Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz speaks at Prague Spring 50

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04/12/2018 Added

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Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz giving her talk "What Would Kafka Have Said?" at Prague Spring 50. https://praguespring50.unl.edu/speakers#marketa-goetz-stankiewicz

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[00:00:11.040]Thank you so much for being here.
[00:00:13.115](audience laughs)
[00:00:14.250]And I'm thanking, I'm thanking this magnificent man
[00:00:19.420]who has led us through this week,
[00:00:24.100]not quite a week yet,
[00:00:26.160]of an amazing conference.
[00:00:31.283]I have learned so much.
[00:00:33.870]How is it with the, is it alright?
[00:00:38.690]Shall I hold it a bit higher?
[00:00:41.293]Little bit?
[00:00:42.980]Yeah, okay.
[00:00:44.120]You see, I said I will disappear behind the desk
[00:00:47.360]and faint with embarrassment,
[00:00:50.340]so I thought I'll sit here,
[00:00:52.130]and of course I was told, "Whatever you say will do,"
[00:00:57.290]and here I sit.
[00:01:00.490]Now, I am much richer now
[00:01:03.610]than I was about five days ago.
[00:01:09.020]What I've experienced, I only say a few words about that.
[00:01:12.980]I've watched fascinating videos of Stalinism.
[00:01:17.020]I've traveled the world with a brave woman dissident.
[00:01:21.480]I have watched brilliant photos.
[00:01:25.160]I have listened to magnificent movies, music I mean.
[00:01:30.270]I went back to the hotel tapping my heels.
[00:01:34.640]And I now think about liberal democracy,
[00:01:40.020]that it has defeated the brute force of Nazism.
[00:01:43.530]I look at it in a new way.
[00:01:45.394]I've thought about it a lot.
[00:01:47.670]And I think about why the symmetry
[00:01:52.950]posed by people on Havel is sometimes false.
[00:01:57.260]Havel can't be put into symmetry, doesn't fit Havel.
[00:02:01.060]But we can all think about it by ourselves.
[00:02:06.120]And I have heard the passionate plea by young novelist
[00:02:10.010]for more justice as well as the amazing story of someone
[00:02:15.700]who has experienced everything and much more.
[00:02:19.280]As I collect the survey of the talks,
[00:02:23.060]I realize that I arrived almost as a different person.
[00:02:30.092]I've become a different person, little bit.
[00:02:32.080]One doesn't really become a different person,
[00:02:34.160]but somehow that is the dimension edit,
[00:02:36.590]and that's what I received here.
[00:02:40.840]And there is more to come this afternoon,
[00:02:43.330]after my little talk.
[00:02:44.870]So it will be some important things are coming later,
[00:02:50.890]and I'm happy to tell you about them.
[00:02:54.710]You will hear them.
[00:02:55.830]There's no need to tell now,
[00:02:57.730]but they are coming this afternoon.
[00:03:00.150]Some of my comments will be personal.
[00:03:03.830]Some of them related to Kafka, who looms large in my title.
[00:03:07.750]And
[00:03:10.330]Kafka, you know, you have read him yourselves.
[00:03:14.340]The world has responded to him in thousands,
[00:03:17.570]literally thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages,
[00:03:22.750]including hundreds of books,
[00:03:26.520]none of which really do him justice.
[00:03:30.480]We have, we went through Kafkaesque,
[00:03:34.800]and you did all through Kafkaesque experiences,
[00:03:39.270]and for better or for worse, he has told us
[00:03:44.369]about them in his own life,
[00:03:48.060]which interested Havel greatly too,
[00:03:50.910]but I'll say a few words about that.
[00:03:54.720]Now, Kafka has not experienced the Prague Spring
[00:03:58.480]as you know, and still,
[00:04:01.700]he lingers in, I would go as far as saying
[00:04:07.050]the awareness of the world,
[00:04:09.670]because there's a writer who wrote in German,
[00:04:13.130]lived in Prague, was Jewish, and was banned
[00:04:16.700]by two opposite political regimes,
[00:04:20.590]the Nazis and the Soviets, or the Communists,
[00:04:24.000]was banned by both those regimes,
[00:04:27.350]which is quite a feat for a writer, I think.
[00:04:30.620](audience laughs)
[00:04:32.860]And here in Prague, if you go there, there are two images,
[00:04:37.752]artistic, I would say,
[00:04:43.360]how will I put it?
[00:04:45.280]Artistic reproductions of him,
[00:04:48.686]one near the Staromestske Nameski,
[00:04:51.640]and the other very new one, strange,
[00:04:55.730]where he changes large, shiny,
[00:05:00.590]sort of consisting of pieces of metal,
[00:05:04.330]and as you look at him you think,
[00:05:05.937]"Wait a minute what is he doing?
[00:05:07.527]"Is it me or is it him?"
[00:05:09.370]He's turning his head.
[00:05:11.530]Go and see it when you are in Prague.
[00:05:13.480]Make sure to see it.
[00:05:17.652]It is home city of Prague that has honored him,
[00:05:21.960]I think, with these works of art.
[00:05:26.970]The city of Prague, which he called my mother,
[00:05:30.640]my little mother.
[00:05:31.950](speaking in foreign language)
[00:05:34.662]My little mother with claws.
[00:05:39.660]Now I have the, I'm sorry to say, dubious honor,
[00:05:45.490]that I have experienced the eight number
[00:05:51.300]almost all of the number eights
[00:05:54.130]that we have been concerned with,
[00:05:55.940]not the first one, I assure you.
[00:05:58.010]1918, I don't go as far back as that
[00:06:03.270]but all the others.
[00:06:07.070]Now permit me to a
[00:06:11.400]quick personal glance into the past.
[00:06:15.680]It was mid March, 1939, and I was standing
[00:06:20.490]at the large window in our apartment, which I loved.
[00:06:25.680]I like to look out at the sunset.
[00:06:27.750]It was spring, a different spring
[00:06:31.020]from the spring we are all talking about now.
[00:06:34.070]And I looked out and enjoyed the scenery.
[00:06:39.840]It was right at the corner,
[00:06:44.259]the building was right at the corner of Masaryk Street,
[00:06:48.090]and that street has changed its name
[00:06:50.900]in the next 50 years, quite a few times.
[00:06:56.652]As I looked out, observing the view in the spring,
[00:07:01.100]I saw something that totally,
[00:07:05.650]it didn't upset me yet, but I thought what is this
[00:07:09.440]around the corner by Brokops Delicatessen,
[00:07:12.470]came a number of soldiers with bayonets stuck on their guns.
[00:07:18.120]Would you say stuck on their guns?
[00:07:20.110]It's a wrong way, no, maybe.
[00:07:22.970]And they walked slowly around the corner.
[00:07:26.460]I thought, "what is this?
[00:07:27.387]"Who is this?"
[00:07:28.820]I called my father, I said, "Look, daddy.
[00:07:31.737]"What is going on here?"
[00:07:33.200]And then everything went dark.
[00:07:35.840]Why did it go dark?
[00:07:37.960]Not because of the terrible event that I was seeing,
[00:07:43.570]but my father put his hand over my eyes
[00:07:47.660]and led me away from the window
[00:07:50.450]because he knew what was coming was very dark
[00:07:54.660]for all of us, the whole family.
[00:07:57.370]So after this moment of darkness,
[00:08:01.470]I will just say the rest is history,
[00:08:04.410]which the saying,
[00:08:08.330]the cliche gives us
[00:08:11.290]lightheartedly and sometimes callously.
[00:08:14.960]So the rest is history.
[00:08:17.560]Now, just a few dates,
[00:08:20.760]this was 15 years after Franz Kafka had died
[00:08:26.290]and seven years before Vaclav Havel was born.
[00:08:31.740]Their names, in a way, indicate or give an idea
[00:08:35.758]of their stories,
[00:08:40.920]the atmosphere in which they lived.
[00:08:44.410]Kafka was called after Franz Joseph of,
[00:08:50.390]well Kaiser Franz Joseph of the Austrian emperor
[00:08:55.450]for many years, Franz.
[00:08:57.964]And Havel was called
[00:09:01.380]after the saintly duke of Bohemia
[00:09:05.810]who was born in 901
[00:09:09.480]and murdered almost exactly
[00:09:12.430]a thousand years before Havel was born.
