Václav HavelRecensioni

As a person continuously humiliated by mental torment, when with my mind deprived of privacy (as in -voices), deprived of freedom (as in - obsessive compulsive thinking), I found the same values that Havel found in dissidents whose inner truth did not allow to compromise with living a lie. Of course one should not compare a mentally ill person to a dissident, but often dissidents in Soviet Russia were branded as 'mentally ill' and stuffed psychiatric drugs (Haloperidol et al) to destroy their intellectual capacities. Years later, when my situation got stable, I found that after a human being is stripped of everything - pride, dignity, valor, merit, he discovers what remains - pure ideas, whether it be freedom, love, nobility, responsibility, compassion, commitment. These and other ideas are the exit from the Platonic cave. They become a measuring rod of everything around, they make us reach for the humane and the Divine. This is the pre-political, the state of genuine humaneness which is difficult to define, but a person consious enough knows when it is lacking. Havel's work is a super-structure in which the main theme - the pre-political in the humane is equally valid and timelessly important in the modern post-democratic times. It is very important to bear in mind what is it that defines this humaneness, and where exactly we turn into political cyborgs, in a delayed notion of collapse of the human spirit into a wretched digital manipulation of the cognitive cybernetics of mass media and power structures and 'system of rule' of the modern age, that by the means of inverted totalitarianism introduces exactly the notions of post-totalitarian rule, yet in reverse - leading back to totalitarianism by slow, hidden steps, in bright-daylight and a reshuffled sense of concepts of a different economic order.

I'll preface by stating that I revere Vaclav Havel, an astoundingly courageous & brilliant playwright, writer, revolutionary and finally, after degradation & imprisonment, President of his country.

This book is a selection of speeches he made after becoming Czech President, but these speeches are more than exhortations. They are clear, insightful statements of what political & moral acts should be, and how to accomplish them.

Oh, would that each country contained one person of his character & capabilities.

read this ages ago, and on the re-read skimmed.

As a person continuously humiliated by mental torment, when with my mind deprived of privacy (as in -voices), deprived of freedom (as in - obsessive compulsive thinking), I found the same values that Havel found in dissidents whose inner truth did not allow to compromise with living a lie. Of course one should not compare a mentally ill person to a dissident, but often dissidents in Soviet Russia were branded as 'mentally ill' and stuffed psychiatric drugs (Haloperidol et al) to destroy their intellectual capacities. Years later, when my situation got stable, I found that after a human being is stripped of everything - pride, dignity, valor, merit, he discovers what remains - pure ideas, whether it be freedom, love, nobility, responsibility, compassion, commitment. These and other ideas are the exit from the Platonic cave. They become a measuring rod of everything around, they make us reach for the humane and the Divine. This is the pre-political, the state of genuine humaneness which is difficult to define, but a person consious enough knows when it is lacking. Havel's work is a super-structure in which the main theme - the pre-political in the humane is equally valid and timelessly important in the modern post-democratic times. It is very important to bear in mind what is it that defines this humaneness, and where exactly we turn into political cyborgs, in a delayed notion of collapse of the human spirit into a wretched digital manipulation of the cognitive cybernetics of mass media and power structures and 'system of rule' of the modern age, that by the means of inverted totalitarianism introduces exactly the notions of post-totalitarian rule, yet in reverse - leading back to totalitarianism by slow, hidden steps, in bright-daylight and a reshuffled sense of concepts of a different economic order.

As a person continuously humiliated by mental torment, when with my mind deprived of privacy (as in -voices), deprived of freedom (as in - obsessive compulsive thinking), I found the same values that Havel found in dissidents whose inner truth did not allow to compromise with living a lie. Of course one should not compare a mentally ill person to a dissident, but often dissidents in Soviet Russia were branded as 'mentally ill' and stuffed psychiatric drugs (Haloperidol et al) to destroy their intellectual capacities. Years later, when my situation got stable, I found that after a human being is stripped of everything - pride, dignity, valor, merit, he discovers what remains - pure ideas, whether it be freedom, love, nobility, responsibility, compassion, commitment. These and other ideas are the exit from the Platonic cave. They become a measuring rod of everything around, they make us reach for the humane and the Divine. This is the pre-political, the state of genuine humaneness which is difficult to define, but a person consious enough knows when it is lacking. Havel's work is a super-structure in which the main theme - the pre-political in the humane is equally valid and timelessly important in the modern post-democratic times. It is very important to bear in mind what is it that defines this humaneness, and where exactly we turn into political cyborgs, in a delayed notion of collapse of the human spirit into a wretched digital manipulation of the cognitive cybernetics of mass media and power structures and 'system of rule' of the modern age, that by the means of inverted totalitarianism introduces exactly the notions of post-totalitarian rule, yet in reverse - leading back to totalitarianism by slow, hidden steps, in bright-daylight and a reshuffled sense of concepts of a different economic order.

