Successes and failures in ambiguous constellations. Václav Havel as a Foil for Current Czech Interpretations of the Present
Abstrakt
Five monographs devoted to Václav Havel have appeared in Prague recently, in addition to a multitude of journal articles and individual contributions to larger works.Taken together, they once more convincingly prove that Havel's image in the Czech Republic is still ambiguous and even unfinished, although the dramatist, dissident, and first President after November 1989 belongs to the most important figures of contemporary Czech history. The present review article deals in a critical and in some respects even polemical way with the monographs on Havel by Eda Kriseová, Martin C.
Putna, Jiří Suk, Daniel Kaiser and Michael Žantovský. Its aim is first to compare the respective strengths and weaknesses of the different tacks, starting points, and views.
The author's second objective is to work out a few general lines of Havel's world view. In doing so, he points out continuities of Havel's thinking, successes and failures of Havel's politics, and last but not least the fact that there were many, sometimes conflicting, aspects to Havel's personality, something that has been often overlooked so far or even overed up.