The Girl with the Round Glasses
The Sleeping Woman. Picasso
When Josef K is summoned to the trial, he is given the address of the courts but no specific time at which to make his appearance. But from the moment he is told that he is under trial for unknown charges, it takes over his life. It becomes a huge metaphysical destiny — Destiny — that looms over his life, blotting out everything unrelated.
The first time he goes to the courts is on a Sunday, and although he has not been given a specific time for his appearance, he is anxious to get there as soon as possible. It is the same anxiety that Gregor Samsa feels when he realizes that he will be late for work on account of being turned into a giant bug. Josef K, on his way to the courts, passes the common folk going about their Sunday lives– washing clothes, relaxing, playing with their children. But he doesn’t notice any of this, even though, according to Milan Kundera, the true beauty of life lies in such minutiae.
Life offers us these glimpses of escape, but as humans, we are often so enmeshed in the grand narrative of Destiny, we don’t notice these doorways. Today I am interested in one such case (spoiler alert) — Franz’s love for Sabina from The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Although Sabina had heartlessly left Franz when he got too attached to her, he is still in love with her. Everything he ever does is to satisfy the invisible gaze of the lover he has lost. For Franz, Sabina is his Destiny.
In Kundera’s novels, we are often offered a view into the main characters’ lives from a different point of view. Often, the protagonists of these interludes are not even given a proper name but just a description. For example, in Life is Elsewhere, there is a whole chapter titled “The Man in his Forties,” whose protagonist is the lover of the novel’s main character’s ex-girlfriend. Inspired by the polyphonic music of the Baroque, it is a contrapuntal poetic device that seems to belong entirely to Kundera. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it is the girl with the round glasses that plays this part for Franz.
The girl with the round glasses is one of Franz’s students who becomes his lover after Sabina leaves him. Even though Franz thinks of Sabina as his Life, it is the girl with the round glasses who is his real life. It is she who really loves Franz, not Sabina. For Sabina, her abstract love of freedom and betrayal are more important.
It is only in his dying moments that Franz thinks of the girl in the round glasses. The one who truly loved him and perhaps the only one who will mourn his passing. And when Franz is buried, his estranged wife, whom he despised, gets to write the epitaph on his grave — “A return after long wanderings” — a beautiful sounding kitsch which hides the literal truth of her final triumph over Franz’s rebellion. We don’t learn if Sabina is even aware of his death.
But it is the girl in the round glasses who cries quietly for Franz. She was Franz’s real home. Not his wife. Not Sabina.
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