Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of paintings and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.
The passage reflects on the fragility of human memory and history, suggesting that what we remember is just a narrow thread in a vast ocean of the forgotten. As time progresses, the sheer volume of events, achievements, and cultural artifacts will become too great for any individual to fully grasp, leading to a loss of understanding about one's identity and heritage. The richness of past centuries, filled with art, knowledge, and significant events, risks being reduced to simplistic symbols devoid of meaning.
Kundera emphasizes the dire consequences of this memory loss, as it threatens to strip humanity of its sense of self. The recollections and experiences that shape who we are could diminish into fragments that fail to convey the depth of human experience. In this way, the text serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of preserving history, culture, and shared memory in order to maintain a coherent sense of identity over time.
