Life Is Elsewhere

The author initially intended to call this novel _The Lyrical Age_. The

lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an

epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values:

childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet.

His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed,

and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character,

horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil

is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud

entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a sombre farce.