Word: vaclav
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...politics of meaning," I'd probably be for it. But the kind of political morality that we need in our politics has nothing to do with sexual propriety; it consists essentially of accepting one's responsibility to participate in the direction of everyone's affairs. As Czech President Vaclav Havel has written, "If you are modest and do not lust after power, not only are you suited for politics, you absolutely belong there...
...most eloquent spokesman for embracing the East is Czech President Vaclav Havel. He argued last month that "we have always belonged to the Western sphere of European civilization and share the values upon which NATO was founded and which it exists to defend...
...Amid uncertainty and confusion it is good to write and read about a hero," Eda Kriseova writes in her preface to Vaclav Havel, the Authorized Biography. However, when her book was first published in Czechoslovakia, "literary critics attacked me for having written a pretty story, a fairy tale." It is good to talk about a hero in our times. If such a hero could exist, Vaclav Havel would fulfill the requirements. As a longtime friend, artist, and fellow political worker, Kriseova is well qualified to write about Havel's life. Her attitude towards him encompasses both familiarity and reverence. Kriseova...
Both sides of Havel's family were prominent and aristocratic figures in Czechoslovakia's Old Regime. Such a history only intensified the communist government's discrimination against Vaclav, even in his youth. The Havel family history is truly interesting, but Kriseova devotes too much energy to relaying stories about Vaclav's parents and grandparents. Likewise, her account of Vaclav's own youth tends towards the chatty and overly anecdotal. To be fair, many of these tidbits are surprising and intriguing, especially those about the beginnings of Havel's involvement with Prague underground literary circles...
...political change in Eastern Europe, and especially in Czechoslovakia, is how the intellectuals and their poetic sensibilities of truth became a public force in the political arena. This is a noteworthy book about a remarkable man in a remarkable time. Given the unimaginable nature of the challenges of Vaclav Havel's life, it would have been difficult for Kriseova to write anything besides a fairy tale, in which, at the last, good wins out over evil...