Abstract
In his first speech to the Federal Assembly in Prague (25 January 1990), playwright Václav Havel, in his new role as President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, focused on the phenomenon of time:
In my offices in the Prague Castle, I did not find one single clock. To me, that has a symbolic meaning: for long years, there was no reason to look at clocks, because time had stood still. History had come to a halt, not only in the Prague Castle but in the whole country. So much faster does it roll forward now that we have at long last freed ourselves from the paralysing strait-jacket of the totalitarian system. Time has speeded up.1
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Notes
Václav Havel, Projevy (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1990) p. 24.
For an informative selection of his writing, see Jan Patočka Philosophy and Selected Writings, ed. Erazim Kohák (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Václav Havel, Horský hotel, in Hry 1970–76 (Toronto: Sixty-eight Publishers, 1977).
Milan Uhde, Nâvštevy a navštiveni V. Havla, in O divadle (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1990) p. 231.
Václav Havel, Dopisy Ohe (Brno: Atlantis, 1990) pp. 38–9, own translation
English edition: Václav Havel, Letters to Olga (London: Faber and Faber, 1988)
Václav Havel, Zahradnà slavnost, in Protokoly (Prague: Mladá fronta, 1966) pp. 15–65.
English edition: The Garden Party, translated and adapted by V. Blackwell (London: Cape, 1969).
For a detailed discussion of this play, see E. Paul Trensky, The Garden Party Revisited, in Czech Literature since 1956: A Symposium (New York: Bohemica, 1980) p. 103.
English edition: The Memorandum, trans, by V. Blackwell (New York: Grove Press, 1980).
Václav Havel, Ztižená možnost soustředenà (Prague: Orbis, 1969).
English edition: The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, trans, by V. Blackwell (London: Cape, 1972).
Václav Havel, Temptation (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), trans. G. Theiner.
For an interesting discussion of this work see Goetz-Stankiewitz, Variations of Temptations — V. Havel’s Politics of Language, London: Modern Drama, vol. XXXIII, no. 1 (March 1990) pp. 93–105.
Václav Havel, Three Vaněk Plays — Audience, Protest, Unveiling, trans. by Jan Novak and Věra Blackwell (London: Faber and Faber, 1990).
Václav Havel, Largo Desolato, trans. Tom Stoppard (London: Faber and Faber, 1987).
For a short bio-bibliography of V. Havel, see Václav Havel, Living in Truth, ed. J. Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989) p. 95.
See also M. Goetz-Stankiewitz, The Silenced Theatre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979)
E. Paul Trensky, Czech Drama since World War II (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1978)
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Majer, P. (1994). Time, Identity and Being. In: Docherty, B. (eds) Twentieth-Century European Drama. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23073-0_12
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