Yearning to return to our native lands and original
places of abode is not merely a noble feeling; it is also one of the strongest emotions that rules and drives us. But for Milan Kundera, who was born in Czechoslovakia
and later settled in France, nostalgia is a far more complex feeling that comes with
different significances.
Czechoslovakia was born at the end of the
First World War, disappeared during the Second World War and reappeared thereafter.
It was literally effaced from the map of European Civilization during Russian
occupation till about the fall of communism in 1989. How would a fine novelist
like Milan Kundera find such
changes in the status of his motherland land when he is swept by that noble feeling of nostalgia? And
how would that generate different possibilities of human existence? Milan Kundera’s
novel “Ignorance” is deep meditation on the feeling of nostalgia as it comes up
with moving pictures, insights and some important questions. The
story moves around two strangers---a man and a woman who had earlier met but
once----who are visiting their motherland after a long gap; it’s a story about
what happens to them and what happens between them.
Yearning for our origins, homelands and native
places is a powerful emotion that makes people do great things; it is also at
the core of great narratives, literature and creative acts. It is a theme that runs deeply through our
shared history and literature. Two examples are worth mentioning: Odysseus (in Odyssey)
in western mythology and Ram (in Ramayana) in Indian mythology. Odysseus returned to Ithaca after a gap of
about twenty years, ten years of war and ten years of search for motherland. After
great struggle he returns ultimately to Ithaca only to get embroiled in further
killings and adventures. He comes back to Penelope, his wife, his own
men, his own land and nation; and he finds himself in some murky and violent affairs
that had precisely been created due to his long absence from Ithaca. Even Penelope
first refuses to believe him. He has to prove himself to her and to others. How
much do the inhabitants of Ithaca care for him after his
leaving Ithaca? Not much! In his absence
they lived their own time they did not share with him. There is a long discontinuity in time, life
and events. To them he belonged to a period that was not theirs. He lived
outside the pale of their existence, in darkness and nobody wanted to know where
he was and what he did. And hence after his return he finds that painful
distance and abyss that separates him from his own people.
This
distance and abyss is also manifest in Ramayana, the famous Indian epic where
King Ram and his wife Sita return to Ayodhya after a period of fourteen years! Even during the fourteen years, Ram and Sita were
separated for some time as Ravana, the villain, had abducted Sita; she was rescued after Ram killed Ravana. Ram
ultimately returns to Ayodhya with Sita. But this sense of satisfaction proves only
short lived as under the pressure of public opinion Ram was required to abandon
his own wife. Sita had been abducted by
Ravana and remained in his custody for a fairly long time, a fact the Indian people
at that time would hardly accept. Ramayana
ends in the tragedy of Ram and Sita. Again the longing for the homeland generates
a complex set of events!
Returning to one’s own motherland with after a long gap may apparently be a happy affair. But not
always; at times it would be far more complex. We mostly leave in the presence
and the present concerns; our memory of the past is buried under layers of
later experiences and these past memories surface sometimes only under the powerful
pull of nostalgia. The shared memories may under such circumstances be
available to the one who is plagued by nostalgia and not to others. Such asymmetries of memories make people strangers
even in their homelands.
No
wonder then Milan Kundera finds “Nostalgia” a powerful theme that becomes far
more fertile in generating different experiences and different possibilities of
existence. Alienation, nostalgia and home-coming runs
through Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance”, which is a beautifully crafted novella.
This is the story of Irena and Josef, two strangers originally from
Czechoslovakia, who had left Czechoslovakia in the past, had met only once when
they left Czechoslovakia and who later on meet briefly in Prague while on their
respective short visit to their motherland. Their love story, that began and
apparently ended in their only visit twenty years ago, remains deeply etched in
their minds. How do they react to each other when they meet after twenty years
under similar circumstances? Were they
really welcome in Prague? Was their visit spiritually and historically
redeeming enough that would elevate nostalgia that propelled them to go to
Prague?
When
Joseph and Irena ultimately return to their homes from Czechoslovakia, they had
seen, in bits and pieces, the reality of homecoming. The contrast between surge
of longing and the belittling hard realities they face in Prague is the high
mark of this novel. And in this story Milan Kundera finds large spaces for
meditating on such concepts as alienation, yearning for motherland, love and
nationalism; he explores and demonstrates some dynamics of how the communities
and nations (and even families) look to estranged people who had once left
their homelands and yet carry a deep sense of belongingness to their erstwhile
nation. He also shows how lofty feelings of nostalgia that elevate and raise
men from the ordinary and the mundane, ultimately encounter the petty concrete
details that make loftiness feel its own weight.
