tag bă Moțule din Apusăni! Și io mă bucur amu cî, deșî îs moldovean, iubesc mult Ardealul bre, șî oi fost di multi ori prin Apusăni, mai cu așijderea iubesc Peștera Focu Viu și Cetățîle Ponorului. Îs mai mișto decît Cetatea Neamțului, tre să recunosc. Păi da io acum mă bucur și io că am găsît un suflet bun. Hai să mai pălăvrăgim, că nu mi-o iau la căpățînă.