My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  I asked him where he was from. He was from Italy and said he was traveling around, painting, drawing, and visiting galleries. I was truly in another world.

  The premiere went over well, but in a few places that had been interrupted with applause or laughter in Prague, here everybody was silent. Instead, the viewers laughed at entirely different points in the play. They lacked knowledge of the actual circumstances and didn’t understand the allusions. Mr. Spiess comforted me during the intermission: In Germany we applaud during a play only when someone gets kicked in the butt, he told me. (I considered this a mere witticism, but two days later I attended the premiere of Brecht’s Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti. At one point Mr. Puntila kicks his servant, who flies to the other end of the stage, and the audience did indeed break out in applause.)

  When my play ended, the audience clapped for quite a long time. This was certainly also due to the fact that the curtain whipped about in such quick intervals that they didn’t have a chance to get up from their seats.

  Mr. Stroux invited me to a celebratory dinner, and everyone assured me my play had been a tremendous success, but surprisingly I felt no need for success.

  When I was finally alone in my overly luxurious hotel room with a television set and six towels, I realized that it wasn’t fame I longed for. I wanted to say something to people at home about what I was feeling and going through with them. If I lived here, I’d probably feel something completely different and therefore write about completely different things that would make an impression on Germans. Perhaps I was mistaken. As long as a person expresses something powerfully, he should be able to make an impact on people anywhere in the world. But I couldn’t believe someone like me was capable of something like that.

  There were probably twenty reviews of The Castle, most of them positive, but also cold and unemotional. They compared my play to Mrożek’s marvelous Tango and Kafka’s Castle, something my play had nothing in common with except the title and the name of the protagonist. All the same, I had baffled the German critics (for whom Franz Kafka was usually the only source of knowledge of Czech literature). If my play shared anything with Kafka’s writing it was the attempt to seek out allegorical images. But Kafka, as I learned later when I was writing about him, spoke allegorically because his shyness forced him to conceal the fact that he was writing about his own most intimate experiences and feelings. I sought out allegory because without it, The Castle would never have gotten past the censors. If anyone influenced my writing, at least formally, it was not Kafka but Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

  As it turned out, my Castle was somewhat haunted by misfortune. It went well in the famous Düsseldorf theater, but at the American premiere in Ann Arbor, one of the few stages with a permanent professional company, it had its first catastrophe (which I’ll tell you about a little later).

  At the Swedish premiere, the avant-garde director decided to improve the play by shifting around the individual scenes in order to demonstrate that the author actually didn’t know what he’d written, and that only the director could give the play a meaningful form.

  However, The Castle suffered its greatest calamity in England, where the famous Royal Shakespeare Theatre was getting ready to perform it. The director, Mr. Williams, even came to see me in Prague to go through the production details. Then I received an invitation to the premiere along with a printed program that boasted an all-star cast. But the premiere never took place. A week before it was to be performed, the board of directors met and discovered the unsatisfactory financial situation of the theater and replaced The Castle with a Shakespeare comedy. The director informed me of the situation by telephone and with a great many apologies. With respect to earning capacity and artistic value, the board had certainly acted wisely, but The Castle had indeed been unlucky. If only the board had waited a week longer for their meeting.

  *

  During the interwar period, but actually near the end of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire when there was an exaggerated interest in literature and freedom of the press (which was only somewhat limited) in the Czech lands, dozens of literary trends and groups began to emerge, primarily due to critics and theoreticians. We had circles of decadents, symbolists, vitalists, impressionists, dadaists, ruralists, and Catholic authors. Vítěslav Nezval professed poetism and later surrealism; Karel Čapek and some of his close friends were considered by some as adherents of pragmatism.

  After the February takeover, the only permissible artistic trend was socialist realism, and authors were differentiated, at most, by age, place of residence (there were Brno authors and critics and Ostrava authors, as well as western Bohemians), and the literary journals they subscribed to. Two journals were the most pronounced in their views: in the second half of the 1950s, Květen, with its poetry of the everyday; and beginning in 1964 until its involuntary demise, Tvář. Both were originally intended for young authors just starting out, but the moment they began to unduly resist the current ideological norms, their publications were discontinued upon the orders of the party authorities.

  The midsixties, which saw the beginning of Tvář, of course had a drastically different atmosphere from the midfifties, when Květen began. At Květen we tried to write without the ever-present ideological agitation. We sought to focus on ordinary people and ordinary affairs. For the most part, the authors were members of the Communist Party; all the editors were Communists as well; and only with difficulty could we attempt to polemicize openly with the official ideology.

  After 1948, authors who had never accepted the Communist Party began to gather at Tvář. They had no need to correct their own errors (not to mention crimes). Along with the remarkable Christian philosophers, several gifted young poets published here, as well as, significantly, critics Bohumil Doležal and Jan Lopatka (they had already published in Květen). With an erudition remarkable for their age, these writers subjected to criticism almost all contemporary literary authorities and meritorious writers. They saw that much of what passed for independent literary production was merely old ideas better articulated.

