Vaclav Havel. To the Castle and Back. Translated by Paul Wilson. New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 383.

Transcription

1 REVIEWS 177 Vaclav Havel. To the Castle and Back. Translated by Paul Wilson. New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, pp Some believe that each nation has the kind of leaders it deserves. In this regard, the Czechs have been lucky. At least two of their leaders towered high above their fellow compatriots. During the last stages of World War I, the exile Thomas G. Masaryk with significant assistance from Edvard Benes helped to create the new Czechoslovak state at a time when the nation at home slumbered comfortably under the shelter of the Habsburg Empire. During the vicious two decades that followed the Soviet invasion of August 1968, the nation surrendered en masse, dropped the liberal reforming ideals of the Prague Spring, and retreated to lead a private mode of existence. There was one man who did not run away from public life. Despite repeated arrests and permanent harassment at the hands of the police, Vaclav Havel kept speaking out and challenging others to assume their responsibilities as citizens. He was virtually alone at first; in the midseventies, he could rely on only just over one hundred supporters out of a county of fourteen million napping and "normalized" inhabitants. Masaryk took great care to present himself on the political scene as an accidental sojourner whose real calling in life was philosophy. Yet, in philosophy, he left no significant trace, whereas in politics, he inspired millions. Havel has employed a similar stratagem. He tells the world that he is an artist, a playwright who was forced to enter public life by various unexpected circumstances. Some of his plays were brilliant. But the best of them, The Garden Party, was written a long time ago, in 1963, and only specialists may be familiar with it now. As an artist, Havel was one of a very talented generation that burst onto the scene of post-stalinist Czechoslovakia in the late fifties and dominated public discourse until the normalization in the early seventies, when some of the country s leading artists were forced into exile Josef Skvorecky went to Toronto, Milan Kundera to Paris, Milos Forman to New York or driven underground. Igor Lukes, review of To the Castle and Back, by Vaclav Havel, Journal of Historical Biography 3 (Spring, 2008): , Journal of Historical Biography This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

2 178 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY By contrast, Havel s political achievements are unique and permanent. One of the founders of the very small, but influential, Charter 77, Havel quickly rose to become Public Enemy Number One of the normalized Czechoslovak state. He promoted his image as an impractical intellectual and artist. Yet he proved to be a charismatic and gutsy leader, he seemed to have the ability to conduct political campaigns, and he had a magnificent sense of drama and timing in politics. In short, Havel s achievements as a playwright may be considerable, but they are overshadowed by his achievements in politics. Havel s performance in practical politics in the post-1989 era proves this point. In many countries of Eastern Europe, the first round of democratic elections brought former dissidents to power. By the middle of the nineties, however, they were sometimes less than ceremoniously booted out of office and replaced by managers, technicians of power, and sometimes even those who had had political careers under the previous régime. Those who tried to linger, such as Lech Walesa in Poland, tended to experience bitter defeats, sometimes by former Communists. Although Havel had to face, from the beginning, a number of determined rivals current president Vaclav Klaus is one example who resented his domestic and international successes, he never lost an election and was able to serve the maximum time in the president s office. In fact, since he had started as president of Czechoslovakia and then continued in the same position for two terms in the Czech Republic, Havel stayed in the Prague Castle for almost thirteen years. To the Castle and Back seamlessly combines Havel the politician and Havel the artist in a collage of three separate narratives, each running along its own time-line. The first narrative opens the book with excerpts from Havel s diary covering the period from early April 2005, when he came to Washington as a guest of the Library of Congress, to early January 2006, when his beloved boxer died in Prague. The second consists of a long interview with the journalist Karel Hvizdala that touches on a number of practical aspects of Havel s political career. The third and by far the most