[00:09:16.660]So if you look at those names, they already seem
[00:09:20.420]to tell a story that we can fulfill or continue ourselves.
[00:09:28.660]Today, with many of the weaknesses
[00:09:33.100]of many of you have witnessed more than I.
[00:09:38.320]We have to become aware of the two figures
[00:09:41.950]that each in his own way, Kafka and Havel,
[00:09:46.000]have conquered the world's imagination,
[00:09:50.240]the political and the artistic or literally imagination.
[00:09:58.440]Vaclav Havel's writings, stacked in the Zerenachra Bitze,
[00:10:03.170]The Green Box where all his writings have been collected.
[00:10:09.100]It's called The Green Box
[00:10:11.330]with a half ironic,
[00:10:15.435]half loving name
[00:10:19.710]for his collected works.
[00:10:22.280]And he signs it on top with his heart
[00:10:26.510]that we all know well.
[00:10:29.940]Next to him stands
[00:10:35.450]Kafka's story, well more books but the one that is next to
[00:10:40.760]and leans on Havel, or Havel's books lean on him,
[00:10:44.582]Die Verwandlung, The Metamorphosis.
[00:10:48.270]Metamorphosis.
[00:10:50.103]Yeah, is it all right?
[00:10:51.550]Am I doing something?
[00:10:52.640]Tell me, show me if I do something wrong here with the,
[00:10:57.130]yes, are you showing your hand?
[00:11:00.006]I'm just saying it's good.
[00:11:01.310]It's good! Thank you.
[00:11:02.670]I didn't see your nice thumb.
[00:11:04.470]I see.
[00:11:05.453](audience laughing)
[00:11:08.300]So Die Verwandlung is translated The Metamorphosis,
[00:11:12.690]which doesn't quite do justice but it's understandable,
[00:11:16.400]because Verwandlung is sort of a strange echo
[00:11:20.980]in the German language, so we'll go for Metamorphosis.
[00:11:25.390]And who is between them?
[00:11:27.620]George Orwell, standing between Havel
[00:11:31.400]and Kafka on my shelf there.
[00:11:35.120]So, the Czech, German, English tree-um-vee-ae-rat,
[00:11:39.740]tree-um-vi-rat?
[00:11:41.570]I'm not pronouncing this properly, yeah?
[00:11:44.970]Triumvirate rules my little study
[00:11:49.123]at the Pacific.
[00:11:51.710]Now you will say, and I'm saying myself,
[00:11:54.710]where am I aiming with these obviously scattered remarks?
[00:12:00.120]What I would like to do is extract a few scenes
[00:12:05.960]from the Central European cultural map.
[00:12:12.230]The scenes will be past, present, and future,
[00:12:17.220]but with a question mark behind the word future.
[00:12:23.450]And I want to show you a little bit, just a little bit
[00:12:27.460]how the above mentioned writers reflect
[00:12:30.520]and were reflected in the,
[00:12:34.696]in the anni mirabiles.
[00:12:36.970]I've taken the title from somebody
[00:12:39.510]who had spoken here before.
[00:12:41.520]The anni mirabiles of the Prague Spring,
[00:12:44.940]and they're embedded in the annals
[00:12:49.806]of the 20th and, indeed, the 21st century.
[00:12:55.700]As you better know than I, there have been many discussions.
[00:13:00.600]When did the Prague Spring start?
[00:13:04.480]We know when it finished, don't we?
[00:13:06.650]But when did it really start?
[00:13:09.070]Was it earlier, when they start writing?
[00:13:13.570]So I will just give you an even further look into the past
[00:13:18.880]and tell you that when I went to Prague after the war,
[00:13:24.050]right after the war
[00:13:25.070]my father, who survived, thank God, sent me there.
[00:13:32.630]It was in '45, '46, and I didn't grasp the political scene.
[00:13:39.090]I had not been in school.
[00:13:40.490]I was clueless about everything.
[00:13:43.070]But I experienced, for the first time in my life,
[00:13:46.220]a vast city, a metropolis.
[00:13:49.390]I jump over to glimpses of my father
[00:13:54.720]sweeping the sidewalk in the 1940s in Hagibor,
[00:13:59.490]and the second one when I was tested
[00:14:02.540]for racial body signs by the Gestapo.
[00:14:06.720]But we jump over there, that is not so interesting
[00:14:10.670]but it's part of an absurd life, I suppose.
[00:14:15.600]But it doesn't belong here.
[00:14:18.989]The point I want to make is that the harbinger sign
[00:14:22.960]of the Prague Spring came to me in,
[00:14:28.530]came about 15 years earlier
[00:14:31.857]than it really began
[00:14:37.052]and the discussions are touching
[00:14:39.540]on when it began, when the first literature was,
[00:14:42.633]when the first words were spoken,
[00:14:44.570]when the first literature was published.
[00:14:47.430]Well, in my case, it is sort of
[00:14:49.750]funny moment or little scene.
[00:14:52.780]When I went to Prague, as I said,
[00:14:55.900]I was out to lunch,
[00:14:59.100]as they say nowadays,
[00:15:01.290]not knowing what really was going on,
[00:15:03.550]and there was a nice friend also
[00:15:06.537]who became my friend from Estec.
[00:15:11.750]I yearned to have a friend.
[00:15:14.160]I didn't have many except,
[00:15:16.320]I didn't have many in my teenage when I grew up,
[00:15:20.190]and she came to me in tears.
[00:15:22.180]I said, "Hanka, what happened?"
[00:15:24.170]She said, "My boyfriend."
[00:15:25.810]I don't like the word boyfriend, I must say.
[00:15:27.763]I'd rather say manfriend, but it was a boyfriend.
[00:15:30.560]We were half kids.
[00:15:32.320]And she said, "He left me, he abandoned me."
[00:15:36.820]So I, gathering my very scant knowledge
[00:15:42.140]of erotic problems,
[00:15:45.020]I said, "With another girl?"
[00:15:48.530]She said, "Oh, no. With a man.
[00:15:51.077]"And a man who isn't alive anymore.
[00:15:54.157]"And a book, he just walks around with this book,
[00:15:56.887]"doesn't even look at me anymore."
[00:15:59.100]And it was Kafka.
[00:16:01.310]So this was very early on.
[00:16:04.080]I won't claim that Prague Spring started then,
[00:16:09.460]but there were signs moving about,
[00:16:12.350]and because the Czech people are extremely intelligent
[00:16:16.770]and sensitive, and they sense what is in the air,
[00:16:20.330]and somewhere in this crazy time, '45, '46,
[00:16:24.440]it was in the air.
[00:16:27.690]As you know, World War II was hardly over,
[00:16:33.500]but there were young people who read Kafka.
[00:16:38.050]His stories circulated in Czech,
[00:16:43.510]somebody had translated, we won't go into that.
[00:16:47.342]Translation is also a big,
[00:16:51.940]a possible thesis topic for students
[00:16:55.400]to discuss
[00:16:58.971]the histories of translations
[00:17:02.120]in strange times, in absurd times.
[00:17:05.910]So there are quite a few possibilities
[00:17:09.690]to write thesis here.
[00:17:12.680]But we won't go into that either.
[00:17:15.220]But if you want, I can give you all kinds of topics.
[00:17:20.210]Havel was only a kid of 10 then,
[00:17:23.740]and he did not read Kafka, obviously,
[00:17:26.850]but he plowed through whole five volumes
[00:17:30.260]of Jirasek's historical novel, F.L. Vek.
[00:17:34.170]And within further 60 years,
[00:17:37.520]in 1952, he read as he writes
[00:17:40.750]with feverish excitement, Jan Patocka's
[00:17:44.510]The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem.
[00:17:49.940]And strangely enough, Patocka's work, this one here,
[00:17:54.100]was published in 1936,
[00:17:57.724]and it was Havel's birthday.
[00:18:00.260]He didn't know, of course, what was coming.
[00:18:05.970]Here we might remind ourselves
[00:18:10.010]that Stephen Spender,
[00:18:11.760]living in England but traveling on the continent,
[00:18:16.170]wrote about the students' protests in 1950s and '60s,
[00:18:22.160]you know, what happened there in France, in Germany,
[00:18:26.590]the Baader-Meinhof Group which ended
[00:18:29.970]in an alleged half mysterious suicide in prison.
