The Festival of Insignificance

Abstract

disconnection clinic with a woman who assigns him manual tasks in her garden. While he is aware that the robot, like the human being, is the product of electrical impulses, and knows that, like himself, Today is capable of “intelligence, sentiments , and emotions,” Tim’s work leads him to appreciate the world of nature, to which he had been oblivious. Jarry describes poetically the gradual awakening of Tim to the sounds of birds, the colors of the sky, the calm. He wanders off into the woods, without a destination. During this week Today is taken in by an aging singer, who tries to use him as an accompanist, then leaves him for a lover. Today manages to reboot his system and make contact with Tim’s family, where he learns of Tim’s cure of disconnection. He develops independence. The contrast between the two beings— Tim and Today—leads to an ironic conclusion in which the robot has more strength than the human who trained him. Adele King Paris Milan Kundera. The Festival of Insignificance. Trans. Linda Asher. New York. Harper. 2015. 115 pages. It has been thirteen years since Milan Kundera last published a novel. The Festival of Insignificance is Kundera’s tenth novel and the fourth to be written in French. Although The Festival of Insignificance is the shortest of his last four novels, its theme may be the broadest. It’s incredibly difficult to summarize the plot other than to say that it revolves around four men in contemporary Paris over the course of two days. The four men are at least in late middle age. Like Kundera’s nonfiction, The Festival of Insignificance is divided into seven parts. Each part orbits the lives of Alain, Ramon, D’Ardelo, and Charles. There are various minor characters who make appearances as well as a strange subplot featuring Joseph Stalin. The novel begins in June with Alain contemplating the exposed navels he spots on various women he sees while strolling through Paris. What follows is a postmodern meditation on the insignificance of life and the fact that our navels are signs that fundamentally tie us to our mothers. The existential dilemma Kundera explores is not as finely tuned as in his previous work but is nonetheless resonant here. What the characters come to realize is that the navel is an unambiguous sign of humanness. Our individuality, the particular individuality of identity, gives way to the general. As Kundera’s Alain exclaims: “The thighs, the breasts, the buttocks have a different shape on each woman. So those three golden sites are not only arousing, they also express a woman’s individuality. You could never mistake the buttocks of the woman you love. The beloved buttocks, you’d recognize them among a hundred others. But you could not identify the woman you love by her navel. All navels are alike.” Tua Forsström One Evening in October I Rowed out on the Lake Tran. David McDuff Bloodaxe Books / Dufour Editions A Swedish-English bilingual edition of poems by the celebrated poet Tua Forsström, this robust collection of beautiful landscape imagery demonstrates Forsström’s keen eye for capturing the complexities of the natural world as well as the ambiguities that can arise in the tensions between nature and the human experience. George Economou Unfinished and Uncollected: Finishing the Unfinished Poems of C. P. Cavafy and Uncollected Poems and Translations Shearsman Books Rather than fulfilling the conventional job of a translator, George Economou uses his poetic disposition to translate and then complete the unfinished poems of the late Greek poet C. P. Cavafy. While Economou does not insist that he is the authority on how Cavafy would have finished the poems, he presents these poems as an artistic vision, written in the spirit of a classic poet. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 79 What may be most important about this novel is the fact that it further ties Kundera to the French language. In fact, I suggest that readers take Slowness, Identity, Ignorance , and The Festival of Insigni