Possibility Of Fictional Form

Immortality,written by Milan Kundera,a Czech French novelist,in his peak period,represents the highest achievement of his narrative art.The unique artistic features of Immortality can be found through the exploration of "the path-novel" and the multidimensional research on its postmodern narrative art.Kundera consciously explores the art of novel form based on his critical thinking of modern society,life and the novel's history.He digresses deliberately in novel composition to be against the deprivation of slowness by efficiency.He finds back the novel spirit of complexity to be against the deprivation of diversity by consistency.He persists an elitist literature view to be against the deprivation of reality by mass media.He derives abundant instructive literary resources from the whole western culture circle,especially from the Central Europe.He rediscovers the"first half' of the novel's history which belongs to Francois Rabelais,Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,Denis Diderot and Laurence Sterne,and innovates in novel's form following the novelists in the "third half ' like Franz Kafka,Robert Musil,Hermann Broch and Carlos Fuentes by writing philosophical essays in novel,setting up complex structure of space and time,no longer resisting digression,and all these measures add the spirit of unseriousness and playfulness into his novel.Immortality is composed of multiple lines.There are three narrative spaces in the novel,where the respective lines are interconnected,and the narrative distance and rhythm of the novel are continuously changing.Because of the multi-line structure,the novel presents the character of"complexity".The narrative sequence and narrative discourse of Immortality also have distinct characteristics.In the novel,Milan Kundera arranges the narrative sequence by using "repetition","digression" and "scattered connection".By repeating,details have been added,the vague outline of the event gradually becomes clear,stories are linked together,the characters' behaviors are explained,and the novel also presents a construction of circular regress.Digression breaks the continuity of the novel and enhances the enjoyment of the novel.Deferring from "repetition" and"digression",the "scattered connection" does not make chaos,On the contrary,it restores the order and makes the novel easy to understand."Repetition","digression" and "scattered connection",introduced in Kundera's "prose novel" greatly reduces the burden of structure and makes the novel flexible.Although there is triple-spacetime and multiple clues mixed in the novel,the theme is well-knitted.As a prose novel,Immortality seeming scattered has a unified spirit.Immortality contains rich intertextuality and dialogicality relations,and there are dialogic relations between the novel and the former texts,between the characters,between the writer and the readers.The dialogic relations between the text and the former text are rendered as the restatement of history,the exploration of philosophical proposition,the quotation of poetry and the reappearance of other works of Kundera.The setting of the characters enriches the content of the novel and facilitates the writer's discussion on the philosophical proposition.Kundera has a strong audience awareness,and he expects the readers to maintain an objective sense of judgment,to keep up with his pace and to engage in the narrative process.Immortality adopts the technique of"metafiction",which has no intention to arouse "resonance" and creates defamiliarization effect.In addition,novels,essays,biographies,historical materials,news reports and poems works in concert with each other in the novel.All these embody openness.Kundera always ponders and explores with the question of exploring the possibilities of development of novel artistry.His step towards "the path-novel" opens up a possibility.All the artistic devices,multi-line structure,mixed narrative timing,and multiple dialogue relations implicated Kundera's poetics ideal:the pursuit of complexity.