How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph), with the exception of Part V, which runs (Part#. "Short Title". Paragraph). Part V has no numbered chapters—only title headings.
Quote #7
Because ever since they expelled me from the ring dance, I have not stopped falling, I am still falling, and all they have done now is push me once again to make me fall still farther, still deeper, farther and farther from my country into the deserted space of a world where the fearsome laughter of the angels rings out, drowning all my words with its jangle. (III.9.5)
Life as a dissident ain't exactly easy, as Kundera finds out. After speaking out against the Communist regime in his country, he finds himself on the outs in so many ways: professionally, politically, and even as a human being. The government has taken an eraser to his life. Everything he's written has been junked. All prospects for a career have vanished.
His sense of banishment and loneliness take on biblical proportions here, where the laughter of the angels recalls that moment when Adam and Eve are banished by the archangel Michael from the Garden of Eden (check out our summary of Milton's account here).
Quote #8
I imagine the world rising higher and higher around Tamina like a circular wall, and that she is a bit of lawn down at the bottom. Growing on that bit of lawn, there is only a single rose, the memory of her husband. (IV.4.4)
Tamina doesn't realize that her pathological need to connect with the past has to do with a profound sense of isolation and detachment from her present life. All meaning and purpose for her have been left in the grave with her husband. So it's completely appropriate that Kundera envisions Tamina as a kind of prisoner in a green courtyard with only the memory of her husband to keep her company.
Quote #9
General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside. (IV.9.14)
Kundera defines graphomania as the urge to write books. And everybody he meets seems to want to write his or her life story as a way to keep him- or herself from disappearing into a void. The problem? When everyone is chatting away on paper, nobody can hear the voices of others. The isolation needed to write becomes a more permanent separation from society—and that just makes everything worse.