Nietzsche's concept of eternal return in the essay 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'
~ The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a number one bestseller in France, where Czech exile Kundera lived for ten years, and appeared on bestseller lists in the United States. Kunderas. Milan Kundera, in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), reflects on the idea of eternal return conceived by Friedrich Nietzsche and the idea of binary opposition between lightness and weight proposed by Parmenides. The novel sets in motion a series of complicated matters. The problem is that the light life is meaningless. If everything only happens once, it might as well not have happened at all. In response, we can only live for beauty and pleasure. Yet we find the smallness of our lives unbearable and the unbearable lightness of existence. But if we act as if our actions are of eternal importance, in the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest burden of weight. If eternal return is the heaviest burden, then our life can oppose it in all its beautiful lightness.