The Velvet Revolution of 1989,
which marked the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, has become a kind of
mythical or mythically veiled happening. As Peter Oslzly, one of the 'men' of
1989, put it: "The whole 'tender' revolution is permeated by symbolic
coincidences."[1]
On December 6, 1989, V. Havel said that in his "globally popular
view," it was "all a kind of play" that "first required to
be decoded" in order to "decide what we say [to the public] about
it." And only after that, Havel continued, "it would be possible to
announce further strategies."[2]
In this regard, Klaus's statement "I am a symbol of an unwritten
program" has been noted and also
raised some eyebrow-raising questions in the press.[3]
Similarly, Havel hinted in his speeches that preceded the breakup of
Czechoslovakia several times about his "beforehand prepared [yet publicly
further undefined] program."[4]
It
is also remarkable how many high-profile revolutionaries of 1989 either
rejected or seriously questioned the word "revolution" as adequate
for describing what had happened (Urban, Panek, Klima, Neff , Steigerwald, Oslzly,
Battek, Bystrovova).[5]
Yet, they found it either problematic to come up with a different name of their
own or finally preferred 'takeover' to 'revolution.' Karel Steigerwald offered
his own version - "The Theatrical
Putsch," to denote the leading role played by play-writers and actors
in the revolution.[6]
Such a name of the takeover has a particular relevance, especially in the light
of the confession of Steigerwald, one of its managers, himself a theatrical
artist, who pointed out that because the dissidents were either unknown to the
overwhelming majority of the citizens, or their public image was not yet
particularly high, they stepped aside to let the popular actors and artists
pave the way for them.[7]
In addition, the dramatic institutions (theatres, schools and unions) and
artists also performed a role of the first (public) organizers of the take-over
and its transmission belt at its very start.[8] The
protest strike also began first as a strike of theatres. As Martin Palous, a
dissident leader and later a deputy foreign minister, pointed out, in the theatres
the formerly isolated dissident movement was elevated into politics.[9] In this regard, Martin Palous further added:
"Everything was in fact taking place in a theatre [in Laterna magika - the
headquarters of the Civic Forum] and, moreover, under direction of a
playwright, and so everything was some kind of theatre."[10]
Vaclav Maly, a Catholic priest and chief manager of the manifestations was with
regard to such a theatrical technology of politics very explicit:
In directing
the public presentations, we focused on that people should see famous faces, actors, sportsmen, singers. This
was to prevent an impression that it is created again by the dissidents, that
it is a matter of only a tiny group of power-thirsty
people with inferiority complexes [my italics].[11]
In
this way and from the very start, the organizers of the take-over consciously
wanted to "educate people below to support effectively support the
powerful."[12]
The takeover appeared to another of its actors as a "happening" and
"big fun" (Vladimir Kovarik).[13]
Similarly, the last spokesman of the Communist government, Miroslav Pavel, who
played an important role in the takeover to become then for a while the
director of the Czechoslovak Television, stated that it was not so much a
revolution as an orderly passing-on of the power.[14] Miroslav
Vacek, the last Communist Minister of Defence and still a supporter of the
Communist party, said: "Many former dissidents do not call November 1989 a
revolution, but they speak about a take-over. This appears as more truthful to
me as well."[15]
Alojz Lorenc, who is suspected as being one of the directors of the power
transfer, also referred to it as a "state take-over," conspicuously
avoiding the word "revolution."[16] Ludvik
Vaculik, a former Czech communist writer and later dissident, further
elaborated on this theme, arguing that "how the StB agents participated in
this play was not essential; what was
important was how the play ended."[17]
What is the available evidence that would (or not) substantiate such a thesis?
Is the result really everything, and is anything else dismissable?
The
preceding evolution of Czechoslovak communism towards its capitalist
metamorphosis was well summarized by a former Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiri
Dienstbier (also a communist-turned-dissident): "after 1968 [the elite]
already knew that their empire would not be there for a thousand years."[18]
In this regard, the strange coincidence and parallels between Czech theatre and
Communist power and police are manifest here again. Curiously enough, an
essentially correct and subsequently validated scenario of what was to become
the Velvet Revolution and following transformations, including the breakup of
the state, can be also found in Havel's play The Conspirators, and also in another piece of his The Beggars' Opera. As Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz,
a Canadian Bohemist, noted, The
Conspirators is about craving for political power where ideals are used as coverups
of this struggle for power, and, as other plays of Havel, is also circular
[like the perfect system of Hegel], circular are also all the transformations
and interchangeability of identities of Havelian characters.[19]
So, for example, "in The Beggar's
Opera we no longer know when anyone is pretending and when he is not."[20]
Because, in the Hegelian universal homogeneity, nothing can stand out, only
that one who is able to be more universally "homogeneous" (be better
at being nothing) can cheat on others more efficiently. Thus, it is a system
that allows only the liars to compete - with each other. This Hegelian theme
underlies the whole of Havel's opus. And if contrasted with the 'other
possibility' of the Czech ethos, this "main theme" of Havel's plays
inevitably turns to that of betrayal and treason.[21] In
this way, The Beggar's Opera, as well
as other Havel's plays. are about joining such a game and accepting its rules:
Macheath
[one of the mafia bosses in The Beggars'
Opera], caught in the mesh of pretence, no longer able to distinguish a lie
from the truth ... draws his conclusion: 'If everyone around betrays me, as has
become obvious, it does not mean that they expect anything else from me, but
the exact opposite: by acting in this way they offer me some sort of principle
of our mutual relationship.' Accordingly he decides to play along on the