[00:18:33.960]And Steven argues that,
[00:18:39.870]I should not call him Steven, should I?
[00:18:43.210]Spender, sorry.
[00:18:45.120]Steven Spender argues
[00:18:49.577]that one should analyze always,
[00:18:54.010]when there are rebellions
[00:18:56.070]or mass protests going on.
[00:19:01.100]One should always look at the assumptions
[00:19:04.610]and the circumstances that cause their disagreements
[00:19:09.120]and try to understand that very different things
[00:19:14.510]as in France, in Germany, all over,
[00:19:17.760]also in Czechoslovakia then.
[00:19:21.932]In the subtext, they have something in common.
[00:19:25.210]And I really appreciate that Spender made early on,
[00:19:29.420]made this comment.
[00:19:32.320]So despite having not necessarily having read Kafka
[00:19:36.260]at the time, he lived in a scene throbbing
[00:19:39.760]with yet undisclosed excitement and rejection
[00:19:45.200]of automatic responses, which are very important.
[00:19:49.430]And any regime that is trying
[00:19:54.785]to control its people,
[00:19:58.450]automatic responses are very important.
[00:20:02.010]If I started to run a society,
[00:20:06.710]a totalitarian society,
[00:20:08.850]I would look at the language first
[00:20:10.650]and I would check automatic responses
[00:20:13.400]and impose them on people.
[00:20:15.430]Well, luckily this is not the case.
[00:20:20.670]Havel knew about that.
[00:20:22.560]And living in this is yet undisclosed
[00:20:30.110]but throbbing scene,
[00:20:31.970]he knew about absurdity
[00:20:35.110]and wrote the delightful
[00:20:38.510]Anatomy Of The Gag in 1963
[00:20:43.450]when he was about 37.
[00:20:45.400]And if you put up with me,
[00:20:48.180]I can show you an example.
[00:20:52.200]You may not want it of the Anatomy Of The Gag.
[00:20:55.420]Which is, what's the difference between a joke and a gag?
[00:20:58.750]Very important.
[00:21:03.030]There were other voices as well.
[00:21:09.940]Timothy Snyder worked with Tony Chad
[00:21:14.250]on big
[00:21:18.420]assessment of Europe.
[00:21:20.810]And Chad calls it Thinking the 20th century.
[00:21:25.780]And he says at one point,
[00:21:32.388]the foresight into the,
[00:21:34.540]let's see, just a look here.
[00:21:37.997]"Those who get the 20th century right," he says, like Kafka
[00:21:43.980]He mentions Kafka there.
[00:21:46.990]Or his contemporary observers to be able
[00:21:50.310]to imagine a world for which there was no precedent.
[00:21:55.480]And the precedent the world, the world without a precedent,
[00:21:58.880]was the world where the absurd becomes reality,
[00:22:03.070]and where the absurd is,
[00:22:05.580]where you have language coming in, normalized.
[00:22:09.580]What a nice word normalized, yeah?
[00:22:13.500]A terrible word when it was invented.
[00:22:16.350]Havel realized this and must have found
[00:22:21.530]this type of world in Kafka.
[00:22:24.468]Later he writes about this in Letters To Olga,
[00:22:28.620]for example, translated by Paul Wilson.
[00:22:31.520]What would we do without Paul's translations?
[00:22:35.360]Of many books, may Czech books.
[00:22:38.700]What would we do without them?
[00:22:43.800]And that's where, Havel says in his letters to Olga,
[00:22:50.560]how easily absurdity becomes legitimate.
[00:22:54.770]So, again to Kafka.
[00:22:57.040]And he says that because he wrote these letters from prison.
[00:23:00.477]And of course, they were all read.
[00:23:03.380]But people said now,
[00:23:07.396]the people who controlled
[00:23:09.490]what was going in and out of prison
[00:23:11.430]in writing said, "What is that? The absurd?"
[00:23:16.419](speaking in foreign language)
[00:23:18.900]But then, these are just Czech words now.
[00:23:21.820]But they thought, "Well, Kafka.
[00:23:24.830]"That was long ago."
[00:23:26.070]And they let it go.
[00:23:27.310]And the letter got out
[00:23:29.120]and Olga received it
[00:23:32.220]and we have it now to be read.
[00:23:36.030]I can't resist from reading to you,
[00:23:39.870]but I have to ask to the bosses that are here.
[00:23:42.480]How am I doing on time?
[00:23:46.929]You have
[00:23:51.030]about half an hour, probably.
[00:23:54.535]That won't be, I won't.
[00:23:55.661]And then leave time for questions.
[00:23:56.520]Yes.
[00:23:57.353]Okay, I won't talk that long.
[00:23:58.730]Don't worry.
[00:24:00.534](a few audience members laugh)
[00:24:01.367]But I will give you, I can't resist
[00:24:04.180]from giving you a quotation of a speech
[00:24:07.230]by then president Havel, 38 years later
[00:24:11.990]when receiving an honorary degree, one of many as you know,
[00:24:16.770]from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
[00:24:20.360]on April 4th 1990.
[00:24:23.030]Now what's the date today?
[00:24:25.450]April.
[00:24:27.230]Yeah, just three days later.
[00:24:30.690]This was April 4th.
[00:24:32.270]I was surprised it was almost,
[00:24:36.520]it was 1990 but the month was right.
[00:24:40.790]And he was giving a moving, for some in the audience,
[00:24:44.240]quite surprising speech.
[00:24:46.550]The speech was relating to Kafka mostly,
[00:24:51.810]about 80%.
[00:24:53.210]I'm not very good at percentages.
[00:24:55.270]But about that.
[00:24:56.980]About 80% of the speech was dwelling on Kafka.
[00:25:03.959]"I'm not a Kafka log," he said.
[00:25:06.377]"But I feel I'm one who understands
[00:25:11.587]"and I'm even secretly," now hold your hats.
[00:25:15.750]It's not in his speech, that were my words.
[00:25:20.057]"And I'm even secretly convinced that if Kafka didn't exist,
[00:25:25.847]"and I would be a better writer that I am,"
[00:25:28.733]And I would say don't worry Vaclav, you are a great writer.
[00:25:32.157]"I could write his whole oeuvre.
[00:25:35.807]"I could write it.
[00:25:37.957]"I hear already," still his speech,
[00:25:41.327]"that many of you want to counter me here
[00:25:44.647]"and claim that I could only adopt
[00:25:48.687]"a style or design myself
[00:25:52.627]"into this Kafkaesque patterns.
[00:25:55.117]"Yes, I agree of course, that on the surface, on the outside
[00:25:59.767]"I seem to be the very different,
[00:26:01.907]"the very opposite of Joseph K."
[00:26:04.690]Who was woken up when he was asleep
[00:26:07.370]by two policemen, men in uniform
[00:26:11.530]not in uniform actually,
[00:26:13.080]and told he is arrested
[00:26:15.160]and he didn't know what was going on.
[00:26:19.200]Great scene, of course.
[00:26:20.970]That also Havel, he mentioned it once,
[00:26:24.370]experienced in his own life.
[00:26:26.520]And many of the dissidents
[00:26:28.620]experienced this scene themselves.
[00:26:33.160]So, I go back,
[00:26:35.570]if you put up with my,
[00:26:39.640]with my changing topic.
[00:26:41.760]It's not change of topic, I only interrupt myself.
[00:26:45.787]"I agree," I read that again, halfway decently.
[00:26:48.867]"I agree of course, that on the outside I seem
[00:26:54.081]"to be the very opposite of Joseph K, the land surveyor,
[00:26:59.647]"but nevertheless, I keep to my point.
[00:27:03.337]"It is just what I told you about myself."
[00:27:07.290]Also, there is the aspect of shame
[00:27:10.950]and guilt that is at the heart
[00:27:15.400]of all of Kafka's figures.
[00:27:17.880]And it seems to have given Havel,
[00:27:19.930]I maybe overstating things here now.
[00:27:23.180]But in a way, it seems to have given him
[00:27:25.570]a sort of key to his own character.
[00:27:28.890]Because he was a very shy man.
[00:27:31.487]"According to my opinion," and this is Havel again.
