The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Sabina’s bowler hat is a “motif in the musical composition that was Sabina’s life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus’ ‘You can’t step into the same river’ riverbed” (88). Here, the narrator recalls Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s famous aphorism “You cannot step twice into the same river.” The bowler hat is, for Sabina, a symbol that appears and reappears throughout her life and changes its meaning with each new appearance. Sabina’s bowler hat thus becomes a motif symbolizing other motifs, illustrating how the many motifs that appear within a human life change their meanings over time. This is one of the text’s key philosophical observations about the nature of existence, and it speaks to the theme of Leitmotif and Interpretation in that, according to the narrator, life decisions both great and small rest on how individuals interpret coincidences and chance occurrences.

For Sabina, the hat initially symbolizes a connection to her familial history. It becomes part of a series of sexual games that she and Tomáš play, and at that time it signifies a “violence” against her past that she willingly participates in.