Letters to Olga by Václav Havel
"Letters to Olga" is a collection of correspondence written by Václav Havel, a prominent Czech playwright and dissident, to his wife during his imprisonment from 1979 to 1982. These letters were composed while he faced severe state oppression in Czechoslovakia, where he had been arrested multiple times for his involvement in human rights activism and his role in the Charter 77 movement. The correspondence spans various locations, including pretrial detention and hard labor camps, revealing Havel's reflections on morality, human dignity, and the absurdity of existence—a perspective influenced by existential and phenomenological philosophy.
The letters provide a personal glimpse into Havel's thoughts on the human condition amid political repression, echoing themes found in the works of existentialist thinkers like Albert Camus. Despite the harrowing circumstances, Havel's writing showcases his resilience and commitment to freedom, serving as a testament to his moral courage against a tyrannical regime. This collection not only contributes to understanding Havel as a playwright but also illustrates the profound impact of his experiences on his philosophical outlook. Overall, "Letters to Olga" stands as both a personal narrative and a broader commentary on the struggle for human rights and dignity in oppressive political environments.
Letters to Olga by Václav Havel
First published:Dopisy Olze (cerven, 1979-zari, 1982), 1984 (abridged in translation as Letters to Olga: June, 1979-September, 1982)
Type of work: Letters
Time of work: June 4, 1979-September 4, 1982
Locale: Czechoslovakia
Principal Personages:
Václav Havel , a distinguished Czech playwrightOlga Havel , his wifeIvan Havel , his brotherKveta Havel , his sister-in-law, Ivan’s wifeJiri Nemec , a Czech psychologist and philosopher, a member of VONSEmmanuel Levinas , a French philosopher whose ideas influenced Havel
Form and Content
On May 29, 1979, Czechoslovakia’s State Security police jailed ten members of the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted, known by its Czech acronym of VONS. Havel was one of those arrested. VONS had been organized to monitor the cases of persons imprisoned for expressing their beliefs or people otherwise victimized by the police and the court system. The arrest was Havel’s fourth. In January, 1977, he had been imprisoned for five months because of his membership in Charter 77, the Czechoslovak human rights movement. In October, 1977, he had been sentenced to fourteen months for “subversions,” but the term was conditionally suspended for three years. In January, 1978, he had been arrested but was released in March without official charges filed against him. A vicious campaign of harassment followed, aimed at forcing Havel either to cease his dissident activities or to emigrate. He did neither.
The VONS trial was held in October, 1979, with five of the group’s members given prison terms; Havel’s was for four and one-half years. After three years, he developed pneumonia and was hospitalized, and on February 7, 1983, the government suspended the remainder of his sentence because of his ill health. On regaining his freedom, he resumed both his Charter 77 work and his playwriting.
Between June 4, 1979, and September 4, 1982, Havel addressed 144 letters to his wife, Olga. While the original Czech edition (published first through samizdat’s private circulation in Havel’s homeland, then in Toronto in 1985) contains all of them, translator Paul Wilson chose to delete four which were not delivered and fifteen which repeat information available in other letters. Even so abridged, the text (including an introduction, notes, a glossary of names, and an index) runs to 397 pages.
Letters 1 through 17 were written during Havel’s pretrial detention in Prague’s Ruzyne prison, from June, 1979, to January, 1980. Letters 18 through 86 originated from a hard labor camp, Hermanice, in Northern Moravia, near the Polish border. There, Havel was set to making steel mesh with a spot welder, with performance quotas set twice as high as for civilian workers. Letters 87 through 128 came from the Plzen-Bory prison, where Havel was first employed in the laundry, then in a scrap metal depot. The last set of letters, 129 through 144, while also written in Plzen-Bory, were designed by their author to be read as a unit. They represent a sustained meditation on morality and metaphysics, unfolding a philosophical vision clearly inspired by Havel’s phenomenological and existential reading.
Critical Context
Stripped of their sometimes pretentious philosophical jargon (“Does not the hunger of meaning . . . derive from the recollection of a separated being for its state of primordial being in Being?”), Havel’s letters reveal him to be a secular humanist with a strongly existential orientation. His closest temperamental and speculative kinsman is probably Albert Camus: Both men meditate on an “absurd” universe in which existence has no given, absolute truth, value, or meaning. Both men regard such a world not as an invitation to nihilism but rather as an opportunity to establish a man-made, morally coherent worldview which emphasizes the primacy of human dignity, freedom, and fraternity.
As a Czech writer, Havel is indebted to Jaroslav Hasek and, naturally, Franz Kafka. Hasek’s great comic novel Osudy dobreho vojaka Srejka za svetove valky (1921-1923; The Good Soldier Schweik, 1930) is a picaresque, farcical parody of imbecile militarism in particular, despotism in general. Kafka expressed metaphysical anguish, dread, and mystery in some of the twentieth century’s most memorable works of fiction. Havel shares both authors’ bitter humor, genius for allegorical fantasies, and philosophical bent. As one of Europe’s leading absurdist playwrights, Havel has declared his dramatic affinities with Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, and Stoppard.
Letters to Olga has some value in presenting discussions of the theater’s role, as well as the importance of several plays, by one of the most gifted contemporary dramatists. Its chief value, however, is as a testament to the victory achieved by a person of honor and courage over his vicious hounding by a despicably tyrannous and venomous regime.
Bibliography
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