Describe Books Conducive To Life is Elsewhere
| Original Title: | Život je jinde |
| ISBN: | 0060997028 (ISBN13: 9780060997021) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Jaromil |
| Literary Awards: | Prix Médicis Etranger (1973), National Book Award Finalist for Translation (1975) |
Milan Kundera
Paperback | Pages: 432 pages Rating: 3.95 | 14244 Users | 781 Reviews
Interpretation To Books Life is Elsewhere
Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed, and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a sombre farce.
Particularize Containing Books Life is Elsewhere
| Title | : | Life is Elsewhere |
| Author | : | Milan Kundera |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 432 pages |
| Published | : | July 25th 2000 by Harper Perennial (first published 1973) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. European Literature. Czech Literature. Literature. Novels |
Rating Containing Books Life is Elsewhere
Ratings: 3.95 From 14244 Users | 781 ReviewsComment On Containing Books Life is Elsewhere
The same girl who turned me on to the Calvino book loaned me this one. And though she regularly thwarted my amorous ambitions, I am forever grateful. For I think about this book on a daily basis: it tells the story of a boy named Jamoril, born to be a great poet. However, swept up in the pressures of family and the politics of the time, he becomes a hack instead. Every day, we all must make this choice, between living to our fullest potential or getting bogged down in the details of the small
Milan Kundera sets the destiny of a whole generation under the sign of failure. The hero isn't a young boy from those places and times, but one that lives his painful growth in the age when the communism settled down in Czechoslovakia. He is a vulnerable adolescent, haunted by the fear of pathetic, but he has an extreme purity. The poet Jaromil is attracted by the ideology of Marx, which promises him a revenge against a world that can not include him. Step by step, he becomes a prisoner of a
"Why was he so foolish as to want to step on to the throat of his own song? What was the sense of giving up poetry for the sake of revolution?"Jaromil, a plunged product of mother's prodigious love, transforms from a pet to an artist to a poet to a communist, and somehow cannot be all of them at the same time which is possibly the bane of his existence. Each transfiguration subverts a part of his flatness and adds to him something unsavory. This book has so much substance scattered all over and
I always find it hard to accurately appraise books whose protagonists I hate. Both Jaromil and his mother are small and odious, and my distaste is magnified by the fact that Jaromil is a character whom, if portrayed through a different narratorial lens, I likely would have loved. Thats the point of this book, though, a biting and deeply effective critique of the lyrical poet and often Kundera seamlessly transitions into speaking of Hugo and Rimbaud and Pushkin in the same breath (and indeed
Kundera's novels appeal to my aesthetics in ways that few authors can accomplish. Part 6 is worth the entire book, just to show what some structural changes can do to add depth and breadth to a story. Also, on how utterly incapable we are of truly knowing other people. It is refreshing to be told a story in a way that is unique and not formulaic.The Rimbaud and Lermontov counterpoint to Jaromil resonates like great poetic images. Jaromil is Kundera's lyrical soul incarnate, incorporating all of
the first hundred pages or so made me really anxious because i just couldn't make myself like the book, and who am i, really, if i am actively disliking a book by kundera?? i was like, yeah, uh huh, i get what you're doing with the misogyny, but please, either knock it off or redeem your little monster of a protagonist, stat. and why are there still two hundred more pages left? what. a. chump. (though i was hoping he was just toying with me.)then! before i knew what was happening, kundera zipped
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