[00:27:35.670]In his speech, he says it openly
[00:27:38.480]to the audience there in Jerusalem.
[00:27:41.427]"According to my opinion, it is precisely
[00:27:44.557]"my inwardly sense of being an outsider
[00:27:47.957]"and impossible to relate to any type of system
[00:27:52.567]"that is hidden so that I would somehow conceal
[00:27:57.137]"my almost metaphysical sense of guilt."
[00:28:01.390]That's pure Kafka.
[00:28:03.420]Almost metaphysical sense of guilt.
[00:28:06.330]And maybe the key to this, is metaphysical.
[00:28:09.720]Guilt as well, but metaphysical
[00:28:11.690]is the real deep key under the surface.
[00:28:21.370]I ask you now have I strayed too far
[00:28:24.790]from the Prague Spring in which Havel,
[00:28:27.520]at least in people's imagination, played a major role.
[00:28:31.650]If he did play a role, it was with his plays
[00:28:36.840]and the chore in a way that no other playwright
[00:28:41.290]managed to create the atmosphere in which
[00:28:44.510]the absurd, and it's a repetition but it bears repeating.
[00:28:49.040]The absurd becomes normal.
[00:28:51.720]And it is his interest in language.
[00:28:56.151]That is another thesis to be written.
[00:28:59.380]Havel, Kafka and language.
[00:29:04.160]It is in his interest,
[00:29:07.260]I'm not talking to the people
[00:29:08.990]who have written more than I ever have,
[00:29:11.240]I'm talking just to some students
[00:29:13.450]that might be interested in topics.
[00:29:16.510]So, if the others heard this, I apologize to them.
[00:29:22.510]Language to Havel was something that fashions life.
[00:29:28.160]The cliche organizes life.
[00:29:31.310]It expropriates people's identity.
[00:29:34.690]And identity is a big theme in Havel, as you know.
[00:29:40.510]At the same time, it uses, the cliche,
[00:29:45.490]uses and abuses language,
[00:29:49.330]and at the same time,
[00:29:50.820]it creates an ambivalence that should disquiet the audience
[00:29:56.090]because that's what Havel wanted to do.
[00:29:59.270]And he did it in 1963 and 1965, later as well.
[00:30:04.480]But to do it in those days
[00:30:06.660]was courage and enormous foresight.
[00:30:14.530]That's what he wanted to do.
[00:30:16.120]The audience should not leave the theater,
[00:30:19.710]and I thought we talked about Milton, the other day,
[00:30:22.900]over a glass or two of wine in the evening.
[00:30:25.870]And I thought of Milton.
[00:30:27.430]And Milton said, "You leave the theater in peace of mind,
[00:30:34.087]"in calm of mind.
[00:30:35.597]"All passion spent."
[00:30:37.430]It's very opposite of what Havel wanted to do.
[00:30:41.150]He wanted you to leave the theater nervous, wondering,
[00:30:48.318]not knowing quite what it meant, what you have listened to,
[00:30:53.750]whether it relates to your own life.
[00:30:57.710]And that was a great thing to do in the '60s.
[00:31:02.020]And that's how the Prague Spring started dawning
[00:31:06.820]or continued dawning.
[00:31:13.620]I'll give you, just quickly,
[00:31:16.330]three examples of amusing yet dangerous
[00:31:25.340]language.
[00:31:26.280]I won't read them.
[00:31:27.267]I brought the books here
[00:31:28.990]and if somebody wants to read bit of it you can.
[00:31:32.910]But, we may not have the time to do that
[00:31:35.700]and you may buy one or two books
[00:31:39.210]at the end of the lovely hall there and get it.
[00:31:44.230]Now, The Garden Party.
[00:31:49.020]The Garden Party you say, oh, what kind of a title is that?
[00:31:53.180]That's interesting, The Garden Party?
[00:31:55.290]Havel, The Garden Party?
[00:31:57.220]But you could also give it another title.
[00:31:59.840]You could call it
[00:32:01.130]How To Be Successful By Learning How To Talk.
[00:32:07.890]So it is The Garden Party is,
[00:32:11.360]I would claim the first, and others probably have claimed,
[00:32:15.781]the first critical study of language,
[00:32:20.110]not as means of communication but as a teleological weapon.
[00:32:26.070]The protagonist here makes a steep career
[00:32:29.500]by imitating to perfection professional language.
[00:32:34.500]In the process, he loses his identity
[00:32:37.960]and when his puzzled parents ask him at the end of the play,
[00:32:43.170]"You are our son but who are you really?"
[00:32:47.720]he gives them a long answer
[00:32:49.990]which is a conglomeration of phrases.
[00:32:52.680]And they are stunned.
[00:32:54.397]So, The Garden Party has become a party
[00:32:58.440]of losing your identity by learning a language
[00:33:03.360]that as a speak, and you guys said to me,
[00:33:07.207]"Oh well, this is going on in a liberal democracy as well.
[00:33:11.427]"In fact, it goes on everywhere.
[00:33:13.577]"How can you relate it just to the Prague Spring?"
[00:33:16.153]When people want a job with Apple
[00:33:21.530]or, give me, somebody give me a big,
[00:33:27.437]a big
[00:33:30.900]concern here.
[00:33:32.260]I haven't got the word.
[00:33:34.210]If you want a job, a big.
[00:33:40.344]Pardon?
[00:33:41.177]Corporation?
[00:33:42.010]A big corporation.
[00:33:42.843]There it is, thank you.
[00:33:44.030]A big corporation, where you look for a job.
[00:33:46.960]They will, maybe, tell you how to speak.
[00:33:52.380]When you want to become the vice president,
[00:33:55.780]the right way you start at the bottom.
[00:33:57.450]But you will still be taught how to speak.
[00:34:00.720]So you will say these things
[00:34:02.537]are also going on in our society.
[00:34:05.330]Not as drastically.
[00:34:07.030]And not as related to
[00:34:11.890]to danger possibly.
[00:34:13.340]You might lose your job but not end up in prison.
[00:34:18.050]But I don't know.
[00:34:19.530]You can think about it.
[00:34:23.117]Or else.
[00:34:24.467]Another, The Memorandum.
[00:34:27.210]Which Paul will translate it as The Memo.
[00:34:31.810]Much better.
[00:34:32.710]The Memorandum is such a heavy bureaucratic word
[00:34:35.720]but The Memo, I write a memo tomorrow.
[00:34:38.803]It's much better and fits into our society
[00:34:43.000]in his time in 2012.
[00:34:46.360]Is that right, 2012?
[00:34:48.758]A new translation.
[00:34:50.680]The Memorandum was written by Havel in 1965.
[00:34:57.371]In The Memo, artificial language is used to,
[00:35:03.210]it's invented and used to assure
[00:35:07.562]the betterment of communication.
[00:35:12.170]And it is hilarious.
[00:35:15.716]The language is Ptydepe.
[00:35:18.570]And completely meaningless language
[00:35:22.860]which was invented, by the way, by Havel's brother.
[00:35:27.000]And he always gives him a,
[00:35:29.720]says, "My brother invented this language."
[00:35:40.459]It is a language that nobody understands.
[00:35:44.610]And when the, I just give you a little bit,
[00:35:47.760]a little bit of the first theme
[00:35:53.210]of the play.
[00:35:54.410]Somebody comes, hangs up his coat,
[00:35:56.380]the director of a corporation.
[00:35:59.310]We never know what corporation,
[00:36:00.800]yeah, all kinds of corporations in Havel's plays,
[00:36:05.020]but we never know what it is.
[00:36:06.940]But we can catch on.
[00:36:08.350]It's somewhere.
[00:36:09.250]It's a bureaucratic,
[00:36:11.286]bureaucratic.
[00:36:19.500]How would I say?
[00:36:22.190]Community.
[00:36:25.053]The word is falsely used by me.
[00:36:28.400]But they imply that it's a community.
[00:36:31.520]So he comes, the director, Gross, comes to the office,
[00:36:36.100]hangs up his coat, says hi to his secretary,
[00:36:40.570]who doesn't do much.
[00:36:41.880]She just combs her hair
[00:36:45.340]and puts on her lipstick and makes some,
[00:36:47.440]which is lovely on stage.
[00:36:49.640]And he says, "Oh, what's that?
