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Ignorance... Not Necessarily Bliss

Ignorance... Not Necessarily Bliss
Recounting a relationship that refuses to resume

by Brian Conley

Milan Kundera once again examines the emotional fallout from the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in his newest novel, Ignorance. To Kundera fans, this is familiar territory, artfully explored in other novels such as The Joke and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, as well as in his contemporary masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Ignorance revolves around the lives of Josef and Irena, both Czech expatriates returning to Prague after a 20-year absence. Compelled by the dying wish of his late wife, Josef leaves his home in Denmark to visit his family. Irena, who is visiting Prague at the behest of her erstwhile lover, Gustaf, recently set up office there. Irena and Josef meet on the plane. Recognizing that he is the man with whom she had nearly had a sexual liaison two decades ago, Irena is delighted at their chance meeting; Josef is confused. He does not remember her.

Once in Prague, the two go their separate ways but agree to meet before Josef returns to Denmark. On their visits, both Josef and Irena encounter an unfamiliar city that arouses in them only ambivalence. Even a meeting with his brother yields little emotion for Josef. His brother assumes that the Josef standing before him is the same Josef he had known 20 years earlier. His brother's and sister-in-law's superficial questioning tip Josef to the fact that they are locked into a misconception of who he is, based on their recollections of who he once was. Josef's brother says to him, "You got married over there, I believe?" and Josef replies with a simple, "Yes."

Josef's brother never pries further into Josef's relationship with his wife, neglecting even to find out whether she is dead or alive. Josef chooses not to elaborate.

A central theme of the book is that people change, yet our perceptions of them are often colored only by our memories of who they have been. Kundera makes the case that this principle works in reverse as well. While reading letters he had written in his youth, Josef discovers that the person he once was does not mesh with his recollection of who he had been. The relationship between the book's two protagonists is similarly based on misconception or, as Kundera terms it, "ignorance." Irena is ignorant of nearly everything about Josef, yet she chooses to project a lifetime of unfulfilled desires on him. Josef does not even know Irena's name.

In the book's most poignant scenes, Josef and Irena meet as planned. They have dinner before returning to Josef's hotel room, where they begin to make love. Wishing to fuel Josef's passion, Irena begins to utter a litany of vulgar words, all spoken in Czech. The sound of these words, which Josef has not heard in two decades, inflames his desire. As their lovemaking reaches fever pitch, it is obvious to Irena that her strategy is working. But while her behavior is born of her desire to have Josef reciprocate her affections, she fails to understand that his needs are more temporal than hers.

Josef had come to Prague hoping to feel nostalgic about his homeland—a feeling he has finally found in the arms and in the vulgar words of a woman he hardly knows. Tragically for Irena, he remains ignorant of her more essential, enduring needs. It's the story of two people who come from the same place, have a shared moment in their histories, become exiles for the same reasons, meet again by chance, and share the most intimate of experiences, yet retain two very different perspectives on the same events.

While Kundera has made a brilliant career of examining the emotional baggage that has surely followed him since the days of his youth, in Ignorance he gives the reader the distinct impression that the nostalgia for his homeland before the Prague Spring of 1968 is waning. "Prague is not what it used to be," he seems to be saying. "And neither are we."

The fact that Kundera has written his last three books in French rather than in his native Czech seems almost allegorical. Yet readers should be comforted to know that, despite some of the changes in Kundera's work, he has not lost his ability to use his unique brand of philosophic, autobiographic fiction to beautifully explore fundamental issues that affect us all.