Vaclav Maly: The world of those below
McCloskey, Liz
uct of parallelism. If the official version to imagine how things might be otherwise. understood, evokes the wonderful is all-encompassing and yet flawed in He describes a many-houred performance...
...in Poland in the Catholic church and in moment those participating in the Thus, Havel seems to provide the script the powerful memory of Polish history...
...No, parallel literature, for all its Germany ten weeks: perhaps in transformation that underlay power, cannot in itself account for the pas- Czechoslovakia it will take ten days...
...his wife, Olga, from prison in the early 1980s: "Sometimes Maly hopes that every person will learn '"to be able to inspire I have the strangest feeling that I don't really want to leave himself or herself" to reject the slogan, "the party is our this place...
...As a Catholic priest, reflection groups, and weekly discussion groups...
...When I asked where I might fred him, they were man...
...the people "incorporate all hopes in Havel...
...I try to show a living movement has become the government, and it worries Maly...
...new leaders: the people of Czechoslovakia themselves...
...We in embargo of Iraq, a former trading partner of Eastern Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and European countries...
...Maly was the doors were locked, not at his home--off the parameters official spokesperson for the Civic Forum, the political move-of my map---but in the hospital where he was confined ment dissident Czechs and Slovaks created on the eve of with a broken arm...
...He cautions, "politics is not only the president headquarters, at the Albatross Theater, in bookstores, and and ministers, but in the widest sense of the word, politics on the street, I could meet Vaclav Maly...
...It was, after all, the subversion, their mordant humor and self- Reagan his due in tipping the balance of summer of 1989 when the Chinese gov- mockery, could have as easily ended in the equation by beefing up NATO's nuclear emment shot down peaceful demonstrators paralysis as upheaval, in confusion as clar- missile force...
...And then there was the the function of the current rage for "stand- snowballing effect (in Garton Ash's much- he fullest explanation of up comedy" in the United States--an quoted quip to Havel, "In Poland it took what happened, one that expression of our hapless and agnostic ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East accounts for the spiritual state...
...the political revolution, is I sionate and successful uprisings of 1989...
...Formerly, under But even his former comrades, members of the Civic Forum, the Communists, "they followed orders, now they expect regretted that they did not know how to contact him...
...belief he has forged a human and democratic notion of Before I took a bike trip to Eastern Europe last summer, politics---one that allows him to raise critical questions I had never heard of Vaclav Maly...
...with the people every day to help them understand the chal- "I want them to understand forgotten values...
...ity, in cynicism as hope...
...theater cease to be a mere group of for Czechoslovakia's greatest drama, the But these were not the only vehicles...
...It is a moment when a ficial" version draw on as a measure of which a mix of history, song fest, banquet, common participation in a particular truth...
...Only then will Czechoslovakia have taken the stereotypical routine of prison life, sink into a kind of credible steps toward becoming a free and democratic coun- sweet mental lethargy, and the prospect of going back into ty...
...How could Gorbachev and a recalculation of Soviet Wenceslaus Square and East Germans to such confusion lead to 1989...
...barriers stands directly and obediently before the nation's liberation theologians do not...
...it is necessary to be possibilities of filling the "open space...
...one that took place in Wenceslaus Square The theater, for example, became a place when a shared experience, mutually in November 1989, where the playwright versing on a Prague street comer, neither of whom spoke English but who well understood my request, I found Vaclav Vaclav Maly: The Maly...
...In my ser- lenge raised by Havel and by the church...
...Yet a question remains: How to account think to be found in Havel's reflections, Timothy Garton Ash, whose astute for the moment, the moment when fear of the essays gathered in the volume, Living to accept the full responsibilities of freedom...
...People] need to learn about demo- that affect their lives...
...They don't have bad motives...
...Rumor is rife, second-guessing a and political discussion allowed the audi- adventure of the mind, the imagina- chronic mental condition...
...theology...
...As religious and political expression person of faith should be actively enaged in the world, par- flourish, a remarkable symbol of that freedom has seemingly ticularly the world, as he says, "of those below...
...It is your population...
...I finally Maly's political prominence was testimony to the spiritual managed to talk to him, not at his parish church where the dimension of the Czechoslovak revolution...
...But today, in a my guardian angel...
...former Commonweal intern, is a legislative assistant for Maly fears that the new leaders of the country do not Senator John C. Danforth...
...Halfhearted ig an analysis from the "outside" by phenomenon in the true sense...
...As for Czechoslovakia: "The fhst step is over and it is Havel wrote about this frame of mind in his letters to hopeful...
...task to apply these teachings, to incorporate them into your A year after the revolution the obstacles to democracy life...
...Some stand their ground in Leipzig without systems with their rhetoric of irony and of my acquaintances even pay Ronald knowing the outcome...
...The ascendancy of Mikhail that allowed Czechs to gather in whole puzzling phenomenon...
...From this disappeared...
...others to decide their fate...
...When language ence to learn from and confront Poland's tion, and the sense of humor, and has been co-opted by a hegemonic bureau- past and its politics...
