Milan kundera

machinae 
animatae.
The world has proved Descartes correct. 
Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting 
Karenin's head and ruminating on mankind's debacles. Another image also comes to 
mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it 

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with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put 
his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears. 
That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of 
people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But 
for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: 
Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his 
final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. 
And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his 
head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road 
along which mankind, the master and proprietor of nature, marches onward. 
Karenin gave birth to two rolls and a bee. He stared, amazed, at his own progeny. The 
rolls were utterly serene, but the bee staggered about as if drugged, then flew up and 
away. 
Or so it happened in Tereza's dream. She told it to Tomas the minute he woke up, and 
they both found a certain consolation in it. It transformed Karenin's illness into a 
pregnancy and the drama of giving birth into something both laughable and touching: 
two rolls and a bee. 
She again fell prey to illogical hopes. She got out of bed and put on her clothes. Here, 
too, her day began with a trip to the shop for milk, bread, rolls. But when she called 
Karenin for his walk that morning, he barely raised his head. It was the first time that he 
had refused to take part in the ritual he himself had forced upon them. 
She went off without him. Where's Karenin? asked the woman behind the counter, who 
had Karenin's roll ready as usual. Tereza carried it home herself in her bag, She pulled 
it out and showed it to him while still in the doorway. She wanted him to come and fetch 
it. But he just lay there motionless. 
Tomas saw how unhappy Tereza was. He put the roll in his mouth and dropped down 
on all fours opposite Karenin. Then he slowly crawled up to him. 
Karenin followed him with his eyes, which seemed to show a glimmer of interest, but he 
did not pick himself up. Tomas brought his face right up to his muzzle. Without moving 
his body, the dog took the end of the roll sticking out of Tomas's mouth into his own. 
Then Tomas let go of his end so that Karenin could eat it all. 
Still on all fours, Tomas retreated a little, arched his back, and started yelping, making 
believe he wanted to fight over the roll. After a short while, the dog responded with 
some yelps of his own. At last! What they were hoping for! Karenin feels like playing! 
Karenin hasn't lost the will to live! 
Those yelps were Karenin's smile, and they wanted it to last as long as possible. So 
Tomas crawled back to him and tore off the end of the roll sticking out of Karenin's 
mouth. Their faces were so close that Tomas could smell the dog's breath, feel the long 

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hairs on Karenin's muzzle tickling him. The dog gave out another yelp and his mouth 
twitched; now they each had half a roll between their teeth. Then Karenin made an old 
tactical error: he dropped his half in the hope of seizing the half in his master's mouth, 
forgetting, as always, that Tomas was not a dog and had hands. Without letting his half 
of the roll out of his mouth, Tomas picked up the other half from the floor. 
Tomas! Tereza cried. You're not going to take his roll away from him, are you?
Tomas laid both halves on the floor in front of Karenin, who quickly gulped down the 
first and held the second in his mouth for an ostentatiously long time, flaunting his 
victory over the two of them. 
Standing there watching him, they thought once more that he was smiling and that as 
long as he kept smiling he had a motive to keep living despite his death sentence. 
The next day his condition actually appeared to have improved. They had lunch. It was 
the time of day when they normally took him out for a walk. His habit was to start 
running back and forth between them restlessly. On that day, however, Tereza picked 
up the leash and collar only to be stared at dully. They tried to look cheerful (for and 
about him) and pep him up a bit, and after a long wait he took pity on them, tottered 
over on his three legs, and let her put on the collar. 
I know you hate the camera, Tereza, said Tomas, but take it along today, will you?
Tereza went and opened the cupboard to rummage for the long-abandoned, long-
forgotten camera. One day we'll be glad to have the pictures, Tomas went on. Karenin 
has been an important part of our life.
What do you mean, 'has been'? said Tereza as if she had been bitten by a snake. The 
camera lay directly in front of her on the cupboard floor, but she would not bend to pick 
it up. I won't take it along. I refuse to think about losing Karenin. And you refer to him in 
the past tense! I'm sorry, said Tomas. 
That's all right, said Tereza mildly. I catch myself thinking about him in the past tense all 
the time. I keep having to push it out of my mind. That's why I won't take the camera.
They walked along in silence. Silence was the only way of not thinking about Karenin in 
the past tense. They did not let him out of their sight; they were with him constantly, 
waiting for him to smile. But he did not smile; he merely walked with them, limping 
along on his three legs. 
He's just doing it for us, said Tereza. He didn't want to go for a walk. He's just doing it to 
make us happy.
It was sad, what she said, yet without realizing it they were happy. They were happy not 
in spite of their sadness but thanks to it. They were holding hands and both had the 
same image in their eyes: a limping dog who represented ten years of their lives. 

