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The Disturbing Quote by Milan Kundera That Will Make You Change Your View of Your Past
Learn from the wisdom of one of the best novelists of the 20th century.
There is a phrase that comes to my mind every time I feel nostalgia and rescues me.
It is a phrase inscribed at the beginning of the great novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
Kundera seems to shout it to me from beyond, to pull me out of that haunting that usually precedes the thought “any past was better”.
The sentence.
“The twilight of disappearance bathes everything with the magic of nostalgia; everything, including the guillotine.” — Milan Kundera.
With this phrase, Milan Kundera plays with Nietzsche’s theory of the eternal return.
Nietzsche’s theory is based on the fact that everything is circular, and history constantly repeats itself.
But even though life is cyclical, Milan Kundera reminds us that it is also linear: you cannot live yesterday twice.
And from that reality, nostalgia is born, the thought that any past was better.
