This article argues the virtue of Václav Havel's striking idea “that the world might actually be changed by the force of truth, the power of a truthful word, the strength of a free spirit, conscience, and responsibility.” We are not powerless when we recognize the power of words to change history for good or ill. Intellectuals, whose work is inherently linguistic, bear unique responsibility for the thinking that shapes the general moral consciousness. Havel calls intellectuals to account for vacuous verbal games that erode faith in human communication, for complicity in subversive linguistic manipulation, and for ethical indifference. We must become Cassandras, he urges, “warriors of the pen,” predicting, warning, bearing witness on the side of truth against lies, holding ourselves and others to account for the integrity of words and for fidelity between words and action. Only such scruple can change moral consciousness enough to make violence rare and human life sacred again.
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References
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2.
2. Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, trans. Harry Willetts (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 529.
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4. Ibid., p. 191.
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5. Ibid., p. 199.
6.
6. Ibid., p. 254.
7.
7. Ibid., p. 249.
8.
8. Note the discussion of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, described by a French critic as “a monument against forgetting,” in Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 126 ff.
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10. Ibid.
11.
11. Slavenka Drakulić, “A Winter's Tale,”New Republic, 10 and 17 Jan. 1994, p. 14.
12.
12. Václav Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” in Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965-1990, ed. Paul Wilson (New York: Vintage Press, 1991), p. 258.
13.
13. Drama critic Kenneth Tynan applied the phrase “withdrawal with style from chaos” to Tom Stoppard in a profile in The New Yorker 19 Dec. 1971, pp. 41 ff. A Czech by birth, like Havel, Stoppard was so profoundly moved by Havel's moral bravery that his own plays began to express a passionate concern for human rights.
14.
14. David H. Hirsch, The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism After Auschwitz (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991), p. 282.
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20.
20. Ibid.
21.
21. Ibid., p. 41.
22.
22. Eric Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss (New York: Brazillier, 1957), p. xiv. Kahler's book is among the most compelling arguments for the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
23.
23. Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” p. 268.
24.
24. Steiner, Proofs, pp. 48-49.
25.
25. Václav Havel, Summer Meditations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp. 115-116.
26.
26. Ibid., p. 116.
27.
27. Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in Open Letters, ed. Wilson, p. 151.
28.
28. Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” p. 270.
29.
29. Ibid., pp. 264-65.
30.
30. Ibid., p. 259.
31.
31. Ibid., p. 263.
32.
32. Ibid., p. 267.
33.
33. Ibid., p. 270.
34.
34. Havel, “Power of the Powerless,” p. 176.
35.
35. Ibid., p. 150.
36.
36. Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” p. 268.
37.
37. Ibid., p. 270.
38.
38. Havel, “Power of the Powerless,” p. 145.
39.
39. Ibid.
40.
40. See Václav Havel, “Anatomy of a Reticence,” in Open Letters, ed. Wilson, pp. 291-322. This address was to be delivered at a peace conference in Amsterdam in 1985. He used the occasion to explain his reservations about both pacifism and peace movements.
41.
41. Havel, “Power of the Powerless,” pp. 183-184.
42.
42. Ibid., p. 184.
43.
43. James Joll, “The Not-So-Velvet Revolution,”New Republic, 16 Apr. 1990, p. 40.
44.
44. Havel, “Anatomy of Reticence,” p. 293.
45.
45. Ibid., p. 311.
46.
46. Ibid., p. 314.
47.
47. Václav Havel, “A Word About Words,” in Open Letters, ed. Wilson, p. 377.
48.
48. Ibid., p. 389. Havel was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Bookseller's Association. This is his acceptance speech, read for him by Maximillian Schell on 15 Oct. 1989, since he was not permitted to travel to Frankfurt for the occasion. A month and a half later, he was president of Czechoslovakia.
49.
49. George Steiner, Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution (New York: Atheneum, 1971), p. 63. Note especially the chapter entitled “The Language Animal.”
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50. Havel, “Power of the Powerless,” p. 168.
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51. Václav Havel, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,”New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp. 36-37.
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54. Ash, Uses of Adversity, pp. 62-63.
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55. Kaye Boyle, Words That Somehow Must Be Said (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985), p. 190. Boyle is one of many insisting on this point. She uses the same words as Thomas Mann, who made the point very forcefully when he fled Germany.
56.
56. Havel, “A Word About Words,” p. 380.
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57. Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern (New York: Random House, 1990), pp. 79-156. I have drawn extensively for detail on the dramatic eyewitness account of the Velvet Revolution in this book.
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idem , “You Are Balkans, the World Tells Us, Mythological, Wild, Dangerous,”New York Times Magazine, 18 Sept. 1992, pp. 36 ff.
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66. New York Times, 23 May 1993.
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67. Ibid.
68.
68. Havel, “A Word About Words,” p. 387.
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69. Ash, Magic Lantern, p. 137.
70.
70. Václav Havel, “New Year's Address,” in Open Letters, ed. Wilson, p. 391.
71.
71. Havel, “Anatomy of a Reticence,” p. 321.
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72. Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Eastern Europe in the Postwar World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 6.
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73. George Steiner, Language and Silence (New York: Atheneum, 1967), p. 151. Steiner uses the quoted phrases in praise of Kafka. They apply equally to Havel and to Steiner himself.
74.
74. Ibid., p. x. Steiner entitles the first major section of Language and Silence“Humane Literacy,” also the title of the first essay. The phrase “supreme scruple,” borrowed from Wittgenstein, Steiner interprets as “the word refusing to take itself for granted.”
75.
75. Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace, trans. Paul Wilson (New York: Vintage Press, 1991), p. 85.
76.
76. Milosz, Captive Mind, p. 41.
77.
idem , The German Phoenix: Men and Movements in the Church in Germany (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992).
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79.
79. Ash, Uses of Adversity, pp. 11-12.
80.
80. Hirsch, Deconstruction of Literature, p. 118.
81.
81. Ibid., p. 120.
82.
82. Judt, Past Imperfect, pp. 2-3.
83.
83. Ibid., p. 3.
84.
84. Karel Capek, Good Men Still Live! “I Am the Other Karel Capek” (Chicago: Philip O'Hara, 1924), p. 33.
85.
85. Bernard Wheaton and Zdenek Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988-1991 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), p. 41.
86.
86. Ash, Magic Lantern, p. 81.
87.
87. Wheaton and Kavan, Velvet Revolution, p. 46.
88.
88. Ash, Magic Lantern, p. 113.
89.
89. Ibid.
90.
90. Steiner, Language and Silence, p. 102.
91.
91. Ibid., p. 101.
92.
92. Quoted in Hirsch, Deconstruction of Literature, p. 97.
93.
93. Václav Havel, Letters to Olga (New York: Holt & Company, 1983), p. 369.
94.
94. “Politics and the English Language,”Essays of George Orwell (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1954), p. 163.
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95. David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 15.