principle, when in Rome, do as the Romans do; or 'if you can't beat them, join
them.'[22]
In
so many words, Havel tries to argue that betrayal "became common"
while realizing its conditionality by "existential
schizophrenia" which he, however, inflates again by a ruse of
projection into a universal and homogeneous quality.[23]
What happens after these Havelian heroes start indulging in this kind of theatrical politics? How do they rationalize
their roles? Jenny, one character of Havel's Beggars' Opera, we learn, "had to betray" in order to
"preserve herself," in this regard, she discovers even her concealed
hatred of others as "self-preserving." In addition, she suffers from
a schizophrenia or split personality, implying this as an acquittal of her
guilt because she does not see herself as being identical with herself or her
actions.[24]
On other occasions, Havelian protagonists at least try to appease themselves by
imaging that their real identity can be the very role: "Life simply forced
you into a certain role, and you came to believe that what you are playing is
your own self."[25]
Since, understandably, this can hardly be a viable solution, the play, as well
as the Havelian figures are condemned to the circularity of the Hegelian spirit
- or Nietzschean eternal recurrence of the same (instability and uprootedness
from a firm stand-point) - going around
oneself in circles and whirling around the truth, not close enough to get
burned by it, not far enough not to be afraid of it, hence also their
schizophrenia. Admittedly, such was also the mechanism of the Communist
metamorphoses in Czechoslovakia.[26]
However, in addition to providing this general and psychological insight, Havel
also drew quite a concrete frame of the Velvet Revolution, including an account
of somewhat nasty bargaining and inner struggle among the conspirators over who
ought to be the new 'big boss' - the new head of the state. In his play The Conspirators, written in 1970-1971, Havel
depicts the conspirators as triggering, managing from behind, and using in
their interests - a student revolt (what also happened in November 1989): Moher,
being both the police chief and chief conspirator, stresses:
You do
know my concept: the demands of the students should be boycotted, but nothing
should be done against [the students] so that we don't scare them. Only in this
way, it can grow into larger unrests that will only then show in a full light
the incapability of the government [whose he is a member] to solve that
situation.[27]
The
conspirators are actual power-holders of the regime which they are set to bring
down. They are chiefs of the regime police, army and justice. Formally, they
prepared slogans disguising their take-over as a "national
revolution," while, in reality, they meant its negation.[28]
Their task is a cover-up war against their own population and reducing its
being to folklore - to "traditional forms of folk's art."[29]
Ofir, the chief of the army staff, declares: "I am not an ambitious man
and have never longed for functions ... As far as the future is concerned, I do
have some certain ideas ... a fight organized by the state ... against the population ..."[30]
To this effect, national and patriotic emotions of the nation are to be
manipulated and abused, wherein the press is to play an essential role
(articles and reports to be prepared well beforehand), as well as a calculation
with and making use of people's fear.[31]
The conspirators also understand that it would be necessary to overcome a
critical span of several days needed for making the mechanism of fear
effective: "the others will become scared and will start joining [the
stage]."[32]
Understandably,
the regime which the conspirators have in mind is not democracy, the words of Moher
who recapitulates as if the post-1918 history of Czechoslovakia from the point
of view of Böhmisch nihilism, seem to apply to a kind of post-post-Communist
phase:
This is
a crisis of our whole political system which since the declaration of
independence was not able to solve any of the difficult social problems which
had been left over to us by colonialism ... Why did we fight so long for our
national freedom when we become somebody's milk cow? The crisis of our system
is part of the global crisis of parliamentary democracy. Where has such
democracy led us? To the edge of total destruction when the arbitrary will of
the gang of demoralized members of the [elite's] golden youth is about to rule
the country. Our allies have a right to be alarmed. What should they, for
example, think of when, during the last week, five new Communist parties have
arisen? ... What follows from this, my friends? It follows that it is high time
that we took things firmly into our hands. In other words: our moment is coming
[to make an ordnung].[33]
In
this regard, the conspirators' program envisaged actions against universities
going as far as closing them (like
during the Fascist occupation) and struggle against the cultural and
educational level of the population.[34] On
the other hand, the head of the new regime would focus in his speeches after
the putsch on "the question of inter-human relationships" because
"new possibilities will open in this area too."[35]
Moreover, the (military) security of the state would be handed over or
surrendered into the hands of foreign power.[36] In
fact, the conspirators are controlled and directed from abroad.[37]
Helga, the officer for liaison with these foreign powers, assures:
"finally, they promised to me that their countries are willing to offer us
large economic aid, for example, in the form of exploitation of our mineral
wealth."[38]
Importantly, already in 1970 when Havel wrote this play, he foresaw the split
of the country over which he presided. Unless the foreign powers did not reach
an agreement (on their spheres of influence), "the state would be simply
cut in half." As one of the heroes-conspirators of this, Havel's play
tells us, any disagreement, with such a
dictate to break up the country
"won't matter a sh..."[39]
The Havelian heroes also evoke the confession of Skvorecky's coward: they are
dead living or living corpses (to use Arendt's term), thus, fulfilling the Hegelian-Kojèvian
ethos of death and its imperative at the end of history:
It
appears to me as if I were buried alive. Like a body without the soul. An
artery without blood. A tree without sap.[40]
I am
squashed by death! Whatever I have done, lived or thought up since then, is
marked by it - as if all that were dead in some strange way - I know that and I
