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Václav Havel: Suspicious to Myself

Illustration
  • Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
  • When: December 2, 2014, 19:00 – 21:00

In connection with the 25th anniversary of Václav Havel’s election as president, the Václav Havel Library is issuing the publication Sám sobě podezřelý (Suspicious to Myself). A collection of speeches with a marked personal tone from 1990–1995, it explores the philosophy of Václav Havel not only as president-statesman and president-citizen, but also as president-person. The publication has been put together by Anna Freimanová, and features a foreword by Martin Palouš, an afterword by Michael Žantovský, and photographs by Ondřej Němec.

In the role of president, Václav Havel suddenly found himself face to face with various temptations of power and feeling a dangerous tension between thought and action. In an atmosphere approaching adoration, he realised how important it is to hang on to one’s common sense. A lifelong inner continuity, linked to responsibility and personal obligation, was always a condition of identity for Václav Havel. He also demonstrated that in these presidential texts, in which among other things he kept returning to the Faustian subject of temptation by the devil, a subject he pondered from at least his first imprisonment for making Charter 77 public at the start of 1977.

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