Slow

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: "Slow" is a novel written in French by Milan Kundera after he moved to France. Compared to the heavy themes explored in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Immortality," the theme of "Slow" seems astonishingly light—it is arguably Kundera's most lighthearted work. The author himself once said, "There is no serious word in the work." Through a driving incident during a journey, Kundera discusses themes of speed, time, memory, history, and forgetting. Set against the backdrop of a castle, it interweaves a beautiful love story, blending two temporal speeds—contemporary and 18th-century—in a miraculous way, a gift bestowed by the technological revolution.
A runner, unlike a motorcyclist, always carries his presence with him, constantly aware of the blisters on his feet and the puffs of breath. When running, he feels his weight, his age, more acutely than ever, becoming acutely aware of his own passage of time. When one entrusts the performance of speed to a machine, everything changes. From that moment on, the body is set aside, handed over to an invisible, immaterial speed—a pure, tangible, and miraculous speed.
How did the joy of slowness disappear? Ah, where have the idlers of old gone? The heroes of folk songs, the loafers who wandered from mill to mill, spending nights outdoors, where have they vanished? Have they disappeared along with the country roads, the grasslands, the clearings, and the wilderness? In the Czech language, there is a proverb used to describe their sweet leisure: "They are the windows to the benevolent God." Those who gaze through the windows of the benevolent God will never grow weary; they are happy.
In our world, leisure has degenerated into idleness, which is a different matter entirely. The idle person is a lost one, one who is weary and perpetually seeks the action he lacks.