A Romanticist's Revolution

 I suppose I would, generally, describe my stance as an observer of life as that of the "witty cynic". That is I can, at times, take a rather alarmist and reactionary (note that I didn't say wrongheaded) approach to the great political and socioeconomic strife we all find ourselves in. Further, I am able to use my immense faculty of sarcasm to comment on these deformities in ways that are not entirely uninteresting. However, there are some events that occur that awaken my secondary impulse as a "cautious optimist". Unless I am much mistaken, that is an impulse that resides within all us, even if only dormant.  Submitted for your consideration and as an appeal to that fledgling spirit of optimism... Mr. Vaclav Havel.

Here was someone whom, armed with nothing but the ink of his pen and the wit of his mind, ridiculed and ultimately abolished, that is to say, overthrew the edifice of totalitarianism in his native Czechoslovakia. This was culminated with the expulsion of the single-party government known as the "Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia".

When the Czech invasion occurred in 1968, W.H. Auden, while living in neighboring Austria, wrote a wonderful poem that echoes in volumes when one considers the circumstances surrounding Mr. Havel and his "Velvet Revolution". The poem is called "The Ogre" and goes as follows:

The Ogre does what Ogres can

Deeds quite impossible for man

But one prize is beyond his reach

The Ogre cannot master speech

About a subjugated plain

Among the suffering and the slain

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips

While drivel gushes from his lips

Mr. Havel, a lifelong man of letters and satirist fought against Milos Jakes and his "Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia"in his best way. Through his power of prose and storytelling, Mr. Havel excited the cautious optimism of an entire proletariat and convulsed a stultified political party towards transformation.

My personal favorite would have to be his 1978 essay, "The Power of The Powerless", an essay that ranks right up there with George Orwell's immutable "Shooting An Elephant" as one of the most important essays of the 20th century. Mr. Havel examines one self-evident, but nonetheless crucial point. He states that to live within an oppressive regime where all manner of culture, humor, and individuality are evacuated from public and private life, is to live, quite simply, a lie. That is, that the innate and underdeveloped impulse within us to be enslaved is itself a lie to every instinct of self-respect and integrity that we have. The precise phrase from the essay is as follows: "An individual living within such a system must live a lie, to hide that which he truly believes and desires, and to do that which he must do to be left in peace and to survive".

Another piece that he wrote which helped to mobilize him as a political figure and martyr would have to be "Letters To Olga". It's an anthology, of sorts, of letters written from Mr Havel to his wife (guess her name) while he was a political prisoner from 1979 to 1983 for his association with VONS (The Committee For The Defense Of The Unjustly Prosecuted) and his aide in the creation of Charter 77. "Letters To Olga" holds a special significance as it was produced at a watershed moment that sets about the triune accomplishments of bringing out some of his best writing as a literary figure, while buoying his reputation as a dissident and, finally, offering insight to his development as a future political leader.

Shortly after his release, Mr. Havel founded the Civic Forum in 1989 with the stated purpose of overthrowing the Communist regime after having successfully unified disparate dissidents to a common cause under one banner. To say the efforts of the Civic Forum were successful would be a malicious understatement. In fact, after only 10 days (or 11 depending on the source), the Communist Party capitulated. Following a unanimous vote at the Federal Assembly, Mr. Havel was elected as the first President of The Czech Republic, thus ending 41 years of one-party rule.

It's important to keep the light of optimism shining, which can be quite difficult, especially in these turbulent times of polarization while also bearing in mind that we can indeed learn from history (you will not ask me to be so cliche as to quote Santayana on this point, will you?).

With that, I suppose my parting injunction would have to be to not be numb to the stimulus of art, of literature, and of satire and to realize the power that words in these contexts can have, not just in terms of keeping one's optimism, but in deed of contributing to the very change of which our optimism will be the progenitor.