  Again, the Writers’ Union was the publisher of Tvář, and many authors accustomed to admiration and praise—or minor political reproaches, which elevated them in their own eyes—were aggrieved by the criticisms now issuing from Tvář. It was something other than critical essays on literature that troubled the party ideologues. At Tvář, it was as if Marxist ideology did not exist. Its authors had no intention of trying to reform Marxism with quotes by a younger Marx; they didn’t want to try to restore socialism by recalling the ideas of Lenin. They simply didn’t take this ideological rubbish into consideration. Their great philosophers were Heidegger, Teilhard de Chardin, the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, and, of course, the darling of all rebels and exiles, Ladislav Klíma. Tvář wasn’t even as provocative as Literární noviny. It was just that Tvář ignored the guidelines that the wearied dictatorship kept demanding.

  Tvář was discussed at almost every meeting of the central committee of the Writers’ Union, but the topics of conversation were individual articles or sentences. No one tried to attack or even mention its independent and nonconformist spirit.

  Finally, upon an initiative “from above” (that is, from the ideological department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party), our union committee met in Bratislava to discuss the continued existence of the ideologically cantankerous journal.

  Every meeting of the union’s central committee (as was the case with all legal organizations) was preceded by a meeting of the Communist members. As I’ve already mentioned, this was practically the entire committee. Because every resolution accepted at the meeting was binding for the Communists, the meeting of the writers’ central committee was just a formality. Everything of significance had already been discussed and decided, but it wasn’t until this formal meeting that minutes were taken. In this way, the Communist Party was continuing the methods it had employed when it was seeking to gain power. Everything of real significance was supp
osed to happen in secret, not before the eyes of the public.

  At this time, however, the party organization in the Writers’ Union was fractured and did not look anything like what it was supposed to be, that is, a collection of subordinates obediently endorsing the party’s orders.

  Of all the meetings I have experienced, and often suffered through, this one in particular stuck in my memory. It was led by the chairman of the Central Committee’s ideological department, Pavel Auersperg. Those present were other subordinates in his department. The principal party ideologue explained that the journal Tvář was a disgrace to the good name of Czech writers. We were all proud to have among our ranks genuine creators and a number of authors dedicated to the party, but which of these great writers had ever appeared in Tvář, except as an object of uncritical attack and perfidy? The journal had begun as a tribune for young authors. Who of our young and talented writers had appeared here? Only scum, both homegrown and translated. What did the verses of the aging Vladimír Holan have to say to us? He had the recalcitrant journal in front of him and began to read.

  Dungeon after dungeon grows

  And almost all of us are imprisoned

  perishing within as if God willed

  to be in us only without us . . .

  What did young writers have in common with Gerard Manley Hopkins, who had died three quarters of a century ago, the sixty-year-old Witold Gombrowicz, Georg Trakl, or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin? What about Ladislav Klíma, who was even passed off as an example worthy of being followed? In an enthusiastic paean to the idealistic philosopher, young readers will learn that he was reading again, that he lived on raw horsemeat and pure grain alcohol, and that he had once, as he himself writes, stole a bitten-into mouse from a cat and gobbled it down, just as it was, with the fur and bones—as if I were eating a dumpling. A wonderful example for our young writers.

  Why was it precisely these authors who were appearing in the journal? Because they were decadents and thus ideological opponents of any sort of progress; they had nothing in common with our efforts to build a Socialist society.

  A debate followed. To the surprise of the party functionaries, many of the discussants—such as Milan Jungmann, Kundera, Kohout, Karel Kosík, and Jaroslav Putík—praised Tvář for introducing new topics and new names, and, of course, even young authors (one could name dozens of them). The critical section, which formed a significant part of the journal, was certainly one-sided, but it decidedly expressed the opinion of part of the young generation. Of course there were also plenty of discussants endorsing the opinion of the party ideologues, and during the break they warned those of us who were defending Tvář that this was a serious matter; if we did not retreat, we could count on provoking those who determined literary matters.

  The debate over Tvář lasted well into the night, and at one point the telephone rang. Auersperg picked up the receiver, and at once all the arrogance vanished from both his face and his demeanor. With almost servile deference, he sank into some sort of vassallike bow and then answered as loudly as he could, “Yes, Comrade President, the discussion is still under way. I will definitely pass it on. I’m certain your concern will encourage them.”

  He hung up and passed on the greetings of President Novotný, who was greatly interested in ensuring that Socialist literature received the utmost support, both material and ideological. Then, still with an expression of deference and devotion, he added that the comrades in the central committee of the union will certainly appreciate the president’s concern and will not gamble with his goodwill.

  This performance had obviously been prearranged; the players sought to stage a scene combining promises with hidden threats.

  Around midnight, when everything had finally been said, we requested a vote on whether Tvář should be halted or allowed to continue.

