Word: havel
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...artist, Havel has always been a political prophet, prone to jeremiads. In Largo Desolato, the hero faces unspecified tortures, which he can avert if he changes his name and declares himself not to be the author of his works. Although he ultimately says no, he wavers for a moment, and that is enough to satisfy the state. In Temptation, Havel retells the Faust myth in terms of the ego-driven distortions of truth committed by his compatriots. In the essay The Power of the Powerless, he lambastes an archetypal grocer who places a poster saying WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE...
...Havel, 53, actually were an enemy of the society in which he grew up, it would be understandable. Long before he was singled out for his outspoken politics and insurrectionist art, he was subjected to discrimination because he was born to wealth. His father was a real estate developer. An even richer uncle owned hotels and the Barrandov movie studios, which remain the center of Czechoslovak filmmaking. One of his English-language translators, Czech emigre Vera Blackwell, has said, "If Czechoslovakia had remained primarily a capitalist society, Vaclav Havel would be just about the richest man in the country." Instead...
...years he worked his way up to literary manager of the Theater on the Balustrade, Prague's principal showcase for the avant-garde. That made him a prominent part of the Prague Spring, which was not just a fleeting season but several years of increasing freedom, ferment and hope. Havel's first script, The Garden Party, a surreal satire of communist pedanticism, was produced at home in 1963 and in at least seven other nations -- in 18 separate theaters in West Germany. British critic Kenneth Tynan lauded the play as "absurdism with deep roots in contemporary anxieties." The perspective...
...Havel's English-language reputation was secured with his second play, The Memorandum, in which a society's leaders imposed an artificial language, incomprehensible to everyone but nonetheless required for all transactions. It debuted in Prague in 1965 and reached the U.S. in May 1968 in an award-winning production by Joseph Papp's prestigious Public Theater in New York City. Havel attended the premiere. Three months later, Soviet tanks rolled through the streets of Prague. The political and artistic blossoming withered and died. The bureaucrats Havel had mocked were firmly back in charge...
...Balustrade. Although he continued to write for publication or production in the West, his public role in Prague shifted to politics. He became a principal organizer of Charter 77, a human rights organization designed to compel Czechoslovakia to honor the commitments in existing treaties and its own constitution. As Havel argued, "If an outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in Czechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he or she would be utterly incapable of understanding what we were complaining about." Havel was first jailed in 1977. By August 1978, he was "free" under house arrest behind...