(De)Presenting the Self| Milan Kundera's Deconstruction of the Public Persona Through Paradox
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1997 (De)Presenting the self| Milan Kundera's deconstruction of the public persona through paradox Paula S. DelBonis-Platt The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation DelBonis-Platt, Paula S., "(De)Presenting the self| Milan Kundera's deconstruction of the public persona through paradox" (1997). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1452. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1452 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 1 yj Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of IV ^ O N T A N A Permission is granted by the author to reproduce dûs material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature** Yes, I grant permission _l No, I do not grant permission Author's SignatureÇ^uCLu Q -PCgUtf- Date O 1 I ^ ^ ~7____________________ Any copying for coimnercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. (De)Presenting the Self: Milan Kundera’s Deconstruction of the Public Persona Through Paradox by Paula S. DelBonis-PIatt B.S., Boston University, 1988 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana 1997 Approved by: .cJL' Chairpersonchairperson Dean, Graduate School >4, Date UMI Number: EP35719 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT OlnartiUon PUbHshing UMI EP35719 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest ProQ uest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 -1346 DelBonis-Platt, Paula S., M.A., July 1997 French (De)Presenting the Self: Milan Kundera’s Deconstruction of the Public Persona Through Paradox (123 pp.) Director: Dr. Christopher Anderson The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Milan Kundera deconstructs the public persona in his novels through the use of paradox. Kundera, a Czech writer who has lived in France for the past twenty-two years, uses the personae of his characters to establish the binary nature of human vision and to deconstruct these absolute poles by drawing them together to a point at which they become indistinguishable or interchangeable. Kundera achieves this deconstruction through the use of paradox. Rather than creating an emptiness where nothing is true, Kundera reveals a world of excess - the excess of human possibility, as well as the excess inherent in the postmodern sign. Kundera focuses on the public persona to achieve this Derridean deconstruction and the demystification of received ideas. The persona is created as a bridge and a bar between the interior life of his characters and the exterior world of the Other and of history. This study focuses on four principal areas — that of the plurality of the persona and its fissure in the face of these deconstructionist tactics; the interplay between the body, as used by the persona, and the soul; the historical interplay of the persona, particularly the events in Kundera’s native Czechoslovakia; and the realm of communication, both written and verbal, as used to convey the persona, an effort that results in miscommunication and the revelation of the multiple interpretations inherent in every sign. Kundera uses this deconstruction of the public persona as a critique of absolute truth - constructing a world of relativity and excess in which a pile of contradictory truths, each bearing an infinite number of shifting and ever-changing traces, emerges. The works studied include Kundera’s eight novels to date, as well as his play Jacques and His Master, and his two critical works. The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betraved. These works are studied in their original French, when written in that language, or in their French translations, along with the wealth of critical materials available on Kundera’s works. 11 f refocg Milan Kundera, the novelist, playwright, poet, and critic, has written extensively on the tradition of the novel and the enigma of the self as contained between its covers, ideas which complement the themes of persona and paradox which will be examined in the study which follows. It is with this in mind that I offer the following extract of an interview with Milan Kundera, published in the Winter 1987 edition of Salmagundi: All novels, of every age, are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: What is the self? How can the self be grasped? It is one of those fundamental questions on which the novel is based.. The quest for the self has always ended, and always will end, in a paradoxical dissatisfaction. I don.’t say defeat. For the novel cannot breach the limits of its own possibilities, and bringing those limits to light is already an immense discovery, an immense triumph of cognition. .. What possibilities remain for man in a world where the external determinants have become so overpowering that internal impulses no longer carry weight? . .. That life is a trap -- well, that we’ve always known. We are bom without having asked to be, locked in a body we never chose, and destined to die. On the other hand, the wideness of the world used to provide a constant possibility of escape. Suddenly, in our century, the world is closing in around us. The decisive event in that transformation of the world into a trap was surely the 1914 war, called (and for the first time in history) a world war. Wrongly “world.” . But the adjective “world” expresses all the more eloquently the sense of horror before the fact that, henceforward, nothing that occurs on the planet will be a merely local matter, that all catastrophes concern the entire world, and that consequently we are more and more determined by external conditions, by situations no one can escape, and which, more and more, make us resemble one another. (119- 23) 111 Table of Contents Abstract .....................................................................................................................ii Preface..................................................................................................................... iii Table of Illustrations .................................................................................................. v Introduction.............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Plurality of the Public Persona ......................................................... 7 I. Deconstruction Becomes Demystification ............................................. 9 II. Derridean Différe/ance.......................................................................... 13 III. Pairs ofBeing: Borders Between States............................................. 18 rV. Creation of the Self by the Other ......................................................... 21 V. False Unity: The Interchangeable/Exchangeable Persona ................... 35 VI. Man’s Triviality: Lightness, Weight, and Eternal Return .................... 39 Chapter Two: The Human Body — Persona Personified ....................................... 47 I. The Face: “The Individualism of Our Time” ......................................... 50 II. The Body: Revolt Against Unity ........................................................... 56 III. Death and the Body .............................................................................. 69 Chapter Three: History - The Persona’s Parallel - “An Investigation of Human Life In the Trap the World Has Become” ................................................. 72 I. Man in History........................................................................................ 74 II. Loss of Memory: The Totalitarian State ....................................... 77 III. The Idyll: Heaven or H ell ..................................................................... 80 IV. Circles and Lines.................................................................................. 84 Chapter Four: (Mis)Communication — (De)Presenting the Public Persona 88 I. Misinterpretation: The Multitude of Meanings...................................... 90 II. Graphomania: The Worded Persona ..................................................... 98 HI. Life on the Outside: Tamina and Lucie ............................................... 105 rV. Truth in Communication: A Relative Proposition .............................. 109 Conclusion.............................................................................................................