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They walked a bit farther. Then, to their great disappointment, Karenin stopped and 
turned. They had to go back. 
Perhaps that day or perhaps the next Tereza walked in on Tomas reading a letter. 
Hearing the door open, he slipped it in among some other papers, but she saw him do 
it. On her way out of the room she also noticed him stuffing the letter into his pocket. 
But he forgot about the envelope. As soon as she was alone in the house, she studied 
it carefully. The address was written in an unfamiliar hand, but it was very neat and she 
guessed it to be a woman's. 
When he came back later, she asked him nonchalantly whether the mail had come. 
No, said Tomas, and filled Tereza with despair, a despair all the worse for her having 
grown unaccustomed to it. No, she did not believe he had a secret mistress in the 
village. That was all but impossible. She knew what he did with every spare minute. He 
must have kept up with a woman in Prague who meant so much to him that he thought 
of her even if she could no longer leave the smell of her groin in his hair. Tereza did not 
believe that Tomas meant to leave her for the woman, but the happiness of their two 
years in the country now seemed besmirched by lies. 
An old thought came back to her: Her home was Karenin, not Tomas. Who would wind 
the clock of their days when he was gone? 
Transported mentally into the future, a future without Karenin, Tereza felt abandoned. 
Karenin was lying in a corner whimpering. Tereza went out into the garden. She looked 
down at a patch of grass between two apple trees and imagined burying Karenin there. 
She dug her heel into the earth and traced a rectangle in the grass. That was where his 
grave would be. 
What are you doing? Tomas asked, surprising her just as she had surprised him 
reading the letter a few hours earlier. 
She gave no answer. He noticed her hands trembling for the first time in many months. 
He grabbed hold of them. She pulled away from him. 
Is that a grave for Karenin?
She did not answer. 
Her silence grated on him. He exploded. First you blame me for thinking of him in the 
past tense, and then what do you do? You go and make the funeral arrangements! She 
turned her back on him. 
Tomas retreated into his room, slamming the door behind him. 
Tereza went in and opened it. Instead of thinking about yourself all the time, you might 
at least have some consideration for him, she said. He was asleep until you woke him. 
Now he'll start whimpering again.

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She knew she was being unfair (the dog was not asleep); she knew she was acting like 
the most vulgar of women, the kind that is out to cause pain and knows how. 
Tomas tiptoed into the room where Karenin was lying, but she would not leave him 
alone with the dog. They both leaned over him, each from his own side. Not that there 
was a hint of reconciliation in the move. Quite the contrary. Each of them was alone. 
Tereza with her dog, Tomas with his. 
It is thus divided, each alone, that, sad to say, they remained with him until his last 
hour. 
Why was the word idyll so important for Tereza? 
Raised as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is 
an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise: life in Paradise was not 
like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle 
among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom. 
As long as people lived in the country, in nature, surrounded by domestic animals, in 
the bosom of regularly recurring seasons, they retained at least a glimmer of that 
paradisiac idyll. That is why Tereza, when she met the chairman of the collective farm 
at the spa, conjured up an image of the countryside (a countryside she had never lived 
in or known) that she found enchanting. It was her way of looking back, back to 
Paradise. 
Adam, leaning over a well, did not yet realize that what he saw was himself. He would 
not have understood Tereza when she stood before the mirror as a young girl and tried 
to see her soul through her body. Adam was like Karenin. Tereza made a game of 
getting him to look at himself in the mirror, but he never recognized his image, gazed at 
it vacantly, with incredible indifference. 
Comparing Adam and Karenin leads me to the thought that in Paradise man was not 
yet man. Or to be more precise, man had not yet been cast out on man's path. Now we 
are longtime outcasts, Hying through the emptiness of time in a straight line. Yet 
somewhere deep down a thin thread still ties us to that far-off misty Paradise, where 
Adam leans over a well and, unlike Narcissus, never even suspects that the pale yellow 
blotch appearing in it is he himself. The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be 
man. 
Whenever, as a child, she came across her mother's sanitary napkins soiled with 
menstrual blood, she felt disgusted, and hated her mother for lacking the shame to hide 
them. But Karenin, who was after all a female, had his periods, too. They came once 
every six months and lasted a fortnight. To keep him from soiling their flat, Tereza 
would put a wad of absorbent cotton between his legs and pull a pair of old panties over 
it, skillfully tying them to his body with a long ribbon. She would go on laughing at the 
outfit for the entire two weeks of each period. 
Why is it that a dog's menstruation made her lighthearted and gay, while her own 
menstruation made her squeamish? The answer seems simple to me: dogs were never 

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expelled from Paradise. Karenin knew nothing about the duality of body and soul and 
had no concept of disgust. That is why Tereza felt so free and easy with him. (And that 
is why it is so dangerous to turn an animal into a