[00:36:53.287]"I see, a new memo."
[00:36:58.400]He picks it up.
[00:37:08.231](audience laughs)
[00:37:15.947]"What's that?" he says to his secretary.
[00:37:18.460]And she says, "But that's Ptydepe , of course.
[00:37:20.937]"It's our new language."
[00:37:22.960]And off it goes.
[00:37:24.170]The play goes into delightful analysis
[00:37:28.300]of a language that nobody understands
[00:37:31.020]and then to have the Ptydepe teacher,
[00:37:33.240]who teaches a class, which is delightful.
[00:37:36.760]So, The Memorandum is a great play.
[00:37:39.690]And has been performed all over the world.
[00:37:44.280]Although there are problems with the translation, too.
[00:37:47.680]You don't have to translate Ptydepe
[00:37:50.930]but translations in other languages like French or German,
[00:37:55.160]it becomes much more serious in German.
[00:37:59.100]Anyway, that's The Memorandum.
[00:38:01.868](audience laughs)
[00:38:04.220]Just as another wonderful play, if I may, may I?
[00:38:08.380]Another wonderful play by Havel,
[00:38:12.472]which he wrote much later.
[00:38:16.010]The Temptation.
[00:38:18.400]I think it's number, I hold my thumb today, right now.
[00:38:22.760]Because I think it's his best play yet.
[00:38:25.220]Temptation, which was put on,
[00:38:31.040]which is being played,
[00:38:32.460]but people are not quite sure what to do with it,
[00:38:35.060]and the German audience, in a very good translation,
[00:38:41.140]in Vienna, well, the Austrian audience, put it on.
[00:38:46.680]And they made, because it's the Faust theme.
[00:38:50.200]What happens to Faust?
[00:38:51.910]He wants to be younger and sells his soul, you know,
[00:38:56.730]I don't need to tell you,
[00:38:58.300]to some kind of devil, some kind,
[00:39:01.030]and in Vienna they played it,
[00:39:03.887]and they made Faust play out of it.
[00:39:06.550]And they phoned Havel to,
[00:39:10.539]and I had the enormous honor
[00:39:12.799]to be there and watch the play, and they phoned him
[00:39:16.689]and said, "It's playing in Vienna, look."
[00:39:20.020]And he said, "You made Faust play out of it.
[00:39:24.417]"A serious play.
[00:39:25.397]"It's funny, all my plays are."
[00:39:28.870]So that's Temptation.
[00:39:30.260]Read Temptation, by all means.
[00:39:36.465]There is another play.
[00:39:37.640]And you have seen, I suppose, the three one-act plays,
[00:39:41.520]that were written later.
[00:39:43.100]And Havel wrote them, its Audience, Unveiling
[00:39:48.270]and Protest.
[00:39:50.690]The three one-act plays that were put on, Protest
[00:39:54.020]was written a bit later but doesn't matter.
[00:39:56.760]We don't worry too much about dates, do we?
[00:40:02.582]They were put on in his home in the country,
[00:40:08.834]Harad, Czech which is called Harad, Czech, the little castle
[00:40:14.430]that people called when Havel became president.
[00:40:19.210]The motto of the people who were in the street called
[00:40:22.789](speaking in foreign language).
[00:40:24.710]From the Harad, Czech, from the little castle
[00:40:27.000]to the big castle.
[00:40:28.020]And that's what happened.
[00:40:29.620]Anyway, there he put on with friends,
[00:40:32.350]dissident friends, these plays.
[00:40:34.840]And he just thought they were just for his friends
[00:40:38.950]and they were really nothing much.
[00:40:40.490]And these plays conquered the world.
[00:40:43.430]They were played all over the world.
[00:40:49.270]I can say it without hesitation
[00:40:55.000]and the plays are still magnificent plays.
[00:40:58.950]And they always, it's not, they're about a man
[00:41:04.630]who's Vanek,
[00:41:08.780]and people have said it's the alter ego of Havel.
[00:41:12.200]Not quite, and he has said several times,
[00:41:14.570]it's not my alter ego, it's a character
[00:41:17.780]whom I have invented.
[00:41:19.970]And he goes and visits somebody at the brewer
[00:41:24.750]in the brewery where he worked,
[00:41:26.827]and then some friends.
[00:41:29.350]The other characters, the interesting thing,
[00:41:32.600]one of the interesting things of those short plays are,
[00:41:36.900]that the other people talk.
[00:41:39.140]And Vanek doesn't talk much.
[00:41:41.730]It's very hard.
[00:41:44.040]I'm not an actress but the
[00:41:48.560]the people who act, actor, because it's man,
[00:41:52.440]a couple of times it's a woman too,
[00:41:54.745]it's very difficult to do this, to act this
[00:42:00.910]because all Vanek, the main character says,
[00:42:06.307]"Okay, yes. Oh, I don't know.
[00:42:09.327]"Thank you."
[00:42:10.930]Or, in the end he says, "Goodbye," in a very sad moment.
[00:42:15.920]And now I would just like to say something else
[00:42:19.710]which is close to my heart, because Havel.
[00:42:23.990]People say, "Oh, yes.
[00:42:26.007]"Vanek is the wonderful dissident character."
[00:42:29.150]It's the Havel character.
[00:42:30.510]And the others are just, they talk
[00:42:33.180]and they are barking up their own tree, I would say.
[00:42:37.550]And they talk and they reveal themselves
[00:42:42.100]as the nasty people, the stupid people.
[00:42:47.620]People who have been manipulated by the regime.
[00:42:52.720]Havel now, does something interesting.
[00:42:55.360]At the end, he repeats the first scene.
[00:42:59.980]And this is a moment, as I mentioned before,
[00:43:03.830]where you say, "Now what is all this about?
[00:43:06.487]"I thought I had a nice guy here
[00:43:08.337]"and I had the stupid people.
[00:43:10.617]"What is he doing to me?"
[00:43:12.350]He sends, the nice guy comes in at the end and changes.
[00:43:16.236]Totally changes.
[00:43:17.500]He said only the few words.
[00:43:20.830]He's, what we thought was his character.
[00:43:23.830]And this is what Havel meant
[00:43:25.807]by not letting you go home in calm of mind or passion spent.
[00:43:31.680]Because you think, "What was that all about?
[00:43:33.717]"I had it all straight, and now I don't."
[00:43:37.690]I had to tell you that because I feel so strongly about it.
[00:43:42.760]So, with Kafka's and Havel's help,
[00:43:48.320]we have arrived at the point
[00:43:50.550]where Prague Spring was forced to make room
[00:43:53.810]for one of the basic features of normalization,
[00:43:58.930]again, another word.
[00:44:01.780]The word itself proves that language
[00:44:04.870]is the greatest and most successful manipulator of thought.
[00:44:09.760]And the people were manipulated with this word.
[00:44:16.200]The web, I looked up normalization on the web.
[00:44:19.470]You know what I found?
[00:44:20.820]I suppose maybe you looked it up too.
[00:44:22.930]But I found that it is a refinement process of data
[00:44:29.310]that will make it conduce
[00:44:33.110]that will make a conductive, sorry,
[00:44:36.391]conducive, sorry,
[00:44:37.835]conducive to business activity.
[00:44:41.140]I thought, "Yes
[00:44:43.927]"I see. I didn't know that."
[00:44:45.950]I thought of normalization
[00:44:49.840]as something very dark and sinister.
[00:44:54.710]But there it is in the web.
[00:44:56.500]Look in the web, you get another piece of information.
[00:45:01.740]So, what if I may conclude
[00:45:05.140]with a rather awkward question of my title,
[00:45:09.147]"What would Kafka and Havel,
[00:45:11.650]both artists of the mystery of language,
[00:45:15.010]have said to all this?"
[00:45:17.790]And I close and thank you so much for listening.
[00:45:21.190]Thank you so much for listening to me.
[00:45:23.450]You're such a wonderful audience.
[00:45:25.480]And you put up with my stuttering up and down.
[00:45:29.197]Thank you.
[00:45:30.863](audience applauds)
[00:45:44.010]I'm going to start
[00:45:44.843]with the microphone person.
[00:45:46.660]So, those of you who'd like to ask questions.
[00:45:49.990]I also have been texting with David, talk about absurd.
