Üksinduse maastikud Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabali ja Mati Undi teostes: “Olemise talumatu kergus”, “Liiga vali üksindus”, “Sügisball”

Abstract

The feeling of loneliness, the topicality of which is gradually increasing in time, requires more and more different approaches for understanding it. Fiction is one of the possible ways to untangle this feeling in a versatile, poetic manner. The writer Milan Kundera in his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Bohumil Hrabal in his story “Too Loud a Solitude”, and Mati Unt in his novel “Autumn Ball” have discussed loneliness from different angles, which, put together, enable us to build up a broad picture of this controversial feeling. As the research method, close reading and text analysis were used. The article introduces the psychological concept of loneliness and its types and analyses the literary works based on American philosopher Rubin Gotesky’s classification of loneliness. The article aims to find out what types of loneliness are discussed in the books and in what way they are manifested. All the books analysed in the article present situations and trains of thoughts in which the presence of loneliness is clearly perceivable. However, the border between the different types of loneliness is somewhat blurred. All these works include situations in which both forced and existential loneliness are present. There are also cases of intertwining physical and voluntary loneliness, but these are not the only combinations. Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” presents the greatest number of philosophical ideas related to loneliness; in Hrabal’s story “Too Loud a Solitude” successive abandonments in human relationships can clearly be noticed, and in Unt’s “Autumn Ball” the urban space bursting with existential loneliness enforces itself at the very beginning, casting a shadow on all the characters and their performance. Each of these works refers to loneliness both in a positive and negative key and the characters are often controversial.