Word: havel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Vaclav Havel, an open letter from Prague...
...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...
...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...
...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...