The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.”

This is the crux of one of the novel’s major philosophical questions: Is life light or heavy, and which of the two is more meaningful?

“This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.”

This is an oblique criticism of the Czechoslovak government and all totalitarian regimes. It suggests that such governments commit atrocities against their people and then use history, the passage of time, and ideological shifts to “whitewash” their crimes.

“If every second of our lives recurs in an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return, the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. This is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens.”

This passage explains Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return. In it, the narrator posits a world in which each of our actions has the potential to reverberate infinitely and is terrified at the prospect of one small decision having such great potential consequences.