May

From http://www.czechlit.cz/new-books/may-dva/
/2013/

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Karel Hynek Mácha

The book is a translation, in rhymed and rhymic verse, of the Czech writer Karel Hynek Macha's long poem in the Byronic style, one of the most famous works of Czech literature. William Harkins is the translator and editor, and the poem, rendered here in both English translation and Czech, is accompanied by a preface and introduction. The story concerns the unhappy fate of a bandit hero who unwittingly kills his own father, who had seduced his lover. The poem is replete with an atmosphere of destiny and doom. The principal ironic device is paradox: life and love, emblematic of joy and happiness, lead inevitably to torture and death for the crime of parricide. 

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On Václav Havel

In the Nation, Caleb Crain writes of Václav Havel's significance and moral integrity, and touches on Havel's views on the importance of theatre:

Theater is capable of bringing a group of people into a new understanding of themselves, in Havel’s opinion. “A single performance for a few dozen people,” he wrote to (his first wife) Olga, “can be incomparably more important than a television serial viewed and talked about by the entire country.” Havel’s faith may seem quaint today, when impact is measured in sales or page views. But he insisted on it for other forms of art as well. If only twenty people read a novel, he wrote in his open letter to Husák, “the fact of its existence would still be important.” As “the main instrument of society’s self-awareness,” culture is like a vitamin. A society can survive without it for a while, subsisting instead on the “slick, trivial, and predigested” entertainment products of a totalitarian regime, but not forever. Censorship is not the only way to starve a society; it can also be deprived of essential nutrients by a diet of junk. 

Vaclav Havel Makes a Movie

At the ripe, young age of 73, Former Czech president Vaclav Havel is directing his first film, an adaptation of his autobiographical 2007 play Leaving about a "recently retired statesman (Chancellor Rieger) going through the withdrawal symptoms of power within the general framework of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare’s King Lear."

Michael Zantovsky speaks with Havel about this and many other things in the current issue of World Affairs.

Besides providing inspiration to maturing would-be filmmakers, the interview is interesting on many levels. When asked if he is a "believer" Havel replies:

It is hard to say. If by believing you mean praying to an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and half controls it and half observes it, then I am probably not a believer. But if you mean that it is not all accidental, that there is a mystery to existence, a deeper meaning, that I do believe in. Actually, I am pretty sure of it.... we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith. 

On his political leanings:

I am always amused when people try to put me in a drawer and label me as this or that. It is not all that important. What is important to me is the truth. And the truth is that Russia has become a threat to its neighbors. I don’t care whether this be considered liberal, or conservative, or progressive. But it is the truth. I am not a friend of war. But it is the truth that if we had intervened in Kosovo sooner, we might have saved many lives. The same thing holds for Iraq. When the first Gulf War took place, I was all for going all the way to Baghdad. When dictators get appeased, people die.  

Czech Novelist Emil Hakl

Recently I read and enjoyed Czech writer Emil Hakl's Of Kids & Parents (published by Twisted Spoon Press) and it just so happens that Chad Post has a review of the novel over at Three Percent:

Written almost entirely in dialogue, the novel takes place over one night as a 42-year-old man and his 71-year-old father go from bar to bar drinking, talking about airplanes, about women, about everything. The book is narrated by the son, although expository sections are few and far between.

Read the entire review here.

Milan Kundera the Informant?

As mentioned widely, a historian in Prague has uncovered evidence that Milan Kundera informed on Miroslav Dvoracek, a Czech spy for the West, who subsequently was tortured and spent fourteen years in a labor camp. The Economist notes that:

True or not, the story echoes themes of guilt, betrayal and self-interest found in Mr Kundera’s own work, such as “unbearable lightness” (dodged but burdensome responsibility). In “The Owner of the Keys”, a play published in 1962, the hero kills a witness who sees him sheltering a former lover from the Gestapo.

Twisted Spoon Press

Twisted Spoon Press, based in Prague, is a great publisher of European (primarily Central and Eastern European) literature in English.

This fall, Of Kids & Parents by Emil Hakl, translated from the Czech by Marek Tomin will be published in the U.S. Hakl was born in Prague in 1958 and has published a volume of poetry, three novels, and two collections of short stories. Of Kids & Parents was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year prize in 2003 and was adapted into a feature film.

This description is from the Twisted Spoon website:

Taking its cue both from Joyce's Ulysses and Hrabal's freely associating stream of anecdote, Of Kids & Parents is about a father and son taking a walk through Prague, over the course of which, and in the pubs and bars they stop into, their personal lives are revealed as entwined with the past sixty years of upheaval in their corner of Europe. One's "small history" is shown to be inseparable from the large history played out on the world's stage: families are uprooted, relationships fail, jobs are gained or lost, and still life goes on. Hakl's genius is his ability to mesh the two into a seamless flow of dialogue.

Check out this work and their other interesting titles at the Twisted Spoon Press web site.