Vaclav Havel: From Playwright To President Essay, Research Paper

Vaclav Havel:

From Playwright to President

The president of the Czech Republic was not always a politician. Vaclav Havel’s first career was in the theatre. Throughout his work in drama, Havel satirized the Communistic government of Czechoslovakia. He became a dissident because of his writings and soon began political movements that eventually brought him to power in his country.

Havel is considered by may to be one of the best Czech writers there are around today. Yet, as a president, he is harshly criticized.; It is interesting to speculate whether Vaclav is a better writer or a better president.

Vaclav Havel was born in Prague on October 5, 1936. In 1951 he completed his compulsory schooling. Being the offspring of a prominent Prague businessman’s family, he was barred from pursuing regular studies afterwards. For four years, while taking an apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, he was attending evening classes at a grammar school. It was at the age of nineteen that he started publishing studies and articles in literary and theatre magazines. Family tradition has led him toward embracing the humanist values of Czech culture that were suppressed or destroyed in the 1950’s. As he was not allowed, due to his family background, to study humanities, he went on to a Technical University where he spent two years (Havel, Disturbing The Peace, ps. 20-21).

After completing his military service, he worked as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre and later, from 1960, in the Theatre on the Balustrade. The Theatre on the Balustrade produced his first plays, most importantly The Garden Party (1963), a piece representing in an outstanding manner the strong liberal tendencies that were occurring in Czech culture, society, and government in the 1960’s which culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968. At that time Vaclav was taking part in public and cultural life as one of the champions of democracy in Czechoslovakia. In the second half of the ’60’s, his next plays, The Memorandum (1965) and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968), was performed. After the invasion of Prague in August 1968 by Soviet troops, which put an end to the Prague Spring regeneration process, Vaclav Havel did not abandon his convictions. Consequently, a lasting ban was imposed on publication of his plays in Czechoslovakia (Kriseova, ps.13-14).

Needing work, in 1974 he went to work as a laborer in a brewery. He did not work at the Trutnov brewery because of financial needs, he could have lived off the royalties from his plays. He needed official work and social interaction. His learning capacity for his job was incredible in a few short weeks he knew more about beer and barrels than workers who were there for decades. Havel learned almost everything this was to know about the business during his tenure at the brewery (Kriseova, ps. 78-79). A friend of Havel’s, Andrej Krob, said this of Havel:

What an ability to adapt to new surroundings! He had been in the brewery only a few weeks and he was sold on it. Basically, he did not have to go there, but it was like a trip to another universe for him. For a few months he rolled barrels in the basement, but soon he wanted to know how the barrels were manufactured, who made the iron hoops, what was put into the barrels, and suddenly he was giving us long lectures on the world of beer brewing. He was a world-class expert (Kriseova, ps. 91-92).

After the end of the Prague Spring, it was then that Vaclav began to be known by the international public as a representative of the Czechoslovak intellectual resistance to Communism. As a citizen, he protested against the extensive oppression marking the years of the so-called normalization. His open letter to Dr. Gustav Husak (the then President of Czechoslovakia) of 1975 in which he pointed out the critical condition of the society and the responsibility of the ruling regime and that condition became widely known (Havel, Open Letters, p. 56).

Havel is a major figure in Czech culture and society, he is considered the country’s foremost contemporary dramatist (CLC, vol.58, p.236). His work is “blacky” comic and often disturbing. Working from a broad interest in the absurd nature of human existence, Havel writes plays that have a universal appeal despite their Czechoslovakian settings. In general, his dramas depict the mechanization of the individual by society and the role of language in this dehumanizing process. In 1979, Havel, who often and effectively satirizes bureaucracies, was arrested and sentenced to four and a half years in prison for committing alleged subversive activities. His plays were again banned from the Czech stage. Vaclav has strong supporters in and out of his country. He is a close friend to the dramatist Tom Stoppard. Samuel Beckett even wrote a brief play, Catastrophe for Vaclav Havel as an antitotalitarian statement against Havel’ imprisonment (CLC, vol. 25, p. 219).

Havel’s plays are about the dehumanizing affects of the totalitarian regime. They are farces that are thick and uninhibited yet not devoid of meaning (CLC, vol. 25 ps. 236-240).

His resistance to the Communist regime, which included co-founding the human rights organization Charter 77, resulted in several arrests in the ’70’s. In prison he wrote letters to his wife Olga (now deceased). These letters were collected in a book published in 1988, Letters to Olga: June 1979–September 1982. The letters contain meditations on theatre, politics, literature, and art, as well as, instructions of domestic duties and complaints about his hemorrhoids (CLC, Scammel, vol. 58, p. 240).

Along with co-founding Charter 77, he was also a member of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted which was founded by a group of Charter 77 signatories. His activity sent him to prison a total of three times; altogether he was in prison almost five years. His essay The Power of the Powerless (1978) analyzed the essence of Communist oppression and described the means and mechanisms used by the Communist rule in its effort to create a powerless, resigned society consisting of week and morally defunct people. The impact of the essay reached beyond the scope of the Czechoslovak dissent, influencing revolution in other socialist nations (Havel, Disturbing the Peace, p. 190).

In November 1989 Vaclav Havel was one of the leading initiators of the creation of the Civic Forum, an association uniting opposing civic movements and democratic initiatives. Since the very first days of its existence, he was head of the Civic Forum, becoming a key figure of the “Velvet Revolution.” The Velvet Revolution was the transformation of Czechoslovakia from a communist country to an independent democratic nation state. In December 1989, he was elected President of Czechoslovakia for a term ending after parliamentary elections was held in the country. The freely elected Parliament then re-elected him to the presidency in July 1990 for a term of two years (Havel, Summer Meditations, p.126).

As President of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, he met nearly all European Heads of State, as well as the Presidents of the United States, the Soviet Union and a few other countries. His activity in the area of foreign policy has laid the foundations of Czechoslovakia’s new external relations. In domestic policy Vaclav has been a leading initiator of democratic changes in the administration of the country and of the advancement of democracy in society. Havel has been respected as a nonpartisan President and as an essential integrating authority on the political scene and also in matters relating to the Czech-Slovak relationship. From the position of President, Vaclav Havel resigned on July 20, 1992 because he could no longer consciously serve the country in a way consistent with his convictions (Kriseova, p. 245).

After his resignation, he left public life for two months. In September 1992, he agreed with the government’s suggestion that first, the President is to be elected by both chambers of Parliament; second, the President cannot be recalled by Parliament and third, the President has the right to dissolve Parliament. In January 1994 Havel became the first President of the Czech Republic after the split with the Slovak Republic (Kriseova, p.251).

In 1996, Vaclav’s first wife, Olga Havlova, died after a long illness. On January 4, 1997 Vaclav Havel married the popular actress Dagmar Veskrnova.

Havel has made it clear that he does not wish to be President of the Czech Republic if it is only as a figure-head for show. However, it seems that his fears have come to be, the true leader of the Czech government is clearly Vaclav Klaus, the Prime Minister. With this unfortunate reality, evidently Havel is more effective as a playwright than as a politician. He has his political voice better heard in his dramas than he does as President for sake of appearances.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. “Vaclav Havel”. vol. 25.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. “Vaclav Havel”. vol. 58.

Havel, Vaclav. Disturbing the Peace. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Havel, Vaclav. Open Letters. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991.

Havel, Vaclav. Summer Meditations. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Kriseova, Eda. Vaclav Havel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.