to Nadia

May your journeys be fruitful and full of fun

Mine and mine alone to bear

"The weighty resolution is at one with the voice of Fate ('Es muss sein!'); necessity, weight and value are three concepts inextricably bound; only necessity is heavy and only what is heavy has value.

This is a conception born of Beethoven's music, and although we cannot ignore the possibility of (or even probability) that it owes its origins more to Beethoven's commentators than to Beethoven himself, we all more or less share it: we believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders. Beethoven's hero is a lifter of metaphysical weights."

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera