“There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of laziness we cannot return. Perhaps, however, there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out, because of impatience we cannot return.” Franz Kafka

We live in a world of clicks. Patience is in short supply. We want what we want and we want it now. In an inverted version of Gresham’s law: the perfection of virtual reality pushes out flaw-ridden reality. High speed internet caters to our every need wanted or not via apps. Artificial intelligence is faster and more thorough than the organic dumbed down version. Don’t dawdle, don’t think, time is precious. Speed dating is foreplay for vigorous vapid unemotional lovemaking.

A curious alliance: the cold impersonality of technology with the flames of ecstasy. I recall an American woman from thirty years ago, with her stern, committed style, a kind of apparatchik of eroticism, who gave me a lecture (chillingly theoretical) on sexual liberation; the word that came up most often in her talk was “orgasm”; I counted: forty-three times. The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition reduced to an obstacle to be got past as quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion, the only true goal of lovemaking and of the universe. Milan Kundera, Slowness

Presidential competence has become synonymous with speed. Rosevelt’s first one hundred days “devoted to starting the wheels of the New Deal” has become “the first 100 hours” of “historic action to kick off America’s golden age” under the current madcap President.

Awash in this paean to speed I turned to a masterpiece (or a mess of pieces as some might say): Milan Kundera’s Slowness. Early on in this wonderful novella Kundera stakes out his ground: “Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man.” He then he outlines the theme he pursues in the book. He wistfully asks the question that hounds him that he is unable to answer: “Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?”

Kundera’s novel is humorously built around two instances of lovemaking that take place at a French chateau where he and his wife “suddenly had the urge to spend the evening and night.” The sometimes serious, sometimes sad hilarious events that lead up to these two bouts of lovemaking two centuries apart form the substance of the peculiar tale that is told in the book.

Slowness is a much needed respite in this time of hate and hysteria which we Americans are living through.

The thesis of Slowness is that we moderners have lost the gift for slow living, and thus for remembering. We live fast, therefore we forget. Speed slows down time according to modern physics. Thus, someone who hurries through life has less time to think and remember.

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting … In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting. (Kundera)

We put that “secret bond” to use according to Kundera because our period is obsessed by the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered; that it is tired of itself; sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.

Speed has its benefits. While the author and his wife are driving to the chateau they are followed by a man on a motorcycle who “is watching for the chance to pass me; he is watching for the moment the way a hawk watches for a sparrow.”

Maybe this: the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time; he is outside time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

There are secondary themes in Slowness. Pontevin, a Ph.D historian who hangs out with “a gang of cronies” at Café Gascon, makes an interesting comparison between politicians and performers: All politicians nowadays, Pontevin says, have a bit of the dancer in them, and all dancers are involved in politics, which however should not lead us to mistake the one for the other. The dancer differs from the politician in that he seeks not power but glory; his desire is not to impose this or that social scheme on the world (he couldn’t care less about that) but to take over the stage so as to beam forth his self … Pontevin takes a long pause. He is the master of long pauses. He knows that only timid people fear them and that when they don’t know what to say, they rush into embarrassing remarks that make them look ridiculous.

Madame de T who seduces the young Chevalier in an 18th century love triangle uses conversation and various devious plans to delay the inevitable tryst. She uses anticipation and doubt to add to the ultimate thrill unlike the American woman described earlier. Conversation is not a pastime; on the contrary, conversation is what organizes time, governs it, and imposes its own laws, which must be respected.

The guests at the chateau are constantly gossiping, plotting and commingling as if they are in a complicated ballet which they are. Nothing in this novel stays a secret exclusive to two persons; everyone seems to live inside an enormous resonating seashell where every whispered word reverberates, swells, into multiple and unending echoes.

Everyone is anxious to make a good impression especially on the favored guests but always at a risk. When someone seeks to confirm his elect status by a direct, personal contact with someone famous, he runs the risk of being thrown out, like the woman who loved Kissinger. In theological language, that is called the Fall.

There are several hilarious moments in Kundera’s short novel. Poor Vincent says to Julie, a beautiful young typist: The only thing left for us is to revolt against the human condition we did not choose!” He then convinces her to disrobe and join him in the pool where he tries to copulate with her but fails in view of all the guests. Monsieur Tchécochipi, the Czech scientist with the unpronounceable name, becomes so emotional when it’s time for him to speak that he forgets to give his speech.

At the end of the novel Vincent speeds away on his motorcycle: He has only one desire: to forget this night speedily, this entire disastrous night, erase it, wipe it out, nullify it—and in this moment he feels an unquenchable thirst for speed.

The Chevalier leaves in his coach and returns to the eighteenth century. He feels a new wave of weariness. He strokes his face with his hand and catches the scent of love Madame de T. has left on his fingers. That scent stirs him to nostalgia, and he wants to be alone in the chaise to be carried slowly, dreamily to Paris.

Speed and slowness. There is no doubt which Kundera prefers. He imagines saying to the Chevalier: I beg you, friend, be happy. I have the vague sense that on your capacity to be happy hangs our only hope.

Our world at this moment has chosen speed. Where will it lead? “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”