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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Ignorance>
I finished reading "Ignorance" by Milan Kundera yesterday. I like the writer, he is subtle. I used to read almost all his other novels in Chinese, including the Book of Laughter and Forgetting,the Joke, Laughable Loves, Life is Elsewhere, Identity,Prague Spring, Immortality and Slowness.Ignorace is the first English version I read.
The story is about several emigrants, Irena from Czechoslovakia, her Swede boyfriend Gustaf, and another Czech Josef. It somehow reminds my current situation, being in another country which is very different from my own. After Irena emigrated to France, she decided to enjoy life there and be a person who doesn't live in the past, she doesn't want any impact from her past life in Czechoslovakia. The same happens to her boyfriend, who nearly forgets where he was from. But there is a big difference between them due to certain political reason. People always have different views on emigrates from different places, to Irena, it is stereotype. Those from communist Czechoslovakia are "pitied", they are "sad", they miss home, "nostalgic".
The last part of the book is dramatic and sad. Gustaf always thinks that Irena misses her home, he was trying hard to build his office in Prague thus Irena may have the chance to go back. Gustaf, after some time, started to like Prague, he feels good, relaxed, totally forgets where he was from when he is in Prague. That place does not remind him his past. Hence, he started to like Irena's mother since she likes Prague too. And he was eager to know Irena's past, and her mother is the only connectionto him. However his girlfriend Irena was trying to forget the place where she came from. when Josef appears, she remembers their encounter at a bar in Prague which drew her attention to a large extent, she immediately fell in Josef during their reunion, Sadly, Josef did not remember anything between they two, he treated her as a stranger, he sleeps with her not because of she is Irena but a stranger. Irena was desperate about this and felt she herseelf is like a whore...
Irena is this kind of woman who tends to put her whole weight of life on someone who she thinks she can rely on, Gustaf was one, so was Josef. However Irena is easily hurt because her life is" without future". Her mother, who came to France to visit her daughter, did not care about her daughter much but was interested in strangers, Irena felt she was ignored and she was speechless about her mother's awkward response to her fervor. Her mother, another lonely woman, in the end, seduced Gustaf, was seeking attention as well.
These emigrants are lonely, not the generally defined loneliness, they just feel something lost in their lives, They are struggling to be accepted and working hard to adapt new environment. Sometimes they feel being ignored, this cold ignorance hurts them deeply, but this feeling is indescribable. Some, like Irena who tries hard to forget all this is still living under the shadow, because others do not forget, others somehow would remind her of being a "sad emigrant".
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