Milan kundera

categorical agreement with being.
The fact that until recently the word shit appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with 
moral considerations. You can't claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit 
is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability 
of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the 
bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner. 
It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a 
world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic 
ideal is called 
kitsch.
Kitsch is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and 
from German it entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated 
its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal 
and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which 
is essentially unacceptable in human existence. 
Sabina's initial inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in 
character. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist 
world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to 
wear—in other words, Communist kitsch. The model of Communist kitsch is the 
ceremony called May Day. 
She had seen May Day parades during the time when people were still enthusiastic or 
still did their best to feign enthusiasm. The women all wore red, white, and blue 
blouses, and the public, looking on from balconies and windows, could make out 
various five-pointed stars, hearts, and letters when the marchers went into formation. 
Small brass bands accompanied the individual groups, keeping everyone in step. As a 
group approached the reviewing stand, even the most blase faces would beam with 
dazzling smiles, as if trying to prove they were properly joyful or, to be more precise, in 
proper 
agreement.
Nor were they merely expressing political agreement with 
Communism; no, theirs was an agreement with being as such. The May Day ceremony 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
131
drew its inspiration from the deep well of the categorical agreement with being. The 
unwritten, unsung motto of the parade was not Long live Communism! but Long live life! 
The power and cunning of Communist politics lay in the fact that it appropriated this 
slogan. For it was this idiotic tautology ( Long live life! ) which attracted people 
indifferent to the theses of Communism to the Communist parade. 
Ten years later (by which time she was living in America), a friend of some friends, an 
American senator, took Sabina for a drive in his gigantic car, his four children bouncing 
up and down in the back. The senator stopped the car in front of a stadium with an 
artificial skating rink, and the children jumped out and started running along the large 
expanse of grass surrounding it. Sitting behind the wheel and gazing dreamily after the 
four little bounding figures, he said to Sabina, Just look at them. And describing a circle 
with his arm, a circle that was meant to take in stadium, grass, and children, he added, 
Now that's what I call happiness.
Behind his words there was more than joy at seeing children run and grass grow; there 
was a deep understanding of the plight of a refugee from a Communist country where, 
the senator was convinced, no grass grew or children ran. 
At that moment an image of the senator standing on a reviewing stand in a Prague 
square flashed through Sabina's mind. The smile on his face was the smile Communist 
statesmen beamed from the height of their reviewing stand to the identically smiling 
citizens in the parade below. 
How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their 
souls? What if, the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and 
began beating him up? 
The senator had only one argument in his favor: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the 
mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart 
reigns supreme. 
The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not, 
therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people 
have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, 
children running on the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love. 
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see 
children running on the grass! 
The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children 
running on the grass! 
It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. 
The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch. 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
132
And no one knows this better than politicians. Whenever a camera is in the offing, they 
immediately run to the nearest child, lift it in the air, kiss it on the cheek. Kitsch is the 
aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. 
Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side 
and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to 
escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can 
create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find 
ourselves in the realm of