Identity

Author's name: Milan Kundera

Chantal's sentence, "Men no longer look at me," kept ringing in his head, and he imagined the story of her body: the body was lost among millions of other bodies until the day a gaze filled with desire landed on it, and she considered it part of the darkness of multiplicity. After that, the gazes multiplied and ignited this body, which since then has traversed the world like a torch. That was a glorious and luminous time; but then the gazes began to come, and the light gradually faded, until the day this body began to wander the streets like a wandering nothingness, translucent at first, then transparent, then invisible. On this journey, the sentence, "Men no longer look at me," represented the red signal that warned of the body's gradual fading. No matter how much he declared to her that he loved her and found her beautiful, his loving gaze was no comfort, because the gaze of love is the gaze of isolation. No; What she lacks is not a look of love, but a flood of unknown, obscene, lustful looks that descend upon her without choice, tenderness, or refinement. These looks are what draw her to human society. The look of love, however, tears her away from it.