As a person continuously humiliated by mental torment, when with my mind deprived of privacy (as in -voices), deprived of freedom (as in - obsessive compulsive thinking), I found the same values that Havel found in dissidents whose inner truth did not allow to compromise with living a lie. Of course one should not compare a mentally ill person to a dissident, but often dissidents in Soviet Russia were branded as 'mentally ill' and stuffed psychiatric drugs (Haloperidol et al) to destroy their intellectual capacities. Years later, when my situation got stable, I found that after a human being is stripped of everything - pride, dignity, valor, merit, he discovers what remains - pure ideas, whether it be freedom, love, nobility, responsibility, compassion, commitment. These and other ideas are the exit from the Platonic cave. They become a measuring rod of everything around, they make us reach for the humane and the Divine. This is the pre-political, the state of genuine humaneness which is difficult to define, but a person consious enough knows when it is lacking. Havel's work is a super-structure in which the main theme - the pre-political in the humane is equally valid and timelessly important in the modern post-democratic times. It is very important to bear in mind what is it that defines this humaneness, and where exactly we turn into political cyborgs, in a delayed notion of collapse of the human spirit into a wretched digital manipulation of the cognitive cybernetics of mass media and power structures and 'system of rule' of the modern age, that by the means of inverted totalitarianism introduces exactly the notions of post-totalitarian rule, yet in reverse - leading back to totalitarianism by slow, hidden steps, in bright-daylight and a reshuffled sense of concepts of a different economic order.

Une interview témoignage qui reste très lisible d'un grand acteur/auteur du XXème siècle.

Imagine our Enlightenment project off the rails, it is easy if you try. Okay that's the wrong Lenin, but should we think of the intrepid bureaucrat Polonius who warned of turning words, even as the Devil scared Martin Luther and the Karamazovs lose at the Fast Money Round? This was Doktor Faustus at work in the People's Utopia: something borrowed, something blue. All hues are welcome Orbán.

I think Temptation would dovetail nicely with Stoppard's Rock 'N' Roll. Havel's dialogue doesn't measure with Stoppard's but that could be a query for the Department of State Translation, room 101.

An interesting take on the original Faust, Havel uses the backdrop of a scientific institute's crusade against mysticism to speak out against totalitarian restrictions on intellectual and philosophical pursuits. Layers of deceit and duplicity - both internal and external - are framed within a repetitive landscape of scenes to underline their existence in the commonplace, and illustrate how logic and desire can be used to suppress logic and desire.

This play is promoted as a look at the excesses of rationality to the point that it becomes irrationality. I was expecting a hard hitting look at the misuse of science in Soviet Czechoslovakia, but in fact, the actual scientific dialogue is totally within the realm of ordinary science. The only "irrationality" presented within the rational basis of science was the desire to enforce conformity through the use of the governmental police state apparatus. The rationality appears not to be excessive. What is presented is a series of banal arguments that have nothing new from what was available two millennia ago to argue that God must exist. The ending is actually quite spectacular, however, which makes it difficult to tell just what happened here, though there does appear to be some Satanic symbolism, which appears to be pointing more toward the scientists as being in league with the devil than to the man who had departed from science to get involved in mysticism. A strange work, and perhaps if I saw it staged I would be able to figure out whether this is promoting science or discouraging it. In written form, it looks a lot like the latter.

Der er næsten for mange årsdage i år. Det er f.eks. 100 år siden 1. verdenskrig brød ud og fik det gamle Europa til at gå under. Men det er også 25 år siden, at de kommunistiske regimer i Østeuropa brød sammen under deres egen vægt og skabte det nye Europa, som vi lever i i dag.

Der er derfor alle mulige grunde til at læse Fjernforhør i Tjekkiet. Bogen er en interviewbog, hvor Karel Hvisd’ala stiller spørgsmål til Vaclav Havel omkring årsskiftet 1985-86. Men spørgsmålene er for det meste så generelle, at det bare er en anledning til at lade Havel indtale sine erindringer. Det er også fint, for Havel er en af de helt centrale skikkelser i den tjekkoslovakiske fløjlsrevolution, og det er dybt interessant at følge hans udvikling fra oppositionel forfatterspire til nøgleperson i den folkelige protest mod styret.

I 1986 var Gorbatjov endnu et spørgsmålstegn, men Charter 77 – den borgerrettighedsbevægelse som Havel var dybt involveret i – var for længst blevet en stærk stemme. Og selvom omvæltningerne i 1989 endnu var umulige at forudse, så var udviklingen så fremskreden, at Havel fornemmer et nybrud.

