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Vaclav Havel : Writer and Politician

Roshen Dalal

Politicians are often writers. We have the examples of Lenin, Trotsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many more of the past and present. But Vaclav Havel [1936-2011], once president of Czechoslovakia, and later of the Czech Republic, though he may not have written as much, was more diverse and versatile in his writings.  He received several awards including the Gandhi Peace Prize for keeping alive ‘the flame of democracy’ at a time when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. His writings reflect the struggle and turmoil in Czechoslovakia, particularly before the formation of the Czech Republic.

He started out as a poet, but did not have much success there. It was his plays that made him famous. His first play, The Garden Party, was performed in 1963, and is a satire on the bureaucracy. This was followed by The Memorandum, in 1965. Both these topical plays explore the use of language. In The Garden Party, the protagonist rises in the bureaucratic set up, because he learns to use an ‘official’ language, i.e., one that makes little sense to most people. In The Memorandum, the characters use an artificial language, meant to help communication, but are finally unable to communicate at all. In 1968, in his play The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, he again focused on language, and mocked the indiscriminate use of socialist and other terminology.

His plays, translated into several languages, gained popularity abroad. His work was banned for some years in his own country, but in 1978, he was back on the literary scene with three one-act plays, Audience, Private View, and Protest, which reflect, through his character Vanek, his own life and problems as a writer.

Havel was imprisoned in 1979 for his activities against the Communist regime, but released in 1983 because of illness, and his plays after this mark a new trend.  In Largo desolato (1985), the main character who is again a writer, is not a straightforward ‘dissident’ but an individual confused and burdened by the expectations of both friends and enemies. Temptation, which appeared in 1986, is based on the myth of Faust.

After this Havel was drawn further into politics. He led the so-called Velvet Revolution, a peaceful movement that led to elections and a democratic government, and by the end of 1989, was elected president. Then there was the ‘Velvet divorce’ when the Czech and Slovakia regions separated. Havel was again elected president of the new Czech Republic in 1993, and served for two terms till February 2003. During these years, he wrote essays mainly on political themes. He believed that those who spoke freely, and lived in truth, had a revolutionary potential in any society. This was certainly true in his own life, where standing up for what he felt was the truth finally led to him becoming president, just as it was true in India where Mahatma Gandhi, following his own truth, helped India to gain Independence. In his Summer Meditations, written in his second term as president, Havel wrote, “Despite the political distress I face every day, I am still deeply convinced that politics is not essentially a disreputable business; and to the extent that it is, it is only disreputable people that make it so.”And further, a statement that many would doubt: “If your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it.”

 Havel is not without his critics. Being against Communism, he was popular in the West, particularly in the US. He praised America’s role in the world, and supported their action in Iraq. Thus Noam Chomsky finds his views ‘morally repugnant’, and he has several critics in his own country. A controversial biography of Havel by John Keane, Vaclav Havel, A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, is also critical of him, though this in turn has been sharply criticised for a lack of scholarship.

After and even during his presidentship, he also took on a wider role seeking to promote human rights. From 1997, he organised Forum 2000, an annual conference to explore ways to end conflicts based on religion and ethnicity. Then, after a break of several years, in 2007, he published another play titled, ‘Leaving’ based on Shakespeare’s King Lear and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.  It was later made into a film.

Among his non-fiction books is a long essay, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central Eastern Europe. The essay, written ten years after the Soviet invasion of 1968 is closely linked with Czech history, yet makes universal statements. What troubled him was the apathy of the citizens, their acceptance of the situation and refusal to look for alternatives. Havel insisted on the idea that one must ‘live in truth’. Truth for him was personal, to look at what really mattered in life, and take to decisions based on this. Instead people try to fit in, they withdraw from making decisions, content with watching television, buying groceries, and similar preoccupations. Havel criticised the Western world too, as he said there, “People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined.” There was no brute force, yet conformity and acceptance was the norm.

It’s rare that a writer and political dissident becomes the president of a country. Despite his critics, his works works transcend a particular time and place and Havel’s plays, available in translation, are worth reading. In Prague the Vaclav Havel library has been created in his memory, and there are other monuments to him in various parts of the world. (A PhD in ancient Indian History, the writer lives in Dehradun and has authored more than ten books. Views expressed are personal)

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