am helpless against it. It is a horrible, vain struggle -[41]
Havel's
Beggars' Opera (1972) deals with the
structural and 'moral' problems of the transformation, concretely about the
coalescing of the police and mafia (an outstanding feature of the [post-]Communist
transformation): "Morals [of the mafia-elite] are always the same, but
what had been hushed up before, is done now publicly!"[42]
This ostentatious amorality is to internalize the masses with it and forge
thereby a new bond between the rulers and the folk. The play shows the
impossibility of escape from the circles of conspiracies, lies and betrayals
presented as acts of prudence. Betrayal and treason are the only things
arousing the 'dead' Böhmisch nihilists to life and the only subject of their
"love."[43]
Moreover, betrayal becomes their only possible way of existing and
communicating with the world - all they can is to expand, reproduce and
"gradually improve" it. Such is the rule of the game.[44]
This (political) prostitution thrives
best and most freely when covered by a legal facade.[45]
The structure of this 'spider web' is ubiquitous, but most importantly is the
top equals the bottom. It is the world of Kafka's Trial separating "justice" from the law and the
"law" from justice: "But yet, it is strange: No one knows about
our organization, and everyone serves it! - Who does not know that he is
serving, always serves best!"[46]
In
this nihilistic power which is powerful because it hides itself, there is also
weakness - weakness of (Böhmisch) nihilists, their complex of inferiority which
they consequently strive to make a basis for political tactics and strategy:
"ugliness can be turned into capital."[47]
How? Ugliness should promise that it become a beauty: "Why not? You can
promise anything, what is then important is that you will not be doing
it."[48]
To this effect, it is, however, essential to have "some back-up" of
that ugliness claiming its beauty inside the underground.[49] In
addition, it is acknowledged that without a cooperation with the (political)
police nothing can be simply done.[50]
The police and mafia are a ruling dyad.[51] In
this regard, particularly important are
those agents who are a linkage-transmission in the "dangerous zone"
on the edge between the underground-police and the public, spreading step by
step the dominance of the political underworld.[52]
What is given to the public the revealed truth, but its concealment. Emotions
and feelings are good only for manipulations.[53]
Moreover, such a swindle, especially at a local level, should respect the
orders as to the pre-arranged "dimensions" of how much and whom it
can (un)veil.[54]
Schizophrenia and angst of the
plotters compensated by their hatred of the world, where they officially belong
to, are paramount (this is encountered by turning the fear into a source of
masochistic lust of a [sex] slave):
Do you
understand at all what it is - to have two faces for so long? To live two
lives? To think in two ways? From the morning ti the evening, to watch
yourselves, to pretend, to hide something or feign? To keep accustoming oneself
constantly to the world where you live, and that you reject, and denounce the
world to which you really belong?[55]
Because
of this impossibility to belong somewhere and also their unwillingness to do
so, these (Hegelian) nihilists-agents become true 'universal nothings' or non-beings
(German N-ichts): they are "not
identical with themselves."[56]
Their "destructive [nihilistic] way of thinking" drives them
"into a strange vacuum" of non-being where all is compared to
nothing, and, thus, "there is no identity!"[57]
This lack of their own positive content is also a reason why they feel no
responsibility for concrete being 'here and now' (the state and nation). And
this emptiness is also a reason for their collaboration - they bow to an
external force or will that gives to their emptiness a form. Only this assigned
form or image appears as all that which represents their essential content -
form represents content.[58]
For such nihilists-agents, a would-be escape from existential paranoia - if
they "want to belong to themselves again" - is to destroy what is and has its own
identity (like the state and nation). Only a "drastic self-confirmation by
action" or "murder," that is, death of the other, makes it
possible for them to "live."[59]
Understandably, a deep existential hatred stemming from one's realized radical
deficiency is here a key, or, as Havel put it in his play, a "mysterious
need to do evil."[60]
Importantly, the play is also one of Havel's crucial elaborations on political
strategy related to the destruction of existing institutions and their
restructuring defined here as(new) "fusion" (assimilation) by the
means of "delimitation," or breaking up of the existent entity.[61]
Its relevance to the strategy of Böhmisch nihilism vis-à-vis the Czech
statehood and the Czech nation is as much profound as apparent.
In
1987, when practical preparations for the events of 1989 were apparently
already in full swing, Havel finished another 'prognostic' play Redevelopment or Slum Clearance (Asanace). There he speaks of a
"project" of "taking from the people their home(s)"
disguised as renovation.[62]
The plan makers are hidden in a Kafka-like Castle so that nobody in the village
below knows what is really planned and by whom.[63]
The designs are only referred to as "a modern housing project" of
masons, that requires "a smoothly
running complex of efficient communication systems."[64] A
great deal of the project is a play, a theatre involving its own makers:
"It's as if they're not people but characters in a play someone's putting
on -"[65]
The play is about putting (political) death of the people into effect:
"We're not improving life, we're manipulating it to death!"[66]
A first part of the play apparently is a short-lived party-like frenzy wherein
the secret police grant the people freedom, that is, they seem to be
"liberated" from the police - by the police that, in addition to
freedom, also order :[67] "But everyone must dance!"[68]
This is followed by a wild party-celebration[69]
reminiscent of not only the final episode of Orwell's Animal Farm but also of another "exotic" one that took
place in reality in the autumn 1989, that inaugurated the velvet dialogue of
the "Revolution" in a rather strange way (see below). After letting
people rejoice at the gift of democracy for a while, the police announces:
Preparations
for the project will therefore continue as before but with a new dynamism!
