The Joke by Milan Kundera, translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim
London: Faber and Faber, 1983 (original Czech publication 1967) ISBN 0571130194
Milan Kundera is probably best-known for his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but The Joke - his first novel - certainly made him well-known not just in his native Czechoslovakia, but also in the West. In fact in an author's note inserted in this particular edition of the book he explains how previous editions of his work in English were not only unauthorized, but bowdlerized by those who wished to use his book as a propaganda tool when, as he claims - "The Joke is a love story!"
Well yes, it is a love story, but it is also much more than that. It is a brutal satire on the Communist system as it existed in Czechoslovakia, an exploration of hatred and revenge, and of love and forgiveness. Told in an episodic fashion, it is the story (mainly) of Ludvik and Lucie, their love story, the story of how they came together and split apart, and the story of how life led them in the directions it did, and how "a person's destiny often ends before his death".
We see that for Lucie, the one thing the Ludvik wanted from her to seal their love was the one thing she couldn't give him, and the one thing that Ludvik was too self-absorbed to understand. Ludvik's betrayal by his party comrades sent him to a penal battalion and a totally different life to the one he had been expecting. His burning desire for revenge spectacularly backfires when he commits adultery with his oppressor Zemanek's wife, only to find out they were no longer living together. Ludvik's journey through the novel not only shows the reader the dangers of going against the cultural norms of any time (and how those norms change through Ludvik's journey - at the end of the book he finds Zemanek espousing the very views which sent Ludvik off to the mines), but the dangers of looking for revenge after the moment; Kundera, - through Ludvik - explains that once time has passed the people or institutions one wants to have revenge on have changed - they are no longer what they were. And so revenge becomes hollow.
Lucie's story is one of trying to find love, and instead finding sex and violence. After being traumatized by gang-rape in her youth, her reaction to Ludvik's demands is more than understandable, except for Ludvik, who in his state of incarceration did not think of Lucie at all in his desire for physical release. Lucie eventually finds some sort of solace in religion, the forgiveness of God, and a new life in a new town.
While we can believe Kundera's assertion that The Joke is a love story, it is a love story conditioned by the regime that Czechs were living under at the time he wrote it. It is depressing to read of a society where conformity or prison were the only options, and that love becomes just another thing that is controlled by the State and its minions. When the simple joy of music is corralled, controlled and used to indoctrinate, what life can truly flourish? At the end of the book, when Ludvik comes full circle playing his treasured folk music with his oldest friend to an unfeeling crowd, Jaroslav's heart attack while playing sums up the themes of constriction and repression that course through this book.
The one thing I'm still not sure I understand, pampered bourgeois that I am, was whether The Joke was intended to be funny.....I'll leave that to wiser heads than mine.
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