Beers & Books Havel

Moc Bezmocných* (1978)
literally translated:
The Power of the Powerless
*
The German publishers titled:
Versuch, in der Wahrheit zu leben
(Attempt to Live in Truth)
1980 / 1989 / 1990
*
The English title:
Living in Truth (1986)

 

Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011)

Beers & Books XXVI

Morale in times of globalisation
- -
I think in English the title is
The Art of the Impossible

Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011)

Beers & Books XII – Václav Havel

“Man is not
an omnipotent master of the universe,
allowed to do with impunity
whatever he thinks,
or whatever suits him at the moment.
The world we live in is made
of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue
about which we know very little
and which we must treat with utmost humility.”

Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011)

Prague - freedom - spring

The past three posts very probably would not have been written if - being on my way to become 15 - there had not been Alexander Dubček, the Prague Spring, and its end on August 21 1968, when as Václav Havel later put it, the ("brother"-) state(s) behaved like a girl blaming the mirror for being ugly, and therefore smashed it.

It have been those few months twelve years after the Hungarian Revolution, the photographs of Josef Koudelka, the later Magnum photographer, and the reaction of the western governments that let me start becoming a political thinking human being.

Fourty years have 'flown by' since, and still I do remember these events as vividly as I do remember the tongue of the girl who happened to become the first girl ever to whisper words of love into my ears ... :)