Certain people will try to convince you that this is a return to old rightfully
rejected methods. On the contrary! This is a radical renewal of the original
intention, and a radical cleansing of former deformities calling for critical
reform, as well as of all later excesses resulting from this criticism.[70]
The
play (project) winds up as a ritual of lie and farce. It seems that, in this
way, the play would cover a possible course of development well after the post-Communist
take-over, as remarkably grasped and portrayed here by one of its chief actors.
Again, the nihilistic characters and executors of the project are spiritually
dead - this was accomplished or completed by their "arrest," that is,
initiation into collaboration with the political police. As a result, they
cease to be beings sharing in human togetherness and love and turn into a
mechanism or empty machine of an extraneous 'absolute' will.[71]
To this effect, Plekhanov named apparently after a well-known Russian Marxist,
here an experienced planner, advises: kill love inside or you must kill
oneself.[72]
The choice that the Havelian heroes made is given with a sufficient
explicitness. By being "dead" with regard to their own character
and truth, they are prone to believe
(out of desperation) that they have gained thereby one great advantage: the
others can still lose the truth because they have it - and so the agent of
nihilism cannot but try to destroy the truth wherever it is still suspected and
take away from others the ability to justify themselves in memoriam. They cannot do otherwise: they are and have to be
totally false. Truth is killed for them as much as they kill it.In this way,
they are 'absolutely' free from the truth. Thus, with a touch of bitterness,
they congratulate themselves: "Only a corpse is never fooled."[73]
This reduces to politics to "apolitical politics" - to a theatre
where the nihilist believes only in the power of his lie:
Some
plays, Luisa, you'll never understand until they're taken out of the repertory.
As this one; you'll see. ... Only this time the audience won't walk out of the
play; the play will walk out of the audience.[74]
Accordingly,
Havel defines politics as "[theatrical] acting."[75]
The concrete relevance of theatre-politics to Havel personally, is described by
him as "having been chosen by those [theatrical] aspects of the world as
their interpreter" which is also what lies in his identity:
"ultimately, all theatre is built around the conflict between who a
character seems to be and who he really is."[76]
Because the play is only about an exchange of one lie or form (mask) for
another - its actors as well as its audience (like the nation) are caught in a Hegelian-Nietzschean
circularity of the eternal recurrence of the same. Because there is no truth,
individual differences between lies are only a matter of form - and then as Havel
himself said, only what matters is the form under which there is really nothing.[77]
And nothing is essentially all the same, hence the essence or lack of it of the
transformations and metamorphoses played on the part of nihilism, including the
Böhmisch one. Havel called this law of
eternal recurrence "the well-known Law of Universal Misery
Exchange" which is also the law of the "architecture" of
nihilism, and, thus, apparently of the Universal and Homogenous State.[78]
Why do the nihilists have an urgent need to denounce, although in a covered
way, themselves and what they are to do? One of the inevitable reasons is that,
as one of the Havel's characters put it,
"you can't put on our drama without an audience ."[79]
Indeed, the high degree of coincidence between Havel's projections and the
Velvet Revolution and subsequent evolution is overwhelming. In this regard, one
can only assume that either Havel has qualities of a self-fulling prophet or
there appears to be somewhere really a new Hegel-like God. That all these
theatrical concepts had a direct relevance to the post-Communist phase was
confirmed by Havel himself. In his speech at New York University on October 27,
1991, Havel, already as the head of the post-Communist state, concluded:
I can
responsibly say that I was not forced to disclaim nothing from what I wrote
before or to change my opinion about anything I wrote about. It is perhaps
incredible, but it is really so: I did not have to change my opinion, but I
have even reassured myself of it![80]
In
the summer of 1992, at a time when the top elite decided to break up the
country, Havel was thinking in his Summer
Meditations literally the same - with a striking consistency:
[I] can
responsibly say that I was not forced to disclaim anything from what I wrote
before or to change my opinion about anything I wrote about. It is perhaps
incredible, but it is really so: I did not have to change my opinion, but I
have even reassured myself of it![81]
If
the above said shed some light on the background of the tenderness of a late XXth-century
"revolution" and following "tender" breakup of the
Czechoslovak state, it is now necessary to focus closer on the political events
as they unfold following the spirit and letter of the said scenarios, including
their scientific versions by Uhl and Pithart and an artistic one as in the case
of Havel.
2 [2]
For a discussion on Havel's public hints on the existence of a previously
prepared plan, see Slavomir Ravik, Zahradni
slavnost pro 15 milionu aneb jak vyhovet Murphyho zakonum, (Prazska imaginace:
Praha, 1993), p 17. Also Slavomir Ravik, Totalni
deziluze, (Prazska imaginace: Praha, 1992), p. 9.
6 [6]
Hvizdala, op. cit., p. 41. Of course, the term "theatrical"
revolution could have also a broader and, admittedly, quite relevant meaning.
8 [8]
See, for example, M. Otahal and Z. Sladek, eds., Deset prazskych dnu (17.-27. listopad 1989), (Praha: Academia,
1990), pp. 564-565, 567.
