SOURCE: "Kundera's Laws of Beauty," in Essays in Literature, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Spring, 1992. pp. 144-58.

In the following essay, Hans analyzes Kundera's conception of beauty and shame in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being provides a serious revision of our conceptions of the nature of beauty, and in so doing it forces us to reconsider the relationship between the aesthetic and our daily lives. At the same time, the novel itself reflects the changes Kundera has brought about via his Nietzschean assessment of forms. Part traditional fiction, part essay, part lyrical exclamation, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a decidedly impure form, one that celebrates its mixed heritage even as it establishes an essential relationship between shame and beauty. In addressing the linkages between the beautiful and the shameful, the novel also registers the ways in which our attitude toward these...