The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice - Hardcover

Havel, Vaclav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679451064 ISBN 13: 9780679451068

Publisher: Knopf, 1997

Synopsis

There is no shortage of politicians who make a habit of shooting from the hip, but it is much rarer to find one who speaks from the heart. Václav Havel knows no other way to speak, or to write. Both as a dissident and as a playwright it was his sworn purpose for many years to combat evil with nothing but truth. As president of Czechoslovakia, and now of the Czech Republic, he has clung to that habit, refusing to turn over either his conscience or his voice to political handlers and professional speechwriters. Instead he assumes the additional burden--for him, it is a distinct pleasure--of composing all of his oratory. Audiences from New York to New Delhi, Oslo to Tokyo, have been the luckier for his decision.

This volume consists of thirty-five of these essays, written between the years 1990 and 1996, that manage to be both profoundly personal and profoundly political. Havel writes of totalitarianism, its miseries and the nonetheless difficult emergence from it.

He describes how his country and the other postcommunist countries are learning democracy from scratch and are encountering obstacles from inside and out. He marvels at the single technology-driven civilization that envelops the globe, and the challenges this presents to multicultural realities. He invokes the duty of every person alive to prevent hatred and fear from derailing history ever again. He acknowledges "the advantage it is for doing a good job as president to know that I do not belong in the position and that I can at any moment, and justifiably, be removed from it."  And he reminds us that--contrary to all appearances--common sense, moderation, responsibility, good taste, feeling, instinct, and conscience are not alien to politics, but are the very key to its long-term success.

About this title

Review

This collection of 35 essays written by the Czech playwright and human rights dissident who became the president of his country in 1989, focuses on the challenges facing an East learning democracy from scratch and a West unused to the multicultural complexities this process involves. Their organizing principle is that what is necessary now in politics and statecraft is the reaffirmation of values. "It will certainly not be easy," Havel writes, "to awaken in people a new sense of responsibility for the world, or to convince them to conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day. Who knows how many cataclysms humanity may have to experience before such a sense of responsibility is generally accepted? But this does not mean that those who wish to work for it cannot begin at once." The best vehicle for pulling this off, Havel says, are "those organisms that lie somewhere between nation-states and a world community." What he has in mind are "regional communities" like NATO, world organizations like the U.N., and another force that he thinks might be the best suited of all for this task--the mass media.

About the Author

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1936, Václav Havel is a noted playwright, a founding spokesman of Charter 77, and the author of many influential essays on totalitarianism and dissent. In 1979 he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for his involvement in the Czech human-rights movement. In November 1989 he helped found the Civic Forum, his country's first legal opposition movement in forty years, and the following month he became president of Czechoslovakia. Since January 1993 he has been president of the Czech Republic.

Paul Wilson lived in Czechoslovakia from 1967 to 1977. Since his return to Canada in 1978 he has translated into English work by many Czech writers, including Josef Skvoreck´y, Bohumil Hrabal, and Ivan Klíma, and has translated and edited most of Václav Havel's prose writings to appear in English. He lives in Toronto.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679451064
• ISBN 13: 9780679451068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273