recurring theme?

I had no other picture to accompany my new topic, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (I've become quite attached to these pink flowers)! I'm not even halfway through the book, and I already feel compelled to discuss it! The flow of the words (possibly due to a great translation) read like a novel from no later than the early 20th century, and yet it wasn't written that long ago, and the story itself unfolds in 1968. I just HAVE to share two of my favorite passages that I read today! The first excerpt describes what happens when Sabina, one of the main characters, discovers the modernization of music (a.k.a. "rock") isn't just taking place in Switzerland, but all over the globe:

"...she had thought that only in the Communist world could such musical barbarism reign supreme. Abroad, she discovered that the transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of total ugliness. The total ugliness to come had made itself felt first as omnipresent acoustical ugliness: cars, motorcycles, electric guitars, drills, loudspeakers, sirens. The omnipresence of visual ugliness would soon follow."

While I don't agree that rock falls under the category of muscial barbarism, I do applaud the fact that we live with a lot of acoustical ugliness (the cars etc). Even better is the reference to visual ugliness, which you just can't seem to get away from here in Japan, or more so in the ever-inflating United States of America (inflation of heads and inflation of belt sizes).

My second favorite paragraph of the day centers around Sabina again, while on a trip in New York, discussing its unintentional beauty:

Franz said, "The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base [rather than from an aesthetic premeditated quality]. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry."
Sabina said, "Unintentional beauty. Yes. Another way of putting it might be 'beauty by mistake.' Before beauty disappears entirely from the earth, it will go on existing for a while by mistake. 'Beauty by mistake' -the final phase in the history of beauty."

I'm not sure what's so intoxicating about this passage. Perhaps I'm just jealous. Perhaps I wish I could be unintentionally beautiful too, sparkling with a sudden wondrous poetry! Or maybe it's because of my roommate in university, who swore that the most beautiful women on Earth were the unconventionally beautiful ones. Ever since then I've always wished I could fit in the "unconventionally beautiful" fold. Most likely I'm just attracted to the combination of the word "beautiful" with words that have an "un" prefix!

(Is anyone lost? Did any of this make sense? I promise never to write a "deep" post again!)