10[10]
Ibid., p. 633. There was a great deal of irony in a statement of Ladislav Adamec,
the premier of the last Communist government, addressed to Jiri Bartoska, a
Czech actor, during the first meeting with a delegation of the Civic Forum on
November 21, 1989: "Why aren't you playing [in] a theatre? People want to
go to a theatre." [Michal Horacek, Jak
pukaly ledy, (Praha: Ex libris, 1990), p. 78]
11[11]
Karel Hvizdala, Vyslech revolucionaru z listopadu 1989, op. cit., p. 32. Vaclav
Havel later said that his role at the head of state seems to him as that of
"swindler" from which also stems his great personal uncertainty:
"I feel that anytime anybody could come, take the position from me and
send me back to prison." [Michaels Simmons, Nesmely prezident, op. cit., p. 15]
12[12]
Karel Hvizdala, Vyslech revolucionaru z listopadu 1989, op. cit., p. 33. That
this support (or better, who should support whom) was understood essentially as
a radical "onesidedness" was evidenced by subsequent statements on
the part of the new political elite. Thus, for example, Pavel Tigrid, a former
leading dissident and Czech minister of culture after the breakup, complained
in 1994: "There is still such a belief that the state ... has a certain
obligation with regard to the [national] culture. This should end." [Frantisek
Dvorak, Slavomir Ravik, Jiri Teryngel, Zaloba
aneb Bila kniha k patemu vyroci 17. listopadu 1989, (Praha: Periskop,
1994), p. 61]
14[14]
Oskar Krejci, Proc to prasklo aneb hovory
o demokracii a 'sametove revoluci', (Praha, Trio, 1991), p. 111.
16169.
19[18]
Jana Klusakova a Jiri Dienstbier, Rozmlouvaji
nadoraz: nejen o tom, jak si stojime ve svete, (Primus: Praha, 1993), p.
61.
20[19]
Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, The Silenced Theatre:
Czech Playwrights without a Stage, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1979), p. 60.
22[21]
Cf. ibid., p. 65. In addition to the archetype of a Hegelian slave-coward who
becomes a kind of super-slave trying to make slave-cowards from others as
embodied by Emil Hacha, the Czech "president" during the fascist
occupation, there is also another side of this archetype represented by Karel Sabina,
a XIXth-century Czech writer and political leader who turned to be a paid
informer of the Austro-Hungarian secrete police. The parallels with the present
are as much striking as abundant. In this regard, a first-class analysis of the
existential and spiritual background of Sabina's Böhmisch nihilism and
collaboration can be found in Slavomir Ravik, Ceske Charaktery: Karel Sabina (portret konfidenta), (Praha: Prazska imaginace, 1992). Ravik
stresses that Sabina cannot be seen as an individual case, coincidence or
merely as a mistake. As a prominent personality, Sabina became a 'father' of
modern Böhmisch nihilism by advancing its culture and philosophy - the
philosophy of a "squealer." It was a reflection of a real process:
collaboration, treason, split personalities, inferiority complexes, pettiness
of megalomania of agents and their inability to find a meaning of life thereby
escaped the frames of individual problems and became a political and social
curse. Their collaboration and personal failure are turned into a social force
for "extending their pettiness" as their ostensible redemption and
revenge. In this regard, Sabina typified
a man "without essence and force lost in the wind." [Ibid., p. 10]
This agent-nihilist is a coward and weakling aspiring to play if not a leader's
role in the universe than at least in the nation which he hates. [Ibid., p. 19]
All Sabina's literal work is a painful search for his own self-justification
and apology for betrayal, and this also became a basis of his
"philosophy," hence a "philosophy" and writings as nothing
but an incessant diagnosing of his own ego and its 'feelings' presented as a
doctrine of the universe. The solution was found in nihilism, that is, 'beyond good and evil' that meant an assimilation of good by evil - because he was himself
conscious that he had failed in standing
for good. [Ibid., pp. 5, 20, 26] To this effect, Sabina had to avoid being
concrete and, thus, escaped into superficiality of 'big words' and phrases bordering on covered
primitivism and abstractness. [Ibid., pp. 34, 38-39] Sabina was a schizophrenic
"driven by a permanent dissatisfaction and eternal striving for
change." [Ibid., p. 38] Sabina's existential mode was distinguished as a
'crisis of (his) identity', radical uncertainty, self-alienation and
impossibility to be what he is. [Ibid., p. 44]
Sabina's megalomaniac vanity was combined with his view that all being
is in vain, from where there was only a step to an urge to become a traitor and
get rid of all that is. [Ibid., p. 38] In this way, Sabina was also a
forerunner of the concept of the 'solidarity of the shaken' and existential
'shock' (in the face of death) forwarded by a Czech Heideggerian philosopher
Jan Patocka (1907-1977) who became a spiritual father of contemporary Böhmisch
nihilism and political elite - as Sabina put it in one his librettos:
"Only a vigorous action which will shake the country ... will bring us
salvation! (Jen zivy cin, jenz zemi zatrese .... nam spasu prinese!)."
[Ibid., p. 45] Sabina covered his becoming a traitor under his notion-cipher of
"responsibility" while he was able to rob a dying man. [Ibid., p. 39,
18] In this way, Sabina, the Hegelian slave-schizophrenic, hoped to become a
master - because he could not become such in reality (in 'everydayness'), he
could at least think and dream of it - as a squealer positing himself as a
false master at least by the help of 'the world of darkness' - the police. As
Sabina wrote in a libretto to Smetana's opera "Branibori v Cechach":
"you did not want to give us during the daylight what we demanded so much,
so we have come for it at night to take it ourselves ... the master and slave
are equal ... let's play the master!" [Ibid., p. 44, also 77]
Consequently, the Hegelian slave becomes a snitch upon his own initiative.
