Word: jakub
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...pressure to perform is fierce: 20 players compete for every place on one of the national teams. Says Jakub Zvara, 15, a member of the Prague center, presently ranked 20th in Czechoslovakia in his age group: "I am sacrificing everything, including training and education for a normal job, for tennis. If I am not a good player, then I am nothing." The payoff: a chance to travel freely in the West, rake in hard-currency winnings, and live better than Central Committee members. Any player 18 or over with 120 points on the international tennis rating scale in singles...
...scientist who practices personal eugenics by inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm. A rich American expatriot named Bartleff dispenses fistfuls of U.S. half dollars while preaching a Christianity of joy in which saintly asceticism is practiced out of sheer lust for adulation. Kundera also introduces a character named Jakub, a former political prisoner who believes that the only true freedom in his country is the freedom to commit suicide. To remind himself of this pathetic option, he keeps a poisoned pill with him at all times...
Lethal Dose. Chekhov's dictum about never showing a gun in the first act unless it is used in the third applies to poisoned pills as well. Jakub's lethal dose leads to a death that cries out to be interpreted as either an accidental murder or a murderous accident. Playing existential detective, Kundera shows how all the major characters are implicated. But despite some amusing farcical turns, the verdict is heavily weighted toward a formulation that amounts to a facile existential copout: we are all murderers...
...enough for Stalin. At a signal Gomulka's comrades turned on him. General Marian Spychalski was Gomulka's chief denouncer. Gomulka was accused of being "permeated with the Pilsudski spirit." Economic Minister Mine accused him of betraying his underground comrades to the Gestapo. Said Polit-burocrat Jakub Berman: "Let Comrade Gomulka repudiate his mystical notions and let him march together with the party." But the stubborn Gomulka had another idea. Said he: "I have come to the conclusion that my political career is over. It is my fault . . . Free me from my responsibilities and allow me to work...
...Dictator's death came that "wavering" in Soviet power which he had always feared. When destalinization got out of hand, the long-disciplined Polish intellectuals broke loose. The unrest spread to the workers and peasants. All Stalin's successors could think of was to order Jakub Berman and other hated leaders to disappear. Party Secretary Bierut died fortuitously in Moscow, Deputy Premier Mine took ill. In July came the riots at Poznan. Someone in Moscow remembered Gomulka, the one man who, because of his war record, his persecution, but most of all his patriotism, could perhaps win public...