Kundera

"If there were fewer funeral marches there might be fewer deaths. Understand what I'm trying to say: respect for tragedy is much more dangerous than the thoughtlessness of childish prattle. Do you realize what is the eternal precondition of tragedy? The existence of ideals that are considered more valuable than human life. And what is the precondition of wars? The same thing. They drive you to death because presumably there is something greater than your life. War can only exist in a world of tragedy; from the beginning of history man has known only a tragic world and has not been capable of stepping out of it. The age of tragedy can be ended only by the revolt of frivolity. Nowadays, people no longer know Beethoven's Ninth from concerts but from four lines of the Ode to Joy that they hear every day in the ad for Bella perfume. That doesn't shock me. Tragedy will be driven from the world like a ludicrous old actress clutching her heart and declaiming in a hoarse voice. Frivolity is a radical diet for weight reduction. Things will lose ninety percent of their meaning and will become light. In such a weightless environment fanaticism will disappear. War will become impossible."


March 3, 1996