The Dreamers – People Who Live in the Imaginary Eyes of Those Who Are Not Present (Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being)

“And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the cate­gory of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.”

Georgia May Jagger for Vogue UK October 2013, ‘Dream A Little Dream’. Photographer: Venetia Scott.

Czech writer Milan Kundera was born on the 1st April 1929. As a little celebration of what would be his birthday (he died in July 2023) I decided to share a bit of his writing.

I have read a few of his novels over the years. “Slowness” is the novel which I discussed here on the blog on a few occassion and you can read more about the beauty of slowness and the Fragonard’s Rococo lovers here. Still, my favourite of his novel is “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, published in 1984, which is also his most popular novel. The novel follows the lives of a man, Tomáš, and two women, Terezea and Sabina, in the times of political and social turmoil in the late 1960s and 1970s in Prague. It seems to me that Kundera always writes his novels in a way that the characters serve as a springboard for one or another philososphical discussion. Many things are discussed in this novel; Oedipus complex, the eternal return, kitsch, totalitarianism, love vs freedom, lightness vs weight… One such idea is that of the dreamer and I wanted to share this passage from the novel with you today because I think his cathegorisation is fascinating. Here it is:

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public.

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need.

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day, the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the cate­gory of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.”