Character Analysis
We have to remind you that Petrarch is not the real Petrarch, and Boccaccio is not the real Boccaccio: these are meant to be nicknames for Czechoslovakian poets who are affiliated with the university where the student is enrolled. Kundera chooses these fake names to protect the actual poets who were still living in Czechoslovakia at the time this book was written.
But Kundera doesn't choose these poets' names willy-nilly. First, he wants to honor his colleagues by picking the names of renowned poets. And then, he wants the names to be appropriate for each person.
Petrarch and Boccaccio, for instance, really do espouse the ideas (and noted behaviors) of the 14th-century Italian literary figures they're named after. The real Petrarch is known especially for his Rime Sparse, or Scattered Rhymes, which include poems about his undying and unrequited love for the unrealistically fabulous Laura. Boccaccio is known for his fart jokes, his stories of husbands cheated on in horrible and hilarious ways, and his tales of very, very naughty women.
See the resemblances?
Petrarch and Boccaccio
We're presenting these fellows together because Kundera sets them against each other as representatives of two very different views of love and poetry. Petrarch stands up for serious love, the kind that causes a lover pain and misery if unrequited. We're talking hardcore courtly love tradition here: women on a pedestal, men turning pale and sighing, the desire for death rather than life without the beloved, lots of adulterous action.
We kid you not. And Kundera's Petrarch is totally not kidding you, either. He tells the young student that love must be revered and taken seriously: "Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and want you to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter" (V."Boccaccio's Laughter".17).
Petrarch doesn't mind taking a little side swipe at Boccaccio, who—he's pretty sure—was raised in a barn. But Boccaccio thinks that Petrarch is being a great idiot about women and love. Why in the heck would anybody put a woman on a pedestal? Why would anyone admire stereotypical lady behaviors? He calls himself a proud misogynist and doesn't mind taking Petrarch to task for his fluffy-headed thinking:
"Misogynists don't despise women. Misogynists don't like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror." (V."Boccaccio".5)
Both poets make good arguments—and both poets have some serious holes in their logic. While Petrarch's scheme of love is both beautiful and enduring, there's a dash of the ridiculous about it. And even though Boccaccio's theory about misogyny is clever and articulate, it does disrespect certain aspects of traditional femininity that are both noble and good.
In the end, though, it's hard to ignore Boccaccio's disdain for "worshipers," especially after Petrarch tells the ridiculous tale of the female student who committed serial acts of vandalism in an attempt to show how completely she loved him. The tension in the relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch is really the tension between prose and poetry. The pragmatism of one can't convince the flowery poesy of the other—and vice versa.
Goethe
Nicknamed for the great German poet, Kundera's Goethe represents the sentimental and emotional tradition of the Sturm und Drang, or "Storm and Stress" movement.
Case in point—his response to the disappointed student's description of his provincial lover. Instead of commiserating with him over his poor choice, Goethe is enthusiastic about Kristyna's plainness: she's a real woman.
He doesn't know Kristyna, but it doesn't matter. Goethe projects his own feelings about who she must be in relation to the student, who's just a proto-poet in need of a muse: "What Goethe had written to a woman unknown to him was beautiful and sad, yearning and sensual, lively and wise, and the student was certain that such beautiful words had never before been addressed to any woman" (V."Queen".15).
This is a great favor to the student, who has no way of regulating his disappointment on his own (litost, anyone?). But Goethe has his own problems. He's kind of falling apart: "...Voltaire knew it was not nostalgia for his youth that was keeping Goethe there. Goethe was ill and forbidden to drink. When he drank, his legs refused to carry him. (V."Carrying".6).
At the end of the night, Goethe has to be carried down the curb and shoved into a taxi. Lermontov suggests the metaphorical possibilities of the situation (i.e., "Carrying a Poet")—which he fully intends to explore in his next book. And it's entirely possible that Kundera wants us to think along these lines. What does it mean that the giant of poetry in his country is an enormous, disintegrating mass? What significance is there to his shrew of a wife and his lack of physical agency?
We're going to let you connect the dots on this one.
Voltaire
Aside from Goethe, who is the granddaddy of the poets, Voltaire seems the natural leader of the pack. Kundera explains his choice of nickname for him: "Voltaire is a lecturer in the university faculty of arts and letters, he is witty and aggressive, and he eyes his adversaries with a malicious look. Reason enough to call him Voltaire" (V."Voltaire.1).
This aggression of his can be seen when he gleefully gangs up on Lermontov for proclaiming his own greatness. ("I can say you're a great poet, but you don't have the right to say it.") It's also telling that Voltaire has taken a shine to the student, who doesn't seem to be able to get along with anyone, including his swimmer girlfriend, his parents, his violin teacher, and Kristyna.
Despite his initial role in bringing the student into the Writers Club, Voltaire has curiously little to say during the drunken evening with Goethe and the others. Kundera shares a vision of Voltaire that he has in exile. It's a memory, really, of the moment when he and Voltaire shared a similar fate:
It is the autumn of 1977, my country has been sweetly dozing for nine years now in the strong embrace of the Russian empire, Voltaire has been expelled from university, and my books, having been gathered up from all the public libraries, are locked away in some state cellar. (V."Poets".2)
Perhaps there's some self-identification going on between Kundera and the professor he calls Voltaire. After all, both are grouchy professors of arts and letters who have had a devastating break with the Communist Party.
Lermontov
Lermontov is the outlier in the group of poets. He's a cynic, and as a poet, he's devoted entirely to honesty: he wants to tell it like it is. He could not be more different from Petrarch or Goethe—and he pays the price for his difference. After he criticizes Petrarch's embellished story about the smitten female student, Petrarch, Goethe, and Voltaire gang up on him:
"It's as plain as the nose on your face, Lermontov, that you're loaded with complexes," and he started to analyze all his poetry, which lacked both Goethe's happy natural charm and Petrarch's impassioned inspiration. (V."Insults".14)
The devastating blow comes from Goethe, who tells the room that Lermontov just doesn't have enough sex. On the one hand, that's a low blow. But on the other, it helps Lermontov gain an unlikely ally: the student. The student knows a thing or two about sexual deprivation and fends off further attacks against Lermontov by explaining the source of the poet's pride.
Lermontov doesn't actually seem like a bad guy; he just can't deal with the sugary thinking that Goethe and Petrarch relish: "Lermontov detests happy lovers. He frowns and speaks with disdain of the poetry of mawkish feelings and lofty words. He says that a poem must be as honest as an object fashioned by a worker's hands" (V."Lermontov Remains Alone".1).
Lermontov has got a completely different aesthetic. All of this could probably be overlooked if Lermontov just knew when to hold his tongue, but he doesn't. (Declaring that you're the best poet in a roomful of poets, for example, isn't the most diplomatic idea—we don't care how drunk you are.) Taken together, Lermontov's quirks just rub everybody the wrong way.
Which makes him a natural companion for the student, who can't seem to get along with anyone for an extended period of time, either. But in the end, the student throws Lermontov, too, under the bus for a chance at a happier life as a successful lover and poet.
It turns out that no one wants to be connected to the guy with "hypercelibacy" issues.