[00:45:53.150]I've been texting with David Cerny so I have to go outside
[00:45:55.850]and get the computer set up.
[00:45:58.360]So I'm gonna hand over the microphone in a few minutes.
[00:46:00.830]But let me, yes, yes.
[00:46:15.350]Thank you so much.
[00:46:16.270]I think it is our honor, actually.
[00:46:18.280]If we're going to have to have a tug of war about it.
[00:46:21.380]I just have a comment,
[00:46:22.960]and wanna just share a story with you.
[00:46:26.160]And I think you might appreciate its absurdity
[00:46:28.540]or maybe you'll comment on it.
[00:46:30.200]When I was in Prague in the summer,
[00:46:32.140]I went to the Kafka Society, the Czech Kafka Society.
[00:46:39.586]They were responsible for the first publication
[00:46:41.740]in Czech translation of Kafka's works
[00:46:43.760]and they have a replica of his library.
[00:46:46.350]And they have a bookstore
[00:46:47.980]and there is a David Cerny outside, as everybody knows.
[00:46:51.710]But in the bookstore, there I spoke
[00:46:56.100]to the person who was behind, the cashier, essentially.
[00:47:00.430]And I was looking at some books
[00:47:01.730]and just kind of soaking it all in.
[00:47:04.430]And he spoke English and realized that I was American
[00:47:08.010]and one of the stories he told me was
[00:47:09.690]that many American visitors come to this bookstore
[00:47:13.770]and they engage him in conversation,
[00:47:15.990]and they are convinced that Kafka died in the Holocaust.
[00:47:21.170]And it was, it was not made in any kind of judgemental way
[00:47:26.280]that Americans don't know our history
[00:47:28.010]and I think there is a way in which we don't,
[00:47:30.860]but there is a way in which
[00:47:32.020]there is a kind of fundamental understanding
[00:47:34.700]of Kafka's work as prophetic, perhaps.
[00:47:39.750]And there is a kind of truth
[00:47:41.040]in that American misinterpretation.
[00:47:43.930]I just wondered if you had ever encountered that opinion
[00:47:47.440]and maybe if you have any opinion about this.
[00:47:51.500]Thank you.
[00:47:53.730]Maybe I can talk loud.
[00:47:55.310]Thanks.
[00:47:58.120]I haven't actually.
[00:47:59.690]Although I have great sympathy for the idea.
[00:48:05.530]I might mention that Havel's favorite sister, Otla,
[00:48:10.570]died in Auschwitz.
[00:48:14.280]But somehow, the way he writes, Kafka,
[00:48:19.220]we can see a horrible situation
[00:48:25.687]arising, like
[00:48:30.520]smoke from some chimney, from his work,
[00:48:34.920]as if he had foreseen.
[00:48:37.620]We would not have his, as you know,
[00:48:40.210]we would not have his works, only some early stories,
[00:48:44.810]because he said, maybe he new in his heart of hearts,
[00:48:49.440]that the Holocaust was somewhere on the horizon,
[00:48:55.140]on the unspeakable horizon.
[00:48:57.850]And he didn't want his works to reach people,
[00:49:01.930]to reach an audience, a reader.
[00:49:04.220]So he said to his good friend, Max Brod,
[00:49:07.927]"I want you to burn,"
[00:49:09.430]he was already very ill and he wanted Brod to burn
[00:49:14.595]the later works
[00:49:18.150]and Brod did not do this.
[00:49:22.040]Although it was the wish of his dear friend,
[00:49:25.620]he didn't do it and took the works in a suitcase,
[00:49:32.744]in 1930,
[00:49:35.110]he just made it over the border
[00:49:37.220]to Switzerland, 1939, and he took his works.
[00:49:42.100]So we have this works.
[00:49:44.230]And perhaps somehow
[00:49:48.790]I could relate it
[00:49:50.763]to the American visitors who have some conviction,
[00:49:55.910]or they think that this has happened.
[00:49:58.520]Didn't happen to him, to his dear, their beloved sister
[00:50:04.180]who also organized for him to go up to the Prague castle.
[00:50:08.970]The small, the golden little alley
[00:50:14.450]where she rented one tiny little house for Kafka.
[00:50:18.560]He was very tall, he always had to bend to walk into,
[00:50:21.720]and that's where he said end of road, and continued writing.
[00:50:26.420]Which he couldn't quite do in the office,
[00:50:29.600]an insurance office, which is very, also an absurd thing.
[00:50:35.497]And in his parents' home.
[00:50:51.120]I need to hug you first.
[00:50:54.960]Okay.
[00:50:56.140]I apologize because I'll probably talk more than I should.
[00:50:59.300]But, I'm here actually just to thank you for coming here.
[00:51:04.890]I've had my own spiritual journey with being a Czech.
[00:51:08.960]And I have to say right now,
[00:51:10.563]I have a 100 year old grandma right now
[00:51:12.070]who's in the hospice dying.
[00:51:14.070]So I'm here for her too.
[00:51:18.530]This woman (sobbing), she got me all started
[00:51:21.950]with learning Czech and she pushed me so hard.
[00:51:25.930]And when the Velvet,
[00:51:30.200]when the Velvet Revolution started happening,
[00:51:32.540]this woman said, "Here's this school
[00:51:36.707]"in Czech Republic, why not go?
[00:51:38.897]"Go, learn"
[00:51:40.250]And I thought, "I can't do that, no."
[00:51:43.570]You don't tell this woman no.
[00:51:46.010]She's a strong, hard Czech.
[00:51:48.920]And, I did it.
[00:51:51.030]And I was there.
[00:51:52.410]And, one of the things that I did a lot with my cousin,
[00:51:56.080]is we used to go bar hopping
[00:51:58.450]and, that's probably my cell phone being rude too,
[00:52:01.350]I'm sorry, we used to go bar hopping together, me and Petr.
[00:52:05.130]And he would always take me to the underground punk bars
[00:52:08.300]and we would always be on the lookout for Vaclav Havel.
[00:52:11.920]Never caught him, never caught him.
[00:52:14.060]But, I did catch him at the Velvet Revolution Concert.
[00:52:18.600]I was sitting, clear up in the nose bleeds
[00:52:21.210]for what I thought, but little did I know the old balkanese
[00:52:25.280]that come out like this.
[00:52:26.840]I literally sat, maybe five feet,
[00:52:30.240]away from one of my biggest heroes ever.
[00:52:34.580]And it is very spiritual and it's very metaphysical
[00:52:38.610]because Czechs don't really like to say spiritual.
[00:52:41.810]So we'll go with metaphysical.
[00:52:44.280]But I thank you so much.
[00:52:45.640]I am back here crying with the words
[00:52:47.810]and it's opened my eyes back again
[00:52:49.453]that I need to read more.
[00:52:51.310]Havel and Kafka shaped my world and there are
[00:52:54.910]a million Czech women writers out there as well.
[00:52:57.450]And the literature and language of Russian and Czech,
[00:53:00.810]every Slavic country, I am a Slavophile.
[00:53:04.638]I'm not gonna lie, but I'm also a Czech.
[00:53:07.040]And it's thanks to this woman and women like you.
[00:53:11.800]Thank you so much for this.
[00:53:26.720]Thank you for that.
[00:53:28.890]That word, normalization, it's used all the time
[00:53:33.850]in the public discourse today in America,
[00:53:35.700]in the United States.
[00:53:37.240]It's in the press, it's in the commentary,
[00:53:40.170]it's on Facebook when I do some snooping
[00:53:42.120]through my wife's Facebook,
[00:53:44.120]sorry folks, I'm not a Facebook person.
[00:53:46.870]People use it all the time, the fear
[00:53:48.410]that certain behaviors are becoming normalized.
[00:53:53.800]And we use it constantly, we're aware of it.
[00:53:56.480]That's something is going on in terms of
[00:53:58.090]what's acceptable and not acceptable.
[00:54:00.710]So for us, it's a certain sense that relates
[00:54:02.750]to a sense of way of doing things,
[00:54:07.620]a certain civility and politeness that's eroding badly.
