Vaclav Havel 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011

[Chris Newman]

5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011. Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. One of the great men who helped end an era of dictatorship in the west. RIP.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16236393

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A great, genuinely heroic man, whose plays, I regret, I do not know nearly as well as I do his exemplory political activities.

His character inspired Samuel Beckett's powerful late play Catastrophe, which demolishes the lazy idea of Beckett as a cold aesthetician, unconnected to the "real" world.

[Roehre]

5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011. Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. One of the great men who helped end an era of dictatorship in the west. RIP.

RIP Vaclav Havel

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.

he showed how

[doversoul1]

Very, very, sad. He embodied humanity in a real sense.

RIP

[aeolium]

I recall watching some of his plays in the Play for Today slot in the 1970s, as well as a documentary on him and his work for Charter 77 around that time (in which he laconically commented on his Czech secret police minders who were filming as they were being filmed). The night when he appeared on a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square with Alexander Dubcek in November 1989 was unforgettable.

RIP

[Lateralthinking1]

Sad news. Regrettably the people of what was the Eastern Bloc seem predestined to be in one totalitarian regime or another.

[Bryn]

Now spinning here in his memory: Trout Mask Replica, his favourite 'Frank Zappa' album.

[jayne lee wilson]

I remember a radio 3 broadcast of - I think it was "Audience", around 1975 - set in a brewery was it? And I think with Harold Pinter memorably playing Vanek, IIRC...

A truly great, culture- and world-changing individual, who lived to taste the true difficulties of trying to govern wisely.

[Pilchardman]

Now spinning here in his memory: Trout Mask Replica, his favourite 'Frank Zappa' album.

For me, Havel's use of a scooter to get around in the corridors of power wins him points alone.

[Bryn]

The single quotes are there to indicate the anomaly. According to FVZ, in the lead up to his appointment as honorary cultural ambassador to the Czechoslovak state, Havel had mentioned what a fan of Zappa's work he was. When asked which was his favourite Zappa album, Havel replied "Trout Mask Replica". I find that fair enough, really. From conception to realisation, it is stamped with Zappa's production criteria. One might even say hat FVZ took Don's try-outs and run-throughs and made a composition out of them.

[Pilchardman]

The single quotes are there to indicate the anomaly. According to FVZ, in the lead up to his appointment as honorary cultural ambassador to the Czechoslovak state, Havel had mentioned what a fan of Zappa's work he was. When asked which was his favourite Zappa album, Havel replied "Trout Mask Replica". I find that fair enough, really. From conception to realisation, it is stamped with Zappa's production criteria. One might even say hat FVZ took Don's try-outs and run-throughs and made a composition out of them.

Ah, OK. Gotcha.

[MrGongGong]

a sad day indeed



If only we would have leaders who were even slightly culturally aware we would be in a far better place !

[johnb]

Going off on a bit of a tangent - during Dubcek's Prague Spring I was post grad student and the university arranged for most of its Low Temperature Research Group to attend the '11th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics' which was held that year at St Andrews and they naively included me (undoubtedly the worst post grad student in the group).

There were around 750 delegates from all across the globe and that included a strong Soviet delegation to the conference, though the Soviets (unlike everyone else) didn't seem to mix very much at all and always seemed to have their minders hovering around. While we were at St Andrews the tanks rolled in to Prague. Suddenly the majority of the western delegates started wearing simple badges (which someone had magically organised) on their lapels, etc. The badges were all the same and had just one word on them:

'Dubcek'

There was no hostility - just that very simple expression of a profound sadness. I found it a very moving.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

an excellent essay on Havel's view of the importance of ddemocracy