"When a society is rich, its people don't need to work with their hands; they can devote themselves to activities of the spirit. We have more and more universities and more and more students. If students are going to earn degrees, they've got to come up with dissertation topics. And since dissertations can be written about everything under the sun, the number of topics is infinite. Sheets of paper covered with words pile up in archives sadder than cemeteries, because no one ever visits them, not even on All Souls' Day. Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, p. 103
By Milan Kundera
Published 1984
So beautiful.....
ReplyDeleteSo true and hardhitting
ReplyDeleteFantastic. I've long collected quotes from the books I love and until I found this space, truly believed I was the only one. So happy to realize a kindred spirit in this way. Captivating images, beautiful words, love, love love.
ReplyDeleteThe perishing of culture in overproduction is a reality. So stop, take a rest and listen to the music for a while, nothing else. Read poetry, nothing else. There is always one more mountain left to climb, so enjoy the one you're on just now. That is maybe a way to solve Kunderas problem. Or maybe not, for he writes about theses. However, the book I read by Erving Goffmann quotes lots of unpublished master and doctoral theses. Maybe there is hope for the cemeteries of science.
ReplyDeletelove this book. we read it in our english literature class and i gotta say, though some students found the book burdensom (ironically) and a bother to read, i looked forward to reading it and really analyzing Kundera's perceptions of lightness and weight. really amazing book.
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