The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, th… - Milan Kundera

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

وقد انتهـى به المطـاف إلى الاطمئنان إلى أن فكرة الحب الذى يحل فجأة كالصاعقة يحرر المرأة دفعـة واحدة من كل كابح وحشمة، وبما أنّها عفيفة وبريئة، فأنها تسارع إلى منح نفسها للعشيق مثلما تفعل أى فتاة داعـرة، بل أكثر من ذلك، فالحب حرّر بداخلهـا ينبـوع إلهام على درجة من القوة بحيث أن سلوكهـا العفـوى يمكن أن يشبه سلـوك امرأة ذات باع طويل فى الفجــور ..
فعبقـرية الحـب قد تعوّض الخبرة فى رمشة عيـن ..

In the middle of the night, he woke up and realized to his surprise that he had been having one erotic dream after the other. The only one he could recall with any clarity was the last: an enormous naked woman, at least five times his size, floating on her back in a pool, her belly from crotch to navel covered with thick hair. Looking at her from the side of the pool, he was greatly excited. How could he have been excited when his body was debilitated by a gastric disorder? And how could he be excited by the sight of a woman who would have repelled him had he seen her while conscious? He thought: In the clockwork of the head, two cogwheels turn opposite each other. On the one, images; on the other, the body's reactions. The cog carrying the image of a naked woman meshes with the corresponding erection-command cog. But when, for one reason or another, the wheels go out of phase and the excitement cog meshes with a cog bearing the image of a swallow in flight, the penis rises at the sight of a swallow. Moreover, a study by one of Tomas's colleagues, a specialist in human sleep, claimed that during any kind of dream men have erections, which means that the link between erections and naked women is only one of a thousand ways the Creator can set the clockwork moving in a man's head. And what has love in common with all this? Nothing. If a cogwheel in Tomas's head goes out of phase and he is excited by seeing a swallow, it has absolutely no effect on his love for Tereza. If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond Es muss sein! Though that is not entirely true. Even if love is something other than a clockwork of sex that the Creator uses for His own amusement, it is still attached to it. It is attached to it like a tender naked woman to the pendulum of an enormous clock. Thomas thought: Attaching love to sex is one of the most biza

She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.