A Sartrean Loo k on Kundera's L'idenüté

Abstract

This paper proposes an aestheticreading of Milan Kundera's L'idenüté. The reconstruction and solidification of the inner dynamics of this work is done from the stand point of existential philosophy, such as it is imprinted and defended by Jean-Paul Sartre's first philosophical book L'etre et le néant and his novel La nausée. It is thus a reading of L'idenüté based upon Sartre's l'etre·pour-autrui, modality that flows from the Czech novelist's own text and -based upon the characters' dialectics- is nailed within the Eirifühlung of a loving relationship marked by the loak. In this context. the A. examines whether the 'Kunderian' characters have paid the cost imposedon them by the (greatest) French existentialist in order to protect their "identity".In other words. whether they have chosen to tum provisionally into that immobile and exterior objectivity into which liberiy, defining them as jor-themselves. has become past and foreign.