[00:54:11.620]But it's also a bureaucratic agenda,
[00:54:15.318]the reason I've paid attention to Kafka over the years
[00:54:17.630]is that he talks about bureaucracies,
[00:54:19.410]he talks about absurdity of bureaucracy,
[00:54:21.170]bureaucracies are on the lose,
[00:54:23.070]trying to reduce people to numbers,
[00:54:24.580]trying to reduce people to categories, et cetera.
[00:54:27.420]And that's common to all systems.
[00:54:29.825]But of course, you can do things in one system,
[00:54:32.410]I agree with you in the notion that
[00:54:34.260]in one system, the consequences of your behavior
[00:54:36.720]backing the system are more consequential
[00:54:40.190]than they are in another system.
[00:54:42.450]Like the corporate teamwork, the admin speak,
[00:54:45.810]the team playing aspect of corporate America.
[00:54:48.250]You can walk out the door, or you probably get a pink slip
[00:54:51.090]before you walk out the door, right?
[00:54:54.130]And so you have to agree to that kind of a thing.
[00:54:56.850]So I'm always struck by how,
[00:55:00.320]when you think about people who aren't Czech scholars,
[00:55:02.710]who aren't Czech Americans, they go back
[00:55:05.870]and look at things that are Czech,
[00:55:07.260]because the Czechs have always been talking
[00:55:09.060]about the absurdity of bureaucracies
[00:55:11.780]in systems and how they work.
[00:55:13.190]And I guess they saw that most intensely.
[00:55:15.210]Have you ever thought of connecting that
[00:55:17.960]and trying to connect it to the way
[00:55:19.870]that the Czech literature speaks to the broader sense
[00:55:23.580]of the modern condition of people living
[00:55:25.530]in the modern world and how we constantly
[00:55:27.870]have to resist being turned into the impersonal automaton
[00:55:31.370]who's a number and are ranked the number
[00:55:33.020]in the system or something like that?
[00:55:36.700]Well, I think, having lived for 300 years,
[00:55:43.880]the Czechs having lived for 300 years
[00:55:46.730]under the, I say it with hesitation,
[00:55:50.890]the benevolent dictatorship,
[00:55:54.210]that doesn't fit together, does it?
[00:55:55.930]Of Austria, Hungary.
[00:55:59.830]Which was heavy with corporate,
[00:56:04.610]one didn't use that word much then,
[00:56:06.920]but with bureaucracy, they learned to,
[00:56:13.660]that they lived a different life
[00:56:16.280]from what was going on in Vienna at that point.
[00:56:19.980]And so they were used to bureaucracy but at a distance.
[00:56:25.380]And they are in a way, a people, I would say,
[00:56:30.470]and correct me if you think I'm quite wrong,
[00:56:35.060]they are not a bureaucratic people.
[00:56:39.502]When they, bureaucracy,
[00:56:45.828]the Nazi bureaucracy was imposed on them by '39.
[00:56:51.490]But that was the enemy,
[00:56:53.670]they could distance themselves from it.
[00:56:56.050]But when the Soviet, the Russian bureaucracy
[00:56:59.280]was imposed on them, they were the
[00:57:02.220]Slavic brothers and sisters, et cetera.
[00:57:06.390]So they were faced with this bureaucracy.
[00:57:09.430]They also resisted it in their own way
[00:57:13.110]because they're not a bureaucratic people, I would say.
[00:57:18.520]And what did they do?
[00:57:20.320]They made fun of it.
[00:57:23.380]Sometimes, well I've read you some examples.
[00:57:27.160]But they laughed about it.
[00:57:29.310]And laughter cures.
[00:57:31.760]What does it cure laughter?
[00:57:33.470]It cures, I suppose fear,
[00:57:36.540]it cures the feeling
[00:57:43.130]that you're caught in a trap,
[00:57:45.960]it cures a lot.
[00:57:47.060]Laughter cures a lot.
[00:57:48.570]It can also hurt.
[00:57:50.000]Laughter can hurt.
[00:57:51.360]But if we take it as a sort of a weapon,
[00:57:57.888]a personal weapon against what is oppressing you,
[00:58:04.356]it is of enormous help.
[00:58:06.890]I don't think I answer your question or I comment
[00:58:11.290]halfway intelligently on your question.
[00:58:13.573]I don't think so.
[00:58:25.460]Yes, I was really intrigued
[00:58:27.230]by your statement about the metaphysical guilt,
[00:58:31.360]seeing the metaphysical guilt.
[00:58:33.330]And, the Czech republic is a very small country.
[00:58:36.390]So you have Kafka, you have Havel writing.
[00:58:40.400]One could, in the most narrow sense say,
[00:58:42.707]"Well, it's just something being said
[00:58:44.907]"by somebody in little dinky country,
[00:58:46.757]"doesn't have anything to do with the rest
[00:58:49.717]"of us or with the rest of the world."
[00:58:51.360]But, the metaphysical guilt,
[00:58:53.880]and I wanted to get your comment on this,
[00:58:55.880]the metaphysical guilt that's in Kafka
[00:58:59.030]and somewhat in Havel, is something
[00:59:01.490]that's shared by all humanity.
[00:59:03.650]I think that's really the point.
[00:59:06.070]I think that's where the power come from.
[00:59:09.050]And yet both of them, in a way, and I think more in Kafka's,
[00:59:13.070]Kafka's saying think of the torment that comes
[00:59:15.980]from not reacting to the metaphysical guilt.
[00:59:20.180]The enormous destruction that comes
[00:59:23.070]from simply being passive towards it.
[00:59:25.800]And then Havel is, maybe if you would comment on this,
[00:59:28.610]saying to the contrary, in a real sense
[00:59:32.080]we all have the metaphysical guilt.
[00:59:34.270]So he puts the humor in his plays
[00:59:36.680]so that you'll realize you have it.
[00:59:38.880]Now the thing is to decide what to do
[00:59:41.820]in response to a metaphysical guilt.
[00:59:46.210]Well, the two important words
[00:59:50.970]in your comment now.
[00:59:54.565]Very interesting comment.
[00:59:56.790]The word guilt and metaphysical.
[01:00:00.280]Because you can, there would be people say,
[01:00:04.527]"Well, I feel guilty about this and that,
[01:00:07.057]"and this and that."
[01:00:08.141]but they would not add the word metaphysical
[01:00:10.800]which somehow deepens the concept of guilt
[01:00:16.790]and which makes it beyond, in a way,
[01:00:19.590]beyond to human life.
[01:00:22.150]It goes into the area of metaphysics.
[01:00:27.940]So, this is a,
[01:00:31.610]this is a very big question,
[01:00:34.360]which humanity,
[01:00:38.660]when they sense the guilt,
[01:00:41.670]they see the guilt in someone else, has to,
[01:00:46.480]I was going to say has to solve.
[01:00:48.560]It will not be solved.
[01:00:50.120]You can't really solve very profound feelings of guilt,
[01:00:54.960]which you may feel when you walk along in Vancouver
[01:01:00.150]and somebody
[01:01:05.880]would like to have a couple of dollars
[01:01:10.870]or pennies from me and I go to a concert
[01:01:14.390]and he's there, and I worry about him and I feel guilt.
[01:01:18.160]Now, is that guilt metaphysical guilt,
[01:01:20.860]that I feel that the world is just wrong.
[01:01:23.390]That one little person goes to a concert
[01:01:27.070]and another person is there and begs for a piece of bread.
[01:01:31.390]There you can almost say yes,
[01:01:34.870]maybe that is metaphysical guilt
[01:01:37.940]in the sense that it refers to
[01:01:43.620]the human condition.
[01:01:45.890]The human condition as,
[01:01:50.184]as Sartre would say and others would say.
[01:01:52.160]So there is a little bit of an answer.
[01:01:55.660]Not an answer but just sort of opening up,
[01:02:00.090]even more, a question.
[01:02:04.890]Perhaps this also relates to,
[01:02:07.630]Kafka gave us the
[01:02:11.870]basic sense of guilt
[01:02:16.150]almost through all of his books, his stories.
[01:02:19.860]And what did he do?
[01:02:21.390]He read it to his friends at the cafe
[01:02:24.740]and he roared with laughter.
[01:02:26.950]He thought it was all very funny.
[01:02:29.700]And I've never come, I must say openly,
[01:02:32.840]I've never come to terms with that.
