“Litost is a Czech word with no exact translation into any other language,” wrote author Milan Kundera, in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Linguistically specific words of emotion such as litost for the Czechs, toska for the Russians, and sehnsucht for the Germans, act as markers of the borders of cultural identity, defending the specific perspective of a people from the relentless push for a reduction into universal simplicity.
These words aren’t merely a matter of nationalist pride, however. Who, after all, could be proud of the feeling of litost? It’s the death throe of pride.
“Litost is a state of torment caused by a sudden insight into one’s own miserable self,” Kundera explained. “Litost works like a two-stroke motor. First comes a feeling of torment, then a desire for revenge.”
Litost is a kind of anguish that is felt by those who are on the verge of drowning in an unwelcome authenticity, thrashing out against its inevitability. It comes like a sudden unflattering reflection in a mirror, but of one’s entire self, inside and out, and the sharp clarity of its awful appearance.
A rage of futile self-defense arises in response. All the easy hopes of earlier days turn bitter, curdled by the astringence of actual experience. There’s a desperate urge to lash out in response to one’s descent, but how can it ever be made right?
Life is not a course of continual self-improvement. There is no court willing to hear all our grievances, and the ugly vision we obtain in our litost is proof in itself of the futility of repair. We will never be as we had imagined ourselves to be. We have already been defeated.
