Vertigo and Perambulators
I
Here is something more interesting than my bizarre coping mechanism. Perhaps you’ve noticed that I have come under the charm of a certain Czech genius. If you want to know the whole truth the fact is that I have become a raging Kundera apologist. Unabashed at that. The following words are from my latest textual obsession, the unmatched volume, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. To be honest, I have not gotten this excited/stimulated/intrigued/obsessed with a modern author since, well, I guess this is a first. Pynchon was close with The Crying of Lot 49, but the philosopher’s bones in my body get far more out of Kundera. Enough. Here’s the text:
Anyone whose goal is “something higher” must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified we defend ourselves.
It’s not that Kundera’s description of vertigo is strikingly new and genius; rather it is the fact that he transposes vertigo into a spiritual metaphor that captures me with this passage.
Thought I’d add that; I was having my readers yawning “so what” as they typed in the URL of the next site. Of course, maybe noting has changed, but my text feels more justified.
I missed a word:
I was having visions of my readers…
What an awesome blog you have. I loved your post on rings.
Thank you Lillee, very much. I hope you will continue to be encouraged and challenged by the words on this blog.
I like what I’ve seen of Kundera…which is, in fact, the few paragraphs you’ve posted here.
I’ve been scanning Half.com, looking for a good used copy of Unbearable Lightness.
I guess that means your post was a success.
You have a very interesting life
Everybody knows that a peramulator is something you make coffee in.
But is it “emptiness”?
Admittedly, I feel a bit breathless reading this quote, but I somehow want to resist it . . .
The set up of the quote seems as if the speaker wants to warn off lofty expectations, yet . . . if we fall into emptiness what is to fear? Is the emptiness that from which we climb? Speaking in binary terms, does fullfillment hang above? How is emptiness embodied in a voice?
Aha! That’s it–the phrase “voice of emptiness below us which tempts us and lures us” feels too wrought and a bit hollow . . . is a mermaid down there tempting with a siren’s song??
however, “the desire to fall” is quite haunting.
Haunting indeed Tim. thx.
Your questions are provacative, Squirrley, but I must change the direction of your discourse, redirect the ideas, if you will.
>if we fall into emptiness what is to fear?<
Nothing. Emptiness is the sum of all fears.
>(binarily)…does fulfillment hang above?<
Fulfillment, I think is very close to the opposite of emptiness; but the truth of the matter is that emptiness oft times masquerades itself as fulfillment. A dirty lie–pure and utter kitsch–is the sort of fulfillment that has at its core nothing at all.
>How is emptiness embodied in a voice?<
It is not and cannot be embodied in any way. How does one signify absense? ø? The inherrent instability of absence as a symbol is due to its unembodied nature (aww, the power of language to discuss nothing). If we shifted to a Post-Structuralist metaview (logically impossible, to be sure:) we would find that all voices are actually empty, and that asking whether anything can be embodied in a voice is ridiculous empty play.
To be sure, perhaps the phraseology is “wrought,” but I think the idea is magnificent. Emptiness…which tempts is merely a positive way of communicating the desire to deny substance, to deny meaning and identity.
PS. I leave for my honeymoon tomorrow. Scan the archives, leave a note…