[Ibid., pp. 54, 57, 63] In this way, the
meaning of a cipher "secrete zones" (also used in today's nihilistic
jargon) is rendered as a tomb of betrayal or police engagement. [Ibid., p. 63]
These "secret zones" are guided by a rather simple notion: "Take
where people do not know, leave what they come to know." [Ibid., p. 20]
Such a man longs for the future to negate the present and the past and knows
that he has no future. [Ibid., p. 68] He
is a perfect outsider to life, being an accomplice of death, as well as an
outsider among the masters whom he admires and hates. [Ibid., p. 73] This
banality and 'vulgarity' of agent (Arendt) seeks its depth by reflecting on
itself as "demonic" or evil. [Ibid., p. 79] Cf. Havel's play Temptation where a German titanic Faust is transformed into a petit
Faust - Foustek - while his alter ego Fistula is a police squealer-provocateur-devil with
smelling feet; as Havel himself said, such a Faust "had been haunting him
for a long time," "understanding that he had somehow become involved
with the devil" and, thus, "rediscovering himself" - it was a
"recapitulation," "personal revival," "resume of what has already been." Importantly,
both Foustek and Fistula appear as "double agents" - the former is
unsuccessful in it and the former is presented s highly effective. [Vaclav
Havel, Disturbing the Peace, op.
cit., pp. 67-68] Sabina was in need of the public and audience for having his
'being', 'identity' and 'greatness' confirmed and 'recognized' - a supreme
existential need of the Hegelian god as we know. At the same time, Sabina
sincerely despised the public while projecting his own deficiencies into it.
Then, he indulged in reprimanding the
public for his projection and personal problems. It seemed to him that actually
only the nation and its aspiration prevent him from reaching his identity and
being. [Cf. Slavomir Ravik, Ceske
Charaktery: Karel Sabina (portret konfidenta), op. cit.., pp. 68, 126]
After his exposure, he claimed that this truth is "barbarian,"
"terrorist" and that its intention "was to crush his whole
being." (Actually, he was offered a gentlemen's deal and money for going
abroad; he accepted - but only the money.) [Ibid., p. .97] Notably, these
Böhmisch agents command themselves as being more effective than foreign
enemies, as a German soldier tells a domestic traitor Thousandmarks in Sabina's
libretto: "Not even thousand strangers make such a damage as such one
villain to whom this country is his homeland which he betrays and trots with
every step of his." [Ibid., p. 80] As a matter of fact, after 1918, it was
revealed that the damage he did and his guilt was much higher than initially
suspected. Importantly, these who tried to absolve Sabina was a Communist collaborator
with Gestapo Julius Fucik and a leading Communist intellectual Zdenek Nejedly.
On this occasion, arguments of the alleged banality or harmlessness of treason
were used - similar to those resorted to
after 1989. [Ibid., pp. 104-105] Interestingly, there is one peculiar
coincidence between the case of betrayal by Sabina and present events. In
particular, Sabina's collaboration came to surface when the Czech patriots
obtained Sabina's report on his work against the Serbs and the Serbian state.
In this regard, a contemporary Czech politician Dr. Gregr stated: "I
declare [Sabina] as a traitor of the homeland, as a traitor of the Yugoslav
question whose solution is essential for the Czech nation." [Ibid., p. 94]
Apparently, there is some inherent linkage and close interrelatedness between the beings of these two Slavic
nations. Sabina was also an author of the libretto of a well-known Czech opera,
The Bartered Bride, by Bedrich
Smetana whose title may be also rendered as "the sold-out
bride." This piece is inter alia notable because one its chief
characters is a stupid Vasek (Vaclav) a local cheater-comedian who is exposed
and ridiculed at the end. One of the mottoes of the play is: "Almost all
men are more or less comedians, but not everybody plays his comedy as well as
we - as we do!" [Ibid. 17] Interestingly, Vaclav Havel has a special
weakness for this very opera and its Sabina's libretto. As Havel confessed
seeing this opera was always "on of the most beautiful experiences"
so that "tears came to my eyes during almost every aria." [Vaclav
Havel, Letters to Olga, June 1979 -
September 1982, translated by Paul Wilson, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 270] What found Havel so appealing
in the opera was the fact that in The
Bartered Bride there
"everything revolves around the concealing and revealing of Jenik's
[a competitor of Vasek, his brother-in-law]
identity" - an "identity lost
and then sought for in vain." Vasek's "happiness,"
existence and identity stands and falls
with the recognition of Jenik and confirmation of Jenik's existence and
identity. [Ibid., p. 291] On his second appointment as president, Havel
prepared a theatrical reception on the Prague Castle that was inaugurated under
the tunes of the opera The Brandenburgers
in Bohemia "Our hour has struck, the gates are open." The
libretto was coincidentally written by Sabina. Coincidentally, the parallels
between Sabina's text and the then unfolding developments were found
conspicuously eminent. [Slavomir Ravik, Zahradni
slavnost pro 15 milionu, op. cit., p. 22]
23[22]
Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, The Silenced
Theatre: Czech Playwrights without a Stage, op. cit., p. p. 84. For Havel,
treason is evidently tied to a fear of maturing as a man; thus,
"maturing" means for him betraying: "the 'mature' I ... betrays
its source in Being and denies intrinsic orientation toward it." [Vaclav
Havel, Letters to Olga, June 1979 -
September 1982, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 335. Apparently, this
denotes a deeper truth disclosing an
infant-like dependency of informer. In Ende's real fiction about nihilism,
a snitch says in strikingly Havelian language: The power to manipulate beliefs
is the only thing that counts. That's why I sided with the powerful and served
them - because I wanted to share their power ... When your turn comes to jump
into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of
your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them
persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing
about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that
might save them. Yes, you little Fantastician, big things will be done in the
human world with your help, wars started, empires founded ..." [Michael
Ende, The Neverending Story, op.
cit., pp. 126-127]
24[23]
See Havel's own admittance, for example, in Vaclav Havel, Vazeni obcane, Projevy cervenec 1990 - cervenec 1992, op. cit., 20.