Bogen følger Havels liv kronologisk fra hans opvækst i en borgerlig familie, hvilket udelukkede ham fra gymnasiet, præcis som det skete for den fiktive Jonas Fink, over arbejdet som ung forfatter og dramatiker på de små teatre i 1960’ernes Prag til hans markante offentlige rolle i 1970’erne og 1980’erne. Hele tiden var han i opposition og insisterede på retten til at tænke og tale frit, og hele tiden afviste han, at én sandhed skulle have ret til at definere kunst og kultur. Selvom argumenterne startede med litteraturen og teateret, så havde det naturligvis videre politiske konsekvenser.

Man fornemmer, at man kommer tæt på Havel, selvom hans distancerede forhold til det politiske og til magten kan virke lidt søgt. Der er ingen tvivl om, at han med sine handlinger agerer politisk, men det er nok udtryk for taktik. Charta fungerede netop ved ikke at kræve politiske ændringer, men ved ”bare” at tage forfatningens og menneskerettighedserklæringens ordlyd alvorligt.

Havels metode er en insisteren på de små, konkrete ting. I første omgang skal der ikke sættes ind mod magten som sådan, men derimod stås urokkeligt fast på dette lille tidsskrifts ret til at udkomme eller denne forfatters ret til at udtrykke sig uden at blive retsforfulgt. Det var en tilgang, der tydeligvis fik bedre kår efter OSCE-forhandlingerne og østlandenes formelle anerkendelse af menneskerettighederne med Helsinkierklæringen fra 1974. (Derfor talte man også om ”Helsinki-komiteer” i flere lande.)

Bogens danske udgave er tilføjet et essay fra 1988 og et par taler fra starten af 1989 – og et forord af Niels Barfoed fra august 1989, som han fornuftigvis daterer, for tingene var begyndt at gå rigtig stærkt på det tidspunkt. Det var lige før det hele brød sammen, og dokumenterne vidner om et system i forandring, selvom konsekvenserne endnu var uoverskuelige.

Fjernforhør er en fin dokumentation af borgerrettighedsbevægelsens udvikling, men den giver ingen forklaring på den anden sides handlinger. Charta 77 og de andre initiativer byggede i sidste ende deres succes på, at regimerne afstod fra at bruge det undertrykkelsesapparat, de havde til deres rådighed, og hvorfor det skete, kan bogen selvfølgelig ikke forklare.

Det skal ikke ligge Fjernforhør til last. Bogen er også 25 år senere et vigtigt og inspirerende vidnesbyrd om én af efterkrigstidens centrale skikkelser.

So focused on making a point about the society that it doesn't hang together as a play.

I've seen Garden Party performed and loved it. Reading the rest of these I loved them too. Two basic eras of his career are represented here, his pre-dissident career (which was partially political but mostly meant to entertain) and his dissident work which was banned and distributed in Czechoslavakia only as samizdat. I definitely prefer the former - they're more absurdist, more playful, less bitter, funnier, and a little bit sexy in places. The latter are surprisingly good for what they are, though. "Audience" in particular is a stand-out, a confrontation between the author and a man assigned to spy on him for the government, which is dedicated almost entirely to exploring and sympathizing with the loyalist spy's perspective. The warmth and humility on display by Havel there is very becoming.

In his introduction, Tom Stoppard says that in the play's Newspeak Ptydepe, a more frequently used word has fewer letter than a less frequently used one, and that the word for "wombat" therefore has 319 letters. You know what that means? That Prague's problems could be solved if it had more wombats. And really, the same could be said for anywhere.

Obra basada en les missives que l'autor va escriure a la seva esposa durant els seus anys de condemna en una presó txecoslovaca per la seva condició de dissident. Les seves cartes destinades tant a la seva dona com a circular clandestinament entre l'oposició, expressen amb un estil abstracte, reflexions sobre si mateix, sobre les seves esperances, temors i exigències de la responsabilitat individual i ètica de l'ésser humà i de la seva llibertat.

Pretty entertaining-- and still representative of office/government/work-related absurdity.

L'ONU a fait, dans sa grande naïveté légendaire, de l'année 2001 "l'année de rencontre entre les cultures". Ce souhait s'est fracassé le 11 septembre sur les parois du World Trade Center de New York. On sent bien l'intérêt de l'Organisation des Nations-Unies de favoriser les rencontres dans l'objectif non avoué d'opérer une heureuse symbiose mondiale pacifique et bon enfant. L'intention est louable et l'Enfer, comme chacun sait, est pavé de ces bonnes intentions. Le paradis communiste est est d'ailleurs toujours pavé dans ses avatars chinois, nord-coréen, vietnamien ou cubain. En 1995, Samuel Hutington avait mis en garde, dans son désormais fameux "choc des civilisation" contre les effets de cette uniformité du monde. Avant lui, Vaclav HAVEL, émergé avec douleur du mirage communiste, manifestait les mêmes interrogations tout en cherchant une porte de sortie laïque au désenchantement du monde. Son raisonnement peut suivre les points suivants :

