TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/121189/12118900.042

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 3KB | 54 lines

EAST-WEST, Page 42

The Conscience of Prague


    "Seldom in recent times has a regime cared so little for the
real attitudes of outwardly loyal citizens or for the sincerity of
their statements."

    -- Vaclav Havel, an open letter from Prague, 1975

    Can any of Czechoslovakia's 15.5 million citizens have more
cause to be astounded by the events of recent weeks than Vaclav
Havel? Since the Soviet invasion in 1968, Havel has been the
conscience of Prague, a world-famed playwright who might have
exploited his status as an intellectual superstar to emigrate to
the West, but refused to do so. Instead, Havel, 53, stayed behind,
suffering censorship, intermittent police surveillance and repeated
jailings so he could continue to give voice to the frustrations and
yearnings of a frightened -- and until now mute -- populace.

    A sharp-witted, courtly man who tends toward diffidence, Havel
seems an unlikely folk hero. He was the son of a well-to-do builder
and restaurateur, and his early years were filled with governesses
and chauffeurs. With the Communist takeover in 1948, the family's
wealth became an albatross. Havel was denied the opportunity to
attend high school or college. While working as a taxi driver and
then in a brewery, he pursued his writing and in 1963 saw his first
play, The Garden Party, mounted in Prague. In April 1968 Havel
traveled to New York to see the Public Theater's production of his
second play, The Memorandum. Four months later, the tanks rolled
through Prague, and one of the new regime's first acts was to
censor Havel's writings.

    For his work on behalf of Charter 77, a human-rights
organization he helped found, Havel spent more than four years in
jail. His latest internment ended last May; he had served half of
an eight-month sentence after speaking on Western radio. The
charge: inciting antigovernment demonstrations. It seemed no small
irony that last week, largely through Havel's efforts, the street
protests were halted to give the government and opposition some
breathing space to pursue negotiations.

    Newly relaxed censorship restrictions now open the way for
distribution of Havel's essays and plays, which are often likened
to the absurdist works of Ionesco and Beckett. What Czechoslovaks
will discover is a painstaking attention to the elaborate web of
falsification that for so long enabled a despised leadership to
maintain its grip. Havel's work depicts the idiocy of entrenched
bureaucracies and the power of language to twist and distort ideas.
It also highlights the unwitting complicity of ordinary citizens
in the maintenance of totalitarian regimes. "Everyone is in fact
involved and enslaved," Havel once told TIME. ``Each person is
capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with
living within the lie." Almost alone in his quest, Havel has
refused to compromise.