The Unbearable Lightness of Sacrifice

Abstract

Kundera’s essay Les testaments trahis ends with a parable eulogizing the defence of textual literality against an unrestricted hermeneutic freedom. As a last wish, a dying peasant asks his son not to fell the old pear tree growing in front of the window and embodying for Kundera the will sealed with filial piety. As long as the son’s pious memory of his father lasts, the tree will not be felled and by analogy, according to Kundera, our respectful memory of the author should keep the letter of her work intact. Yet no matter how strongly this parable may appeal to our emotions, the phenomenological abyss of literality continues to defy the possessive claim of the author. That which is worthy of respect in the will might elicit being kept alive otherwise than through blind submission, perhaps in the way of a circumspective inquiry into its essence. Let us not forget that the letter symbolized by the tree belongs in the first place to life with its power to challenge any would-be absolute foundations.