An excellent example of such a typical projection, also denoting an emphasized
effeminacy of character, is reflected in Havel's statement quoted in Michaels
Simmons, Nesmely prezident, op. cit.,
p. 26: "I strongly believe that state power finally cease to behave ...
like an ugly girl which breaks the mirror thinking that it itself is guilty of
her appearance." Cf. Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, The Silenced Theatre: Czech Playwrights without a Stage, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979),
p. 85, 210. In this regard, Goetz-Stankiewicz rightly observed that a Havel's
hero "caught in the mesh of pretence, no longer able to distinguish a lie
from the truth ... draws his conclusion:
'If everyone around betrays me, as has become obvious, it does not
mean that they expect anything else from me, but the exact opposite: by acting
in this way they offer me some sort of principle of our mutual relationship.'
Accordingly he decides to play along on the principle, when in Rome, do as the
Romans do;, or 'if you can't beat them, join them [my italics].'" [Ibid.,
p. 84; cf. Vaclav Havel, Letters to Olga,
June 1979 - September 1982, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 233:
Havel's "responsibility" towards the 'invisible" is conditioned
by betrayal, and everybody is guilty] In the play Temptation, betrayal and collaboration with the police is explained
a "devil" conveniently enabling the newly hired squealer to
"enjoy something thrilling in life and consequently to become more
fulfilled [himself]" by having one's responsibility
projected and shifted to a
"place outside of one's own ego;" this, together with betraying, had
been the hero's "secret dream." [Vaclav Havel, Temptation, op. cit., p. 59] A strong presence of apparent
autobiographic features of Havel's plays is acknowledged by the author himself.
[See, for example, Vaclav Havel, Disturbing
the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1990), pp. 53, 65-67, 72] The essence of the betrayal misery is also well
expressed in Havel's Memorandum:
"... and we are irresistibly falling apart [in a moment of betrayal], more
and more profoundly alienated from the world, from others, from ourselves. Like
Sisyphus, we roll the boulder of our life up the hill of its illusory meaning,
only for it to roll down again into the valley of its own absurdity. ... [man]
stares at a himself, unable not to be what he us not, nor to be what he is. ...
I am in fact totally alienated from myself: the desire to help you fatefully
encounters within me the responsibility thrust upon me - who am attempting to
salvage the last remnants of man's humanity ..." Vaclav Havel, The Garden party and Other Plays (the
Garden Party, the memorandum, the Increased Difficulty of Concentration,
Audience, Unveiling (Private view), Protest, Mistake), (New York: Grove Press,
1993), p. 129] In another Havel's play The
Beggars' Opera, treason ("a
mysterious need to do evil') is presented as the only possible source of self-gratification
and self-preservation appearing but as a veil of impotence: "Believe me, I
have never suspected that treason can be so erotically thrilling!" [Vaclav
Havel, Zebracka opera, (Praha: Dilia,
1990), p. 77]
26[25]
Vaclav Havel, Hry 1970-1976,
(Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1977), p. 72. The referred statement is
addressed to a conspirator-chief of the police by his mistress, also a
conspirator.
27[26]
Thus, Jiri Voskovec, a prominent Czech theatrical artist, wrote in the
introduction to one selection of Havel's play in 1977: "[In Havel's plays]
it is about a motion, a whirl of nonsense ... hurry of emptiness and deadlock
... [wherein] you [Havel] and all the other citizens, including the rulers, are
circling. Only you ... can design this tornado theatrically as if from outside.
Moreover - and the fun is already over -
it is a tornado of the Big General Nonsense ... of a universal ptydepe
[artificial sign language] of deadness." Clearly, this is one possible
definition and perception of the human death brought about the maturation and
expansion of the Hegelian spirit (the Universal and Homogeneous State). [Vaclav
Havel, Hry 1970-1976, (Toronto: Sixty-Eight
Publishers, 1977), p. 11]
31[30]
Ibid., p. 26, also p. 100. On May 28, 1991, Havel himself stated: "we all
repeat over and over that we are not after power as such, but only certain
general values ... And usually it is only the God who knows if it is really so,
or if it is only a more digestible way how we justify to ourselves and to the
world our desire to be powerful and to confirm to ourselves by the means of
power and its impact that we really exist ..." [ Vaclav Havel, Vazeni obcane, Projevy cervenec 1990 -
cervenec 1992, (Praha: Lidove
noviny, 1992), p. 82] On June 25, 1992, Havel addressed the last Czechoslovak
parliament with words specifying the notion of his "certain ideas and
values" as "responsibility for the state of the world and general
things ... not bounded by the frontiers of the state, nation ... but it is
simply co-responsibility for the destiny of man." [Ibid., p. 191] Thereby,
Havel de facto confirmed the validity
of Uhl's political program: it is man, not the nation or the state that is a
valid matter of the concern on the part of Böhmisch nihilism because the nation
allegedly has no "right to have
their own state,' or state or national sovereignty" (see note 181). This
may be contrasted or rather compared with another statement of Ofir from the
said play Ofir: "Yes, the measure of certainty which we will be able to
give to others, is the only measure of our existence ;" apparently, this
"only measure of certainty" is the very power that Ofir is striving
for as a goal of his conspiracy and treason and whose capability to
"confirm one's existence" was stressed in Havel's speech.
