Abstract
In another article, the journalist Tomasz Mianowicz describes how his first encounter with samizdat transformed his life, turning the young art student from Cracow into first a dedicated editor and ‘underground’ publisher, then an exile in Paris.
Also living in Paris, where he emigrated two years ago, is the distinguished Czech poet Jan Vladislav, who spent his last five years in Prague running one of the most interesting of those unofficial literary ventures which give the many banned Czech writers an opportunity to publish their work — even if only a few hundred (or a few dozen) typescript copies. His life, too, was radically changed when in 1975 he decided to incur the displeasure of the secret police by joining his fellow-writers Vaculík, Havel and others in the production of unofficial literature. He collected manuscripts from authors afflicted, like himself, by a ban on all their work, and organised the typing and distribution of the finished books, which he taught himself to bind. Surveillance and intimidation by the secret police inevitably followed: weekly interrogations, harassment and threats.
In an interview with Index on Censorship, conducted over two days in his Paris flat last November, Jan Vladislav spoke about the historical roots and present importance of this ‘parallel’ literature, as well as about his personal experience of samizdat publishing and police intimidation. This is an edited and much abbreviated record of that interview.