  The vote was close, but we who voted to preserve the journal prevailed. We enjoyed our feeling of victory for only a few minutes, however. The envoy of the party leadership informed us that the Central Committee of the Party had already decided the matter. Tvář would no longer be published. It was up to us to plausibly account for its demise, and for us, as members of the party, this decision was binding.

  During the following meeting of the now legitimate central committee, some of us knuckled under; others either abstained or even, despite the warnings, voted against the ruling.

  Thus Tvář was closed as an unprofitable enterprise.

  *

  Before the Six-Day War, Helena and I were invited to Israel by an organization of Czech-Israeli friendship. Although at that time the relationship between Czechoslovakia and Israel was a cautious one, it wasn’t unfriendly, and because the invitation had come from an organization that behaved amicably to the Communist regime, our trip was approved.

  I was somewhat surprised. Why had they chosen to invite me? I’d never written anything about Israel, and I wasn’t very interested in the problems of the Jewish state. In this I was probably influenced by my mother; it seemed a mistake to let some Nazi rules tell me how to see myself. Despite my time in Terezín, I had only indistinct ideas about Judaism. I didn’t speak a word of Hebrew (with the exception of the greeting shalom); I had not the slightest knowledge of the Talmud or even the prescriptions adhered to by believers.

  Helena, on the other hand, was excited. She had some distant relatives in Israel, as well as her first love, and she harbored an affectionate admiration for the country. (Later I learned that it was she who had arranged the invitation.) I was most interested in Israel’s agricultural communes, which my wife had enthusiastically told me about several times. I learned that they were the only communes in existence and perhaps even prospered in the middle of a free and democratic society.

  In Haifa, overwhelmed with the scent of thousands of blossoming orange trees, we left for the kibbutz Artz, which would be our home for nearly a month.

  The kibbutz was pleasant and bright, the houses small but modern. The common kitchen was amazing in its spaciousness and quantity of food. Each person could take as much as he wanted, but because the food mostly consisted of chicken, overeating seemed to have fallen by the wayside after a while.

  We were treated kindly by one and all, as if we were their close relatives. They praised our republic, which had sold them weapons when they were fighting to establish their state.

  I was still curious about the possibility of realizing the Communist vision of a society of comrades. I wanted to know what life and work looked like in a commune nobody was compelled to join. So I talked to a lot of kibbutzniks and took note of the different fortunes and opinions. They were usually educated, but they had chosen the kibbutz as a place for their life and work, even with its Communist precepts. For many it had been at first a provisional emergency solution—they’d come to a country where it was not easy to find a job. They were often fugitives or illegal immigrants without any belongings. The kibbutz had offered them first aid: housing, food, the most necessary clothing, and health care. In return it demanded work, for which they received an insignificant amount of pocket change. The new arrivals, however, shared all the privileges and responsibilities of the other members and were subjected to the same regulations. The most drastic (and unnatural) of these rules seemed to me the handing over of offspring, immediately after birth, to a nursery where their mothers would visit to feed them. The children were not allowed to live with their parents; only during their free time could they visit together. All important decisions were made at meetings of the commune. The standard of living for each of the members depended on the overall results as well as the strict following of communistic principles, which were voluntarily embraced. These principles were so severe and rigid that they often struck me as absurd. Each member had to fulfill certain duties, which could not be avoided. For example, members took turns working in the kitchen, the laundry, or another communal facility. If any of the members found themselves beyond the environs of the commune, for example, if they had been
elected as a representative or worked in one of the academic institutions, they not only had to deposit all their income into the mutual treasury (the kibbutz then paid their room and board outside the commune) but also had to come back every now and then to carry out their regular duties in the kitchen or laundry.

  I was interested in how this fundamentally spartan or semimilitary way of life could prosper in a free society

  The communes arose during the time when a haze of idealism wafted above Europe. The members of our kibbutz belonged to, or were adherents of, the leftist Mapam (united workers) Party, which supported their endeavors. I could understand that the people who had founded the communes were grateful to their principles for help in their own difficult beginnings and had remained loyal to the Communist ideas. But what about their children? What if someone didn’t feel like staying in the commune? Even after dozens of years of work, they owned almost nothing except a few shirts and a pair of shoes.

  I was assured that each person was allowed to decide for himself, keeping in mind, however, that he might have to start all over again no matter what his age. The kibbutz, on the other hand, had over the years allowed him to acquire new and useful knowledge free of charge. Even the young were allowed to leave.

  Never before had I realized how powerfully illusory and utopian was the Communist ideal here, where in a free society people chose to serve a collectivist goal; they suppressed their individual needs and were trying to create a completely new and, from the point of view of others, unnatural or, more precisely, precivilized type of human relations.

  Upon returning home, I wrote a lengthy article about kibbutzim, in which I expressed my doubts about the utopian idea of communes and Communist ideals. (To my surprise, it was noticed in Israel and translated.) I expected that my impugning of Communist education and the ideal itself would provoke some sort of reaction, but nothing happened.