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death 1.1
a butterfly in the pool, La Luna, Tuscany
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira
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I've just began re-reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1985) after sixteen years: thinking about Nietzsche's idea that we exist between 'eternal return' and 'absence of return'.
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times...the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht)...Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes [us] to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and [our] earthly being, and become only half real, [our] movements as free as they are insignificant (Kundera, 1985: 2).
A friend of mine, Iain Mackie, introduced me to Josh Raskin's I Met the Walrus (2008), the soundtrack of which is Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969). I think Lennon may have had this dichotomy in mind, when he referred to the "profound whatever" (interview with Jerry Levitan, 1969). Could it be that we live in, "a world that rests essentially on the non-existence of return, [where] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted" (Kundera, 1985: 4)? Or, refuting Parmenides' dialectical thinking, do we exist at once through the 'lightness' and 'heaviness' of being, until the two become ambiguously deceptive. Indeed, from a certain perspective, transience and infinity may be perceived as one, made both of 'heaviness' and 'lightness'.
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When Nietzsche Wept: Eternal Return (2007)
director and writer: Pinchas Perry
script based on Irvin D. Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession (1992)
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director: Josh Raskin
illustrator: James Braithwaite
soundtrack: Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969)
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