The "pastoral" refers to a pure state of life, a kind of commonwealth, which is an important theme in classical European novels.
But in The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the destruction of it, and in the last chapter reconstructs a kind of pastoral, also capitalized pastoral, but different from socialism. In fact, what the author means is: socialism is a distorted reproduction of the old capitalized pastoral, but he is also as difficult to realize as the old capitalized pastoral. The lower-case pastoral, on the other hand, is a different kind of personal and individual harmony.
The capital pastoral means what Kundera calls "the abandonment of life", and it is precisely for this reason that kitsch expresses itself so appropriately, that kitsch, with its "absolute identification with life", is obliged to disregard the feces, the contradictions and the fragility of life, at all costs. With its "absolute identification with life", kitsch has to ignore at all costs the feces, that is to say, the contradictions and fragility of life; kitsch can only triumph by erecting "a screen to cover death". And it reduces and replaces life in capital letters with life in small letters.
Expanded Information
Thematic Ideas
In this novel, Milan Kundera introduces the novel to a philosophical level around the different experiences of several characters, and through their choices of life, he ponders on various categories such as return, kitsch, forgetfulness, time, and contingency and inevitability. life's destiny and value is the theme of the book.
No one can escape the question of the existence and value of life, which is just a process. In his view, life is a kind of pain, and this pain comes from people's wrong choice of life goals and wrong judgment of the value of life. The world is in diligent pursuit of its own goals, not realizing that the goal itself is a kind of emptiness.
Life has become vulgar because of the "pursuit", and human beings have become slaves to the "pursuit". In the name of "pursuit", no matter whether we go wild or follow the rules, in the end, we only repeat the previous generations endlessly. Therefore, the history of mankind will ultimately be left with only two words - "kitsch".
Kundera borrowed Thomas's words to say: history, like the life of an individual, is too light to bear, as light as a feather, as light as dust, rolled into space, and will not be repeated tomorrow. Thinking about the meaning of existence under such a macroscopic notion of eternal reincarnation, we need to focus only on the sensual world of reality, rather than counting on any non-existent heaven or reincarnation of the soul.
Only need to focus on the survival of the moment, "existence begins in each moment", the past no longer exists, the future has not yet come, the real existence of only the present moment, any moment has been sent to all the past and all the future. Therefore, to live in the present, to cling to life, to grasp life in the present time.
Baidu Encyclopedia - The Unbearable Lightness of Life