Milan kundera

Es muss sein. Es muss sein. 
It was an allusion. The last movement of Beethoven's last quartet is based on the 
following two motifs: 
To make the meaning of the words absolutely clear, Beethoven introduced the 
movement with a phrase, 
Der schwer gefasste Entschluss, 
which is commonly 
translated as the difficult resolution.
This allusion to Beethoven was actually Tomas's first step back to Tereza, because she 
was the one who had induced him to buy records of the Beethoven quartets and 
sonatas. 
The allusion was even more pertinent than he had thought because the Swiss doctor 
was a great music lover. Smiling serenely, he asked, in the melody of Beethoven's 
motif, 
Muss es sein? 
]a, es muss sein! 
Tomas said again. 
Unlike Parmenides, Beethoven apparently viewed weight as something positive. Since 
the German word 
schwer
means both difficult and heavy, Beethoven's difficult resolu-
tion may also be construed as a heavy or weighty resolution. The weighty resolution is 
at one with the voice of Fate (
 Es muss sein! );
necessity, weight, and value are three 
concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value. 
This is a conviction born of Beethoven's music, and although we cannot ignore the 
possibility (or even probability) that it owes its origins more to Beethoven's 
commentators than to Beethoven himself, we all more or less share, it: we believe that 
the greatness of man stems from the fact that he 
bears
his fate as Atlas bore the 
heavens on his shoulders. Beethoven's hero is a lifter of metaphysical weights. 
Tomas approached the Swiss border. I imagine a gloomy, shock-headed Beethoven, in 
person, conducting the local firemen's brass band in a farewell to emigration, an 
Es 
Muss Sein 
march. 

---

"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
19
Then Tomas crossed the Czech border and was welcomed by columns of Russian 
tanks. He had to stop his car and wait a half hour before they passed. A terrifying 
soldier in the black Uniform of the armored forces stood at the crossroads directing 
traffic as if every road in the country belonged to him and him alone. 
Es muss sein! 
Tomas repeated to himself, but then he began to doubt. Did it really have 
to be? 
Yes, it was unbearable for him to stay in Zurich imagining Tereza living on her own in 
Prague. 
But how long would he have been tortured by compassion? All his life? A year? Or a 
month? Or only a week? 
How could he have known? How could he have gauged it? Any schoolboy can do 
experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypotheses. But man, 
because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to 
follow his passion (compassion) or not. 
It was with these thoughts in mind that he opened the door to his flat. Karenin made the 
homecoming easier by jumping up on him and licking his face. The desire to fall into 
Tereza's arms (he could still feel it while getting into his car in Zurich) had completely 
disintegrated. He fancied himself standing opposite her in the midst of a snowy plain, 
the two of them shivering from the cold. 
From the very beginning of the occupation, Russian military airplanes had flown over 
Prague all night long. Tomas, no longer accustomed to the noise, was unable to fall 
asleep. 
Twisting and turning beside the slumbering Tereza, he recalled something she had told 
him a long time before in the course of an insignificant conversation. They had been 
talking about his friend Z. when she announced, If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have 
fallen in love with him.
Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he 
realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z. Apart 
from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite 
number of unconsummated loves for other men. 
We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or 
weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer 
be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the 
Es muss sein! 
to our own great love. 
Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion 
that the love story of his life exemplified not 
Es muss sein! 
(It must be so), but rather 
Es 
konnte auch anders sein 
(It could just as well be otherwise). 
Seven years earlier, a complex neurological case 
happened 
to have been discovered at 
the hospital in Tereza's town. They called in the chief surgeon of Tomas's hospital in 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
20
Prague for consultation, but the chief surgeon of Tomas's hospital 
happened
to be 
suffering from sciatica, and because he could not move he sent Tomas to the provincial 
hospital in his place. The town had several hotels, but Tomas 
happened
to be given a 
room in the one where Tereza was employed. He 
happened
to have had enough free 
time before his train left to stop at the hotel restaurant. Tereza 
happened to
be on duty, 
and 
happened 
to be serving Tomas's table. It had taken six chance happenings to push 
Tomas towards Tereza, as if he had little inclination to go to her on his own. 
He had gone back to Prague because of her. So fateful a decision resting on so 
fortuitous a love, a love that would not even have existed had it not been for the chief 
surgeon's sciatica seven years earlier. And that woman, that personification of absolute 
fortuity, now again lay asleep beside him, breathing deeply. 
It was late at night. His stomach started acting up as it tended to do in times of psychic 
stress. 
Once or twice her breathing turned into mild snores. Tomas felt no compassion. All he 
felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned.