The Czech Republic – Part IV – The Spirit of Prague

Here are some excerpts from Ivan Klima’s wonderful collection of essays “The Spirit of Prague”. Klima’s a great novelist, too. I highly recommend his work. Here he talks about Prague itself, he talks about Havel, about Kafka, about the “velvet revolution”. Don’t miss these excerpts, and check out that book if you ever get the chance.

The Czech Republic – Part IV – The Spirit of Prague

Klima on Prague:

The Prague of past eras is gone. No one can bring the murdered back to life, and most of those who were driven out will probably never return to the city. Nevertheless Prague has survived and has, finally, tasted freedom again. Its spirit is intact as well. This manifested itself vividly during the revolution that opened the way to freedom in 1989. Revolutions are usually marked by high-sounding slogans and flags; blood flows, or at least glass is shattered and stones fly.

The November revolution, which earned the epithet “velvet”, differed from other revolutions not only in its peacefulness, but also in the main weapon used in the struggle. It was ridicule. Almost every available space in Prague — the walls of the buildings, the subway stations, the windows of buses and streetcars, shop windows, lampposts, even statues and monuments — were covered, in the space of a few days, with an unbelievable number of signs and posters. Although the slogans had a single object — to overthrow the dictatorship — their tone was light, ironic. The citizens of Prague delivered the coup de grace to their despised rulers not with a sword, but with a joke. Yet at the heart of this original, unemotional style of struggle there dwelt a stunning passion. It was the most recent and perhaps the most remarkable paradox to date in the life of this remarkable city.

Klima on Kafka

What you call the dream world was, for Kafka, the real world — the world in which order reigned, in which people were able to grow fond of each other, make love, raise families, be orderly in all their duties — but for him, with his obsessive truthfulness, this world was unattainable. His heroes suffered not because they could not realize their dreams, but because they were not strong enough properly to enter the real world, to fulfill their duty.

The reason Kafka was banned under communist regimes is explained in a single sentence by the hero of my novel Love and Garbage: “What matters most about Kafka’s personality is his honesty.” A regime that is built on deception, that asks people to pretend, that demands external agreement without caring about the inner conviction of those to whom it turns for consent, a regime afraid of anyone who asks about the sense of his actions, cannot allow anyone whose veracity attained such fascinating or even terrifying completeness to speak to the people.

If you ask what Kafka meant to me, we get back to the question we somehow keep circling. On the whole Kafka was an unpolitical writer. I like to quote the entry in his diary for 2 August 1914. “Germany has declared war on Russia. — Swimming in the afternoon.” Here the historic, world-shaking plane and the personal one are exactly level …

Kafka’s metaphors were so powerful that they far exceeded his original intentions. I know that The Trial as well as “In the Penal Colony” have been explained as ingenious prophecies of the terrible fate that befell the Jewish nation during the war, which broke out fifteen years after Kafka’s death. But it was no prophecy of genius; these works merely prove that a creator who knows how to reflect his most personal experiences deeply and truthfully also touches the suprapersonal or social spheres. Again I am answering the question about political content in literature. Literature doesn’t have to scratch around for political realities, or even worry about systems that come and go; it can transcend them and still answer questions that the system evokes in people.

This is the most important lesson that I extracted for myself from Kafka.

Klima on Havel

Havel’s candidacy for president and his later election were, in the first place, an expression of the precipitate, truly revolutionary course of events in this country. When I was returning from a meeting of one of the committees of Civic Forum [the organization Havel formed in November, 1989, to investigate police brutality] one day towards the end of November, my friends and I were saying to each other that the time was near when we should nominate our candidate for the office of president. We agreed then that the only candidate to consider, for he enjoyed the relatively wide support of the public, was Alexander Dubcek. But it became clear a few days later that the revolution had gone beyond the point where any candidate who was connected, if only by his past, with the Communist Party, was acceptable to the younger generation of Czechs.

At that moment the only suitable candidate emerged — Vaclav Havel.

To a certain sector of the Czech public, Havel was, indeed, more or less unknown, or known as the son of a rich capitalist, even as a convict, but the revolutionary ethos that seized the nation brought about a change of attitude. In a certain atmosphere, in the midst of a crowd, however civil and restrained, an individual suddenly identifies himself with the prevailing mood and state of mind, and captures the crowd’s enthusiasm. It’s true that the majority of the country shared in the doings of the former system, but it’s also true that the majority hated it just because it had made them complicit in its awfulness, and hardly anyone still identified himself with that regime which had so often humiliated, deceived and cheated them.

Within a few days, Havel became the symbol of revolutionary change, the man who would lead society out of its crisis.

Klima on fear and power

If power becomes so total that it can commit any arbitrary act, can falsely accuse anyone, arrest, try and sentence him for imaginary crimes, confiscate his property, his job, his freedom and, on top of it all, publicly dishonor him with insults, then fear can also become so total that almost none of those things need actually be done to maintain it. The powers that be need only occasionally demonstrate that they are willing and able to behave arbitrarily. We live in a world in which the powerful govern by means unlike anything humanity has ever known. They can control and exterminate individuals and entire peoples. As long as these means exist, our world will remain a world of fear.

The fear that sleeps in the beds of the powerless gives a strong impetus to their dreams and their actions. The powerless person longing to escape his anxiety usually sees only two ways out: to flee beyond the reach of the hostile powers, or to become powerful himself. Fear engenders dreams of power.

…Power is soulless and it is derived from soullessness. It builds on it and draws its strength from it. Soullessness keeps company with fear. People who have given up their souls have only a body, and it is the body they are terrified for … People who have not given up their souls can overcome fear because they know that in the end, fear comes from within and not from without. The person who has let anxiety from the external world replace his soul can never drive out his fear. Anyone who has defended his soul, his inner integrity, and is prepared to surrender everything, to risk even his freedom of movement and, in extreme need, even his life, cannot be broken by fear and is thus beyond the reach of power. He becomes free, he becomes a partner of power, not as a competitor in the struggle for control of the country, people and things, but as a living reminder of the mendacity and the transcience of everything power defends and represents …

A person who, out of inner need, consistently stands up to the powerful, risking everything, has a single small hope: that by his actions, he will remind those in power where that power came from, what its origins are and what their responsibility is, and perhaps he will make them a little more human.

Klima on the 1968 invasion

The invasion of my country in August 1968 was a singular act in modern history: it was the only time a foreign country had intervened militarily in the peaceful affairs of a neighbor to which it was allegedly tied with bonds of friendship. The invasion was, of course, traumatic for most citizens … But the shameful nature of the invasion indelibly tarnished all those whose intention it was to renew the old-style totalitarian power.

As I have said, the appearance of being cultured and civilized is particularly important in Czech lands, where centuries of national and cultural repression have made culture, and especially literature, popular and highly respected. The powers-that-be needed poets to cloak their intentions and actions in verse … But they needed them pliant, or even broken … The powers-that-be were usually able to win over a part of the intellectual elite through promises, bribery, concessions and sometimes even by force.

But how could a power that was indelibly tarnished win them over? It could not. It sensed its own isolation and therefore decided to use compulsion. The early 70s were a turning-point for both the powers-that-be and for Czech culture. The regime decided to break those who, in their eyes, represented that culture, even at the cost of destroying the culture altogether. For their part, the members of the intellectual elite decided that they would rather be destroyed than have anything to do with this indelibly tarnished power.

Klima on the 1989 velvet revolution

The authorities frequently used police brutality to break up memorial assemblies to commemorate the country’s national holiday or the memory of Jan Palach … Those who came to pay their respects to a person who symbolized the possibility of individual protest taken to its furthest extreme became the object of a violent attack by special units who used truncheons, water-cannons and tear-gas. People, mostly the young, decided not to give way to violence.

For 5 consecutive days the peaceful assemblies were repeated, and on four occasions the police used violence to break them up. Several people were arrested, Vaclav Havel among them.

During these events, which aroused the emotions of the whole country, the cruel truth about power was publicly revealed for the first time. At this critical juncture, the government could not find a single person with sufficient authority to address the nation. No one was willing to give public support to the regime, but many could be found to protest against police brutality, against imprisoning the innocent. Among the protestors were actors, filmmakers, and writers who, until then, the regime had believed to be on “its side”.

In this critical situation, the authorities — and it is hard to say whether this was out of stupidity or desperation or arrogance, or the awareness that they were indeed indelibly tarnished — refused all invitations by the cultural opposition to take part in a dialogue. The deep chasm between totalitarian power and all the “shaken”, to use Patocka’s term, became unbridgeable. It was clear that any further error, any further act of arrogance, might be fatal.

What happened in November 1989 is well known. As an eyewitness and a participant, I wish to emphasize that this revoltuion, which really was the outcome of a clash between culture and power, was the most non-violent revolution imaginable. In the mass meetings attended by up to three-quarters of a million people, no one was hurt, not a window was broken, not a car damaged. Many of the tens of thousands of pamphlets that flooded Prague and other cities and towns urged people to peaceful, tolerant action; not one called for ciolence. For those who still believe in the power of culture, the power of words, of good and of love, and their dominance over violence, who believe that neither the poet nor Archimedes, in their struggle against the man in uniform, are beaten before they begin, the Prague revolution must have been an inspiration.

Amen!