[01:02:34.780]I thought, "Kafka, don't you know
[01:02:36.547]"that your stuff is pretty,"
[01:02:40.950]pretty
[01:02:42.700]not only dangerous but sad, black, terrible
[01:02:48.198]and it takes away hope.
[01:02:51.460]You have this one guy who is woken up
[01:02:55.640]and you always think he will get an answer to his problems,
[01:02:58.900]at the end he's shot.
[01:03:00.430]You read that, but this was from the longer novel.
[01:03:07.060]And he did not read this bit anymore to his friends
[01:03:10.640]because it was already in Brod's suitcase,
[01:03:14.210]moving to Switzerland.
[01:03:15.570]But the shorter things, he laughed.
[01:03:18.300]What did he think?
[01:03:19.790]Then we'll have to ask, maybe we have another question,
[01:03:23.470]what is Kafka's laughter?
[01:03:27.545]Does it emerge from guilt?
[01:03:30.500]Can laughter emerge from guilt?
[01:03:33.700]Or can guilt follow laughter?
[01:03:36.980]More likely, probably.
[01:03:39.340]Well, these are very simple
[01:03:44.680]and non, how would I say?
[01:03:48.630]They don't hold together.
[01:03:50.180]The answers or the, the way I try to speak about them.
[01:03:56.120]But I try.
[01:04:03.435]As you were speaking,
[01:04:04.720]I was thinking of another Czech great artist,
[01:04:08.300]who also seems to me reminiscent of Kafka,
[01:04:11.630]and that's Leos Janacek.
[01:04:14.050]And not just his opera about Mr Broucek trip to the moon
[01:04:17.240]where you have the fantastical extraterrestrial adventures,
[01:04:22.220]but I'm thinking of that's Makropulos,
[01:04:24.470]The Makropulos Affair.
[01:04:26.460]Where you not only have a woman who has metamorphosis,
[01:04:30.840]Elina Makropulos becomes Ellian MacGregor,
[01:04:34.330]she lives 300 years
[01:04:36.400]but as the metropolitan opera performed it
[01:04:39.430]several years ago with Karita Mattila as Makropulos,
[01:04:43.730]you have that wonderful opening scene where
[01:04:46.160]it looks like something right out of the process, the trial.
[01:04:49.950]You have this huge, these book stacks
[01:04:52.510]that go up endlessly, never come to an end.
[01:04:55.960]And you have this trial that proceeds
[01:04:58.340]through the centuries, also with different metamorphosis.
[01:05:02.940]I'm not sure anymore whether Janacek
[01:05:05.130]had any contact with Kafka, or if he knew much about him,
[01:05:10.160]but it certainly seems the flavor is there.
[01:05:13.340]I'm very glad that you said that.
[01:05:15.266]This is very interesting.
[01:05:17.960]I don't know.
[01:05:19.230]He lived in the little village of Hukvaldy,
[01:05:24.620]I mean Janacek that is.
[01:05:26.700]And it's amazing that this incredible operas
[01:05:30.920]emerge from the small village where he was born,
[01:05:35.820]in a house that was a brewery and next to it was a church.
[01:05:39.770]And you can go there and see it.
[01:05:43.930]This, in a way, is a very Czech thing,
[01:05:46.820]that this great (says foreign word) in people
[01:05:52.160]in literature, philosophy, music,
[01:05:58.070]come out of small, a small context.
[01:06:04.080]so you know, this is just great.
[01:06:07.550]Yes Macropolos.
[01:06:08.987]And he did from the house of the dead
[01:06:12.060]where he writes, he composes,
[01:06:16.260]writes about group of prisoners that come,
[01:06:19.420]you see them emerge from darkness into light.
[01:06:25.080]I only have seen one performance of it.
[01:06:28.078]Yes.
[01:06:30.128]And then Jenufa and earlier on, yes.
[01:06:34.250]Well, Janacek and his music has now.
[01:06:36.934]His music was not that appreciated for a long time.
[01:06:41.360]But it has now come, the mat
[01:06:45.780]has put a new Jenufa,
[01:06:48.150]the village girl, problem there too.
[01:06:55.440]To explore Janacek's attempts at
[01:07:01.640]attempts at seeing life,
[01:07:06.560]seeing potential in life that doesn't really exist,
[01:07:09.890]For example, lived 300 years,
[01:07:12.240]and she didn't like it at the end anymore.
[01:07:14.440]If you have eternal life, you go ahead for a while
[01:07:18.720]but after that, you say, "I don't want it really.
[01:07:21.777]"Now what am I going to do?
[01:07:22.653]"How am I going to get out of this?"
[01:07:25.600]Well, to study the relation to Kafka,
[01:07:31.040]yes, there is another thesis there.
[01:07:37.860]One last question.
[01:07:39.010]Okay.
[01:07:39.900]Marketa, thank you very much for this talk.
[01:07:42.700]I'm really intrigued by the image on your bookshelf
[01:07:46.040]of Orwell sitting in between Kafka and Havel.
[01:07:50.310]I think it's a good place for him.
[01:07:52.510]I just wanted to comment on one of the may slippery words
[01:07:58.160]that exist in that period.
[01:08:02.030]The first time I came across the word normalization,
[01:08:07.430]used not in a sense of restoring order after 1968,
[01:08:12.510]but in the early 1960s, there was critic,
[01:08:16.590]I think he's much undervalued, Joseph Rizak,
[01:08:22.010]who described the whole process
[01:08:23.920]of kinda renewal of Czech literature
[01:08:29.300]and the reestablishment of connections
[01:08:32.567]with pre-communist literature as normalization.
[01:08:35.900]That's what he called it.
[01:08:37.090]And so the Kafka Conference in 1963,
[01:08:44.884]when Kafka was once again allowed
[01:08:47.440]to be published in Czech translation
[01:08:49.630]and to be talked about more less in public,
[01:08:53.560]he saw it as a kind of normalization.
[01:08:55.660]He saw it as a normalization that works of literature
[01:08:59.900]that had lain foul in writers' drawers
[01:09:03.770]for 10 years, 15 years, were now being published.
[01:09:07.831]And so the original use of that word
[01:09:10.910]in the Czech modern context is getting back to normal,
[01:09:14.930]meaning reconnecting with our cultural past.
[01:09:18.160]And then suddenly it gets flipped around
[01:09:20.380]and turns into its exact opposite.
[01:09:23.090]And that's the Orwell connection there.
[01:09:26.460]Oh, thanks Paul.
[01:09:27.650]Yes, yes.
[01:09:29.620]In 1963, it was the first,
[01:09:32.690]and it took place in a castle.
[01:09:35.610]And it was the first conference on Kafka.
[01:09:40.410]And it was done by Prof. Goldstucker
[01:09:45.762]at Charles University.
[01:09:51.190]The reaction to Kafka, there were papers given.
[01:09:55.230]And the reaction were very different
[01:09:58.210]from the people from the West and from East, East Germany.
[01:10:03.690]It was partly done in German but,
[01:10:10.420]because they used Kafka's German text,
[01:10:15.030]that were born in '63.
[01:10:17.380]Well, thank you, Paul.
[01:10:18.360]This is great.
[01:10:19.540]They were trying, yes, to connect the normalization,
[01:10:23.570]and maybe that also relates to your question,
[01:10:28.000]or rather comment, that normalization was used here
[01:10:32.320]in a very positive way to connect with our past.
[01:10:36.370]And then it was twisted around and flipped around,
[01:10:41.520]and it became a dark reminder
[01:10:49.017]of what was going on in an absurd and unacceptable,
[01:10:54.630]they would say nowadays, they use that word very often.
[01:10:57.890]But it had to be accepted because of the danger.
[01:11:02.410]But in such a way,
[01:11:06.070]the word has molded people to awareness.
[01:11:10.910]Thanks, Paul.
[01:11:13.780]Thank you very much.
[01:11:15.050]I'm sorry, I'm will hold it at the right distance.
[01:11:18.250]Thank you very much.
[01:11:19.450]This is the, that was the last question.
[01:11:21.490]If you want to ask our wonderful speaker other questions,
[01:11:28.050]you can approach her during the break.
[01:11:31.750]And I understand that we will have some coffee and cookies.
[01:11:37.035](audience applauds)

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Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz speaks at Prague Spring 50

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