3 REVIEWS 179 revealing element of the collage consists of notes and memoranda Havel produced while he was president of the Czech Republic; the first is dated 4 October 1993, and the last 11 April It goes without saying that Havel writes with great elegance. The text (as always, smoothly translated by Paul Wilson) is full of surprising images. But it is the political component that makes this book such a resource for anyone who wants to try to understand the Vaclav Havel phenomenon. The central theme of this book is America. Like many in his generation, Havel considered it not just a state, but an ethical challenge to the rest of the world. He visited the United States for the first time in 1968, at the invitation of Joe Papp, to see the premiere of one of his plays in New York. He was in his early thirties, and he witnessed a country in the middle of serious political upheavals. He admired the large anti-war demonstrations because, as he puts it, their inner ethos was powerful, but not fanatical. After a long and gloomy twenty-two years, Havel returned again. He speculated that some of the hippies, festooned with beads, whom he had watched in 1968 in Central Park had now become senators or bosses in large corporations. He came back as president of a country he had helped to free from Soviet occupation. Havel mentions several times his friendship with the last three U.S. presidents, and this is not empty boasting. He can also say that while he was in the Castle, the Czech Republic acted as a committed ally of Washington and a supporter of all of its foreign policy initiatives. Some of the most significant passages of this book (for instance, Chapter Six, and also page 41) cast light on Prague s admission into NATO. They deal with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, an event not attended by the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but by Gennady Yanayev, a morose drinker straight out of Dostoyevsky who subsequently joined the August 1991 coup d'état in Moscow. (294) With the collapse of the bipolar world, the former Communist countries were eager to join NATO. Soon after this happened in March 1999, President Clinton summoned the heads of government of NATO countries and explained why he intended to

4 180 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY attack Serbia. Havel confesses that his first reaction was that of astonishment that the president of the United States should speak so openly in front of him and the Polish president, Alexander Kwasniewski, since they represented two former Communist countries. ( ) Havel played the role of staunch American ally right through the invasion of Iraq in Even in this case, the best he can do is to concede that the whole thing was not done in the best way. (167) Havel describes his encounters with notable people. The list includes John Paul II, whom Havel greeted in Prague by saying: I m not sure I know what a miracle is, but I m not afraid to say that I m part of one at this moment ; (146) the Dalai Lama, Wojciech Jaruzelski, King Juan Carlos, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, and many others. Students of history will comb this book for interesting bits about a number of world leaders. Students of politics will focus on a detailed depiction of the power struggle between Havel and Vaclav Klaus. ( ) On one occasion, President Havel, terrified of his rival s aggressive and cunning style, was to inform Klaus that he would lose his ministerial seat in the next government. But when Klaus shot back that it was out of the question and followed with a barrage of arguments, Havel politely backed down and said something like All right, then! (203) Havel reveals other aspects of politics, for instance, the tedium of day-to-day governing. After a state dinner, he wrote to the caterer that there were no salt and pepper shakers on the tables, the dumplings were cold and dry, there was not enough gravy, there were few waiters, and they were slow. One receives better service in any fifth-class pub, the president fumed. (165) The plays Havel wrote in the sixties depicted a world in which bureaucracy acquired a life of its own and devoured individuals who came near it. Before a trip to Brussels, he had received a briefing note from his staff that could have been lifted from one of his absurdist plays. He quotes it in full: There already exist channels of communication... NEEA/PSC, NEEA/MS and a new suggestion,

5 REVIEWS 181 NEEA/MC. The consultations have made it possible for the NEEA to contribute to the development of the CESDP as well as the CFSP. (189) Finally, the book recounts Havel s private struggles and storms, including his own lung cancer and other recurring medical issues. It also discusses Havel s first wife, Olga, who died of cancer. She had supported her husband s dissident activities, but had misgivings about the prospect of Havel becoming president. (5) To those who might seek it, the book offers much information about his second wife, Dasa. I recommend this volume very highly and not only to those who specialize in Eastern Europe. It is a delightful behind-the-scenes tour through a segment of a most original and fruitful life. Since Havel suggests that he does not intend to write a comprehensive memoir, this may well be the only available window on his political and private world. Igor Lukes Boston University