1- nous vivons sur une petite planète qui se trouve, pour la première fois de son histoire, embrassé par une civilisation unique, créée par l'éclatement du monde bipolaire en univers multipolaires

2- les destins de milliards d'hommes se fondent en un seul destin

3- chaque danger qui menace le monde devient un danger global

4- il y a une possibilité de guerre entre diverses sphères de civilisation, de culture ou de religion

5- la civilisation qui nous rapproche et nous uniformise ravive les traditions culturelles ou religieuses qui défendent leur singularité

6- il se produit donc un processes inverse d'autodéfense

7- donc, quel ordre mondial bâtir pour prévenir les conflits

8- un ordre qui se référence aux éléments communs aux civilisation : transcendance du miracle de la vie, ancrage de l'homme dans sa certitude terrestre et cosmique

On peut emettre des réserves sur "l'angélisme" dont fait preuve Vaclav HAVEL, surtout dans son appel à un multiculturalisme, tant il est imprégné d'un humanisme généreux à vocation universelle. Cependant, l'appel à la transcendance transpirant dans ces pages le sauve de la plupart des idéologies contemporaines, fondées sur le simple contrat social cher à Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU. Mais quelle transcendance ? L'auteur, qui a subit le messianisme terrestre du communisme, n'en parle guère mais en tout cas, il refuse que cela soit un "système" de valeurs qui ait réponse à tout avec certitude.
Remarque sur ce commentaire Remarque s

The Nazi occupation, unlike the Russian, split the Czech and Slovak entities along the traditional provincial lines from Austro-Hungarian days, and treated both harshly but favored the Czechs at least until the assassination of Heydrich. The Russian occupation, managed by quislings until 1968 and by Russian "advisors" thereafter, favored the Slovaks but paid lip service to Czechoslovak unity. Given this tangled history, it took a man of considerable political and verbal gifts to untangle these threads without his various constituencies winding up at one another's throats. That man was Vaclav Havel, playwright turned statesman, and this book is a collection of his speeches from the seminal winter and spring of 1989-1990.

The Czech is, as one might expect, beautiful and inspiring, even to a rusty student of this most Western of the Slavic languages. As a collection of speeches, it is lacking context -- not a problem if you lived through this remarkable period, but some years from now this will be a reference for scholars who have other sources for the history. It is also useful to students of war, peace and revolution, as a document of a nonviolent change from tyranny to freedom, but it would be more useful to most such scholars in English. Fortunately some of Havel's most important speeches of this period are contained in his widely available "The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice: Speeches and Writings, 1990-1996." 1st edition. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf; distributed by Random House, 1997.

Brieven geschreven tijdens zijn gevangenschap. Uitgebreide analyse van zichzelf, maar ook diepe beschouwingen over mens en maatschappij. Zeer menselijk beeld½

A very Kafka like story (actually a Play) of Russian bureaucracy, or any governments bureacracy for that matter, at its worse and cleverly depicted.½

I became an admirer of Vaclav Havel after reading his play the Memorandum. I have only read excerpts from this book and will finish it someday.

The author is an internationally-acclaimed playwright and founder of the Czech human rights movement. He became president of Czechoslavakia.
This book is letters to his wife when he was in prison June 1979 to September 1982.

Vaclav Havel was the philosopher/playwright who became the leader of the Czech anti-Communist movement. This book-length interview was published in 1988, long before there was any realistic hope of democracy in Czechoslovakia. Even so, his faith in a better world is unshakeable and the cool thing is, he was absolutely right to hang onto it. It's a real-life story of good overcoming evil. I admit I skimmed some of the earlier parts about his life as a playwright, but the rest is gold.

For anyone who likes Havel, this is certainly a treat. But all the controversy that the theatrical staging of the play in Prague aroused detracts from the work itself. It is not a blockbuster, a life-defining statement, or a philosophical wrap-up of a world-renowned career. It's even hard to cal it a grand re-entrance onto the theatrical scene. It's just another Havel play, and I felt throughout that Havel was struggling and playing with this opposition all along, being very conscious of the fact that his audience (at home and abroad) will want to have a lot to say about his first play in over 13 years (or something like that). He starts to be epic, he follows classical themes (Cherry Orchard most prominently), makes very obvious references to politics of his era, yet every time we're not sure if he really wants to make a grand statement, if the orchard being cleared at the end in order to build a mall is satirical or just pointless, and if vice-president Klein is really Vaclav Klaus (Havel's real life political archenemy) or if Havel is just trying to stick it to us for expecting him to be so straightforward.

read at Mary Lou's - Michael's book - may order on Biblio for Library