Away From Thebes

Milan Kundera’s most popular work remains the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The style is Kundera’s fingerprint blend of philosophical musing and character development, the story of two odd couples, set against a penumbra of Communism, the Czech experiment.

As to the penumbra, consider the following excerpt:

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes of were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists: You're the ones responsible for our country's misfortunes (it has grown poor and desolate), for its loss of independence (it has fallen into the hands of the Russians), for its judicial murders!

And the accused responded: We didn't know! We were deceived! We were true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent!

...It was in this connection that Tomas recalled the tale of Oedipus: Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent. Unable to stand the sight of the misfortunes he had wrought by 'not knowing,' he put out his eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes.

When Tomas heard Communists shouting in defense of their inner purity, he said to himself, As a result of your 'not knowing,' this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt? How can you stand the sight of what you've done? How is it you aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see? If you had eyes, you would have to put them out and wander away from Thebes!

How do you read it? Is Tomas growing angry and bitter at the government which has begun systematically trying to control his life, or has he simply found an interesting analogy, betraying an ethical inconsistency?

Or is Kundera’s horror coming through Tomas (Kundera was born Czech and forced to flee because of his criticism of the invading Soviets)? Perhaps he’s testing out his own uncertainty, letting his characters advance tentative views, while he sits back and decides: are the Communists truly evil, as Tomas perceives, or are they to be forgiven their sins, for their righteous intentions?

I don’t know enough to say.

But for my part, I smell blood.

The intentions were surely beautiful, after a fashion—the great salvation of the proletariat: they saw so much suffering, and they wouldn’t have it. The inequality offended the gut, and nothing like the existential crisis of another’s suffering to spur one into rebellious action. But does the ignorance of the moment excuse the death of the next? To find Utopia, one had to sniff forbidden routes; the Party had to be made omnipotent to battle the damned potency of all the others. But once the centralization was accomplished, the world veered not towards Marx’ paradise, but to newfound terrors all its own. And the question posed remains are they excused by intentions?

Or are the Communists, like Oedipus before them, as damned and guilty as he is? Should they all, as Tomas advised, gouge out their eyes for their sins?

The first day of my sophomore year history class the professor announced that we’d be reading The Communist Manifesto, and then he offered: “Stalin is not what Marx intended at all! That murderous tyrant has nothing to do with Communism!” Marx is innocent! And I, young and liberal and curious about Communist ideology, neither vomited nor screamed.

But the answer was clearly shrill and tear-choked: “So what? Marx’ intentions are of no comfort—none at all—to the victims of how many pogroms? How many gulags? How many disappearances and silences and starvations and complete sufferings? Damn his intentions, and damn yours! Look at the results, and then gouge out your eyes at what you’ve seen!”

My thoughts, not Kundera’s.

So the question is interesting, but it’s moot now—we have seen the Dantean Hell of the Communists. The corruption that governs concentrated power, and how easily and totally the collectivist paradigm is perverted and seduced. Tomas’ Communists could protest that they were indeed innocent, that their intentions were pure, that they did not know. And there is perhaps some God who will forgive them, even if I will not.

Reality has warned us all.

Whatever our beliefs—we know the horrors of dreams unmoored—next time, we shall have no excuse.

And, should our ideas propel more tyrants into the reins, then there will be no recourse, no salvation, but to pop our eyes, and stumble away into the bloody dark.