AND DIALECTS OF THE WORLD.
THIS INSTITUTION WAS FOUNDED IN 1840.
IN
POLAND IT HAS EXISTED
SINCE 1816.
*
Helena noticed me trying to decipher the book about socialism and democracy with the help of an English dictionary and said this simply would not do. A few days later a little man appeared at our door and introduced himself as Vlček, previously Wolf. He told me that upon the wish of my dear wife he would perfect my knowledge of English. From then on he came twice a week and induced me to speak the language of Shakespeare and Dickens. He had an odd teaching method. The only available books in English at the time were published in the Soviet Union. Besides the history of the Communist Party, the works of Karl Marx, and the life of Lenin translated from Russian, it was possible to find brief retellings of classic novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. These books were used for the study of English in Soviet schools. For the youngest students they published fairy tales. I had to buy every volume available, and during each lesson I would retell one of the stories. Mr. Wolf listened in silence (and probably in pain) and then pointed out my grossest grammatical errors by saying that English really had no obligatory grammar. He explained something about a strict sequence of tenses and forbade me to use the conjunction “if” in the future tense.
Later, when the political situation in Czechoslovakia was becoming more interesting, he started speaking about politics with me and would ask if I thought we’d ever slip out of our Soviet shackles. Sometimes when my English retarded the conversation, he allowed me to speak in Czech. It didn’t occur to me that he could have been sending someone reports about my opinions, but I was definitely grateful for the lessons several years later when I had to teach in English for an entire semester at an American university. This was just after the Soviet occupation, and he had disappeared somewhere out in the world. I never heard from him again.
At the same time I plunged into English, my friend Ludvík Vaculík excitedly informed me that an American astronomer by the name of Schmidt had discovered a quasar. A quasar, he explained, was an extremely distant body radiating an enormous amount of energy. According to Vaculík, this was a revolutionary discovery, and he expected that more such celestial bodies would be discovered. The universe was loaded with energy as well as the mysterious antimatter.
It was 1963.
This year was revolutionary for Czech culture as well. This is when Miloš Forman’s Black Peter and The Audition were premiered, as well as Věra Chytilová’s Bagful of Fleas. Bohumil Hrabal’s Pearls at the Bottom came out, along with Fuks’s Mr. Theodore Mundstock and Vladimír Holan’s Mozartiana. While Stanislavsky was still the highest authority in the permanent repertory of so-called stone theaters, viewers were avidly attending the Semafor Theater. Theater Na zábradlí brought out Václav Havel’s The Garden Party, a wonderful parody of the emptiness and vapidity of official thinking and speech. My Hour of Silence was published that year as well.
Some of the above authors, including myself, were members of the Communist Party. Others (at least in thought) were its opponents (like Hrabal, Havel, and Holan), and their words had until recently not been allowed to be published or performed.
At the same time — at least at the very top of the power structure — very little had changed. There was change, however, taking place below — primarily among those educated in the humanities — in individual artist unions, universities, and the Academy of Sciences. Of all the legal organizations, the Writers’ Union resisted and provoked the government the most, even though it had arisen from the will, or more precisely the despotism, of Communist power. The Communists had broken up the original writers’ organization, Syndicate, and replaced it with the Writers’ Union, composed primarily of party members who in the beginning served it loyally. Now the ruling power tried to distance itself from all writers’ gatherings as much as it could. Nevertheless, after seven years, the union met for only its third congress. (The congress was important for me because I could participate. I had heard almost nothing about the shameful inception of the union; those whom I met and who had participated in its beginnings usually didn’t talk about it.)
Scores of writers came together, many of whom I’d never heard before. Most of the contributions were provided by famous authors, and almost all of them dealt with the past. It even seemed that, whereas the recent past had been criminal, today those crimes were being atoned for and freedom was just around the corner. The speakers kept repeating that the dogmatism in the official Communist approach to literature was responsible for the breakdown of creative activity. Others kept returning to some personal wrongs they’d suffered. The former editor in chief of Květen, Jiří Šotola, criticized Literární noviny for working with an overly narrow group of writers.
At the congress, I was one of twenty-three “novices” (most of them were as young as I was) who had been elected to the central committee of the union.
It was a monumental gathering, but the greatest event of that year was the birth of our daughter, Hana, beautiful and long-haired even as a baby.
My wife, who invariably comes up with nicknames for everyone, at first called her František and later Nanda.
*
The new leadership of the union decided to reshape the content of Literární noviny. Until then the editor in chief was more of a Communist functionary than a writer and journalist, and he personified the dogmatic thinking that had been much criticized.
At the end of the year the first quasar was discovered, a meeting took place during which it was decided to recommend that the editor in chief take a working vacation. It was difficult, however, to find a replacement. Finally we offered the position (perhaps somewhat mischievously) to Šotola, who had been critical of the newspaper. Let him try to run it, we thought. He accepted the position and asked if I would join him as perhaps his deputy. I don’t know why he chose me. We knew each other a little from Květen, and he obviously assumed that I had at least a little journalism experience. He was also worried about how he would be received. He knew that I contributed to the paper and that my wife worked there, so perhaps he hoped that he would be well received.
Our editorial offices occupied two floors of a building on the corner of Betlémská Street and the embankment. From the street came the constant ringing of the tram and the roar of automobiles. Several windows had an unequaled view of the river, the Little Quarter, and the castle from which, of course, the proletarian president looked down on our journal with growing ill will.
Apparently so that I would not become conceited or feel like one of the worthies, I at first didn’t get a desk. (I sat across from my wife at hers.) Then, just as at my last place of employment, I was placed in a dark, but quiet, passageway with a forlorn view of a wall of the building next door.
This new job was unlike my start at the publishing house; here I had some idea of the work. Literární noviny arose as the traitorous heir of Lidové noviny (which had been renamed Svobodné noviny after the war). Although nothing remained of its prewar freethinking spirit, it had taken over the format and rotary printer despite the fact that it had become a weekly.
A slightly idealized image of the prewar Lidové noviny became fixed in my mind, a journal that masterfully combined all journalistic and literary genres. On the first page it would print a poem and a column, usually by writers rather than journalists. The first page would also have the beginning of a feuilleton and an installment of a novel. Alongside the daily news, Lidové noviny would run a column of criticism along with reportage, national and foreign political commentary, articles about the economy, and even a small sports section. The foremost writers and specialists contributed to the newspaper. For a moment I forgot I was living under completely different conditions and believed we would succeed in relaunching Literární noviny in that form and at that level. We would create a marvelous journal difficult to compete with in Czechoslovakia.