...coexistence suddenly blossoms into Goldfarb, an American sociologist, puzzled That potential is not always achieved, a feeling of mutual solidarity or by the theoretical and actual state of con- but when it is, he reminds us of how deeply brotherhood...
...God is a living reality, therefore your fear, a human and a functioning economy are there for all to see: the fear, can be overcome.'" absence of laws supporting people's effort to start private Maly echoes themes heard in liberation theology, but enterprises...
...These events, no doubt, are in Tiananmen Square...
...Isn't that, in part, part of the story...
...I explain, but I also try to open people's eyes to One must take responsibility for other people---for the whole change...
...I was only orders...
...world of those below In a working-class parish across the river from Prague's Old Town and up a hill, Maly is carrying on the daily and year ago, Vaclav Maly was one of the most unnoticed work of real revolution in Sunday sermons, gospel public figures in Czechoslovakia...
...the rapid increase in energy costs and complete analysis and hope for a Marxist revolution are naive about dependence on a diminished Soviet oil supply...
...Beyond Glasnost "it has the greatest potential to be a social between the participants...
...theater, in its origins, is tied to ritual and atmosphere of "alliance" and "fel- Alternative language, alternative spaces, meaning-making: lowship" is a central aspect of the alternative traditions were the train tracks The first embryonic appearance "socialness" of the theater I am talkof the parallel culture and were to be found of genuine socialness happens the ing about...
...In his wide-ranging common experience of truth or flash cracy in order to express the official ver- Letters to Olga, Vaclav Havel, playwright of insight into the "life in truth" sud- sion, how do people find the wordsto before he was president, says of the theater, denly establishes new relationships express another reality...
...So he has taken task to do professional politics," Maly explains, "We don't up the unglamorous work of opening people's eyes to the only need speeches from a balcony...
...But I don't preach politics, I preach "It isn't easy to decide about laws...
...How it will be used remains an open question...
...ethnic conflict between the Czechs and the he thinks that liberation theologians who have used a Marxist Slovaks...
...understood, evokes the wonderful is all-encompassing and yet flawed in He describes a many-houred performance elation that makes all the sacrifices unpredictable ways, what does the "unof- of"Retrospektywa," a theatrical event in worthwhile...
...I say, 'Above all, you are Christians...
...the war and the dehumanizing nature of its ideology...
...works on environmental protection...
...They are more comfortable allowing cratic behavior, the art of listening and dialogue...
...They aren't sure how to fill this open space, determined that if I asked enough people at the Civic Forum this vacuum...
...And finally, after is responsibility for public life...
...But to Maly ~ mind, one of the greatest the Soviet Union had a complete experience of this ideology...
...One must be educated...
...This electrifying fusion that "parallelism" provokes...
...The opposition mons, I explain the Sunday Gospel...
...At least not now...
...But at a student-ran theater about the people's devotion to his friend, and president of in Prague called "Albatross," Maly was featured in several the republic, Vaclav Havel...
...country where secret police have become taxi drivers, win- Spending any time with Vaclav Maly makes it plainly dow washers, journalists, and playwrights presidents, the clear that whether on the streets in 1989 or in the parish forty-year-old revolutionary cleric has become an almost in 1991, his work is dominated by the same principle: A invisible parish priest...
...Bible, not a dead word...
...I was led there by Beatrix, the elderly the Communist collapse and whose political posters exu- woman I encountered on the street, clearly sent to me by berantly proclaimed, "Gloria in Excelsis...
...Here you enter a state somewhat brain, our honor, and our conscience," to think critically akin to hibernation, allow yourself to be swept along by and to live fully...
...people and become a community...
...He was When I was in Prague, Havel's face was plastered on described admiringly by the students as a "very, very kind posters all over the city, and he is, indeed, a compelling man...
...These parallel interest are also part of the equation...
...They They see poverty, injustice, and they want to react...
...He was among 8 February1991:103 culture, or threats to the natural environ- reporting regularly appeared in the New death, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, fear ment in Poland, should be eliminated from York Review of Books (essays now gathered of fear gave way to a sense of mutual trust...
...in The Uses of Adversity and The Magic One cannot but return to Havel's reflections Censoring, being censored, writing in Lantern), attributes the impetus for change on the theater to gather a sense of the social order to be censored--what ensues, in to the election of a Polish pope and the and emotional climate, "this electrifying Baranczak's diagnosis, is a kind of hopes he generated in his 1979 visit to atmosphere of 'alliance' and 'fellowship,'" schizophrenia, which only adds to the Poland...
...It is a are not, he says, accustomed to participating in the decisions question of how to react...
...befriending a Catholic sister and an elderly woman con- Maly speaks from his own experience...
...8 February 1991:105...
...LIZ McCLOSKEY the evil world, with its constant demands that you be deci- Liz McCloskey, a graduate of Yale Divinity School and sive, becomes somewhat terrifying...
...But this popularity is dangerous, Maly warns, because unsure and directed me to the Civic Forum headquarters...
...It is not my understand the contagion of this mood...
...documentary films about the Velvet Revolution...
Vol. 118 • February 1991 • No. 3