Consequently, Ofir's goal, like that of Uhl is
"a unification of our mankind into a higher structure of some kind
of superpersonal society": "If this is achieved, then there will be
no force that could thwart our historical deed!" [Vaclav Havel, Hry 1970-1976, op. cit., p. 102]
34[33]
Ibid., p. 86. The Prime Minister to be disposed by the conspirators complains
in this regard to the leader of the putsch, a member of his government:
"And do you think that this nation with so profoundly democratic thoughts
and feelings nation would shortly after [1989?] they finally achieved democracy
- although certainly imperfect - let it be stolen by somebody over night?"
[Ibid., p. 67]
35[34]
Ibid., p. 99. On the analysis and statistics related to the decline in the
field of education and culture after 1989
(number of students, attendance of cultural events, number of books
read, number of concerts etc.) see, for example, Slavomir Ravik, Bylo - nebylo: Uber Alles, (Praha: Periskop, 1995), pp. 38-64; Slavomir Ravik, Totalni deziluze, (Praha: Prazska
imaginace, 1992), pp. 67-72; Slavomir Ravik, Latrina magika v Cechach, na Morave a ve Slezsku, (Praha: Periskop,
1995).
40[39]
Ibid.,p. 99. The arrogance and vulgarity of the relevant
statement cannot be easily translated into English, in Czech it reads: "To
by vam bylo hovno platny -"
42[41]
Ibid., p. 49. Evidently, (self-consciously) dead nihilists are not what our
world is lacking. The following moments of the play can be noted either because
of their relevance to subsequent real developments in Czechoslovakia after 1989
or to the general nature of nihilism: on hysteria (both natural and consciously
produced) as a form of self-gratification see ibid., p. 49-50; the linkage of
that hysteria to hypocrite exhibitionism of self-humiliation ibid., pp. 49-50;
plus infantilism ibid., p. 80; plus sadism and masochism ibid., pp. 48-49, 50,
57; and its link to impotence ibid., p. 73; on a notion of war collaboration
ibid., p. 53. Helga (Havel's wife was Olga), a lover of the future head of the
state, dreams: "Do you know what we will do if all this ends up well? ...
We will have a nice residence where we will regularly invite actors, writers,
scientists, simply intellectual elite of the nation; I will be a hostess, and
you will philosophy with them, discuss your reforms as a really enlightened
head of the state! Are you for it? - A fantastic idea, puppee!" [Ibid., p.
27] Understandably, Havel's play The
Conspirators is the least known and promoted of Havel's works in the Czech
Republic. Havel himself, on the eve of already becoming the head of the later
defunct state, expressed his wish that the play had not been published. [Vaclav
Havel, Disturbing the Peace, op.
cit., p. 60)
56[55]
Ibid., p. 68. A similar misery of a
squealer-traitor was, for example, expressed by Jiri Grusa, the post-1989
Czechoslovak Ambassador to Germany, also wrote in one of his poem from the
1960s: "I have embarked on betraying and then I seek/ who can forgive me." [Jiri Grusa, Cviceni muceni, (Praha: Ceskoslovensky
spisovatel, 1969), p. 21] One can also
find there such a verse like "I am lonely with my betraying" [Ibid.,
p. 7] or a whole poem titled "Betraying" ending with a masochistic
groan: "but soon I will not believe them/ even if they call me/ perhaps
only: a crippled child." [Ibid., pp. 45-46]
60[59]
Ibid., p. 77. On Havel's notion of the interrelatedness between death and
voidness of content and his own personal experience ("dead outlines, forms
without content") see Vaclav Havel, Letters
to Olga, June 1979 - September 1982, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p.
242.
61[60]
Ibid., p. 77. In another play, Havel says: "the devil of it is that she
destroys not out of malice or simple-mindedness but out of her very nature
..." [Vaclav Havel, Redevelopment or
Slum Clearance, (London &
Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990), p.36]
63[62]
Vaclav Havel, Redevelopment or Slum
Clearance, (London & Boston:
Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 12.
76[75]
Quoted in Slavomir Ravik, Bylo - nebylo:
Latrina magika v Cechach, na Morave a ve Slezsku, (Praha: Periskop, 1995),
p. 250.
77[76]
Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A
Conversation with Karel Hvizdala, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p.
195. Havel also calls it a "problem of the true face," "the
phenomenon of masks," "the theme of identity in crisis" and "identity that is decaying,
collapsing, dissipating, vanishing." [Ibid., pp. 195-196] On the
assignment of Havel's role compare ibid., p. 205.
80[79]
Ibid., p. 40. The other reasons for the urge to make a confession, except for
the need to unveil the plan inasmuch as its realization unfolds, or for a
certain masochistic pleasure it probably gives, is also an urge to seek some
kind of absolving in the form (Hegelian) recognition: "We cannot be
forgiven, and there can be no peace in our souls unless we make a confession of
our guilt. Confession liberates." [Vaclav Havel, Vazeni obcane, Projevy cervenec 1990 - cervenec 1992, (Praha: Lidove
noviny, 1992), p. 12]
81[80]
Vaclav Havel, Vazeni obcane, Projevy
cervenec 1990 - cervenec 1992, (Praha: Lidove noviny, 1992), p. 113.
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