Description
Book SynopsisThe Dissident Politics in Václav Havel’s Vaněk Plays: Who Is Ferdinand Vaněk Anyway focuses on Ferdinand Vaněk, a semi-autobiographical character created by Václav Havel and featured in a series of nine plays written by Havel himself and three other dissident writers – Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský, and Jiří Dienstbier. By exploring the ‘Vaněk experience,’ Carol Strong details a multi-episodic, absurdist journey that provides an ‘insider’s view’ of the challenges facing those daring enough to question the status quo, a view that remains relevant today. Strong’s contention is that the lines found in these plays served as a ‘secret language’ of dissent in Cold War Czechoslovakia, which called the citizenry to contemplate the need for societal reform. As the plays were written at a time when the work of Havel and other dissidents were banned, the plays were never performed publicly, but through clandestine living room performances and the sharing of samizdat scripts the plays found an audience. Select phrases were indeed whispered throughout underground networks and helped forge a sense of oppositional solidarity among potential activists. Strong’s argument is that the ‘Vaněk experience’ metaphorically highlights how official power mechanisms are among the least insidious forms of societal power, as the state must follow predictable patterns of legal jurisprudence. By contrast, non-governmental forms of power – as exercised by one’s fellow citizens through informal social channels – can challenge oppositional actors more because of the personal tone they adopt. Using this approach, Strong presents a timelessly relevant critique of modern society with its consumerist / conformist tendencies.
Trade ReviewIn this thought-provoking and well-researched book, written partly in a quasi-theatrical format, Carol Strong demonstrates how this intersection of politics and literature – focusing on Havel and three other leading Czechoslovak dissidents (Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský and Jiří Dienstbier) - played a key role in the eventual downfall of the Communist Party in 1989. And in better understanding Havel’s creation Ferdinand Vaněk – who was based on Havel himself and was subsequently adopted by several other writers - we understand better the complexities of this impressive man and his fellow-dissidents, as well as the power, significance and universality of absurdist theater.
-- Leslie Holmes, University of Melbourne
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: Act I, Scene I Havel’s Vaněk Trilogy: The Plight of a Social Dissident
Chapter 2: Act I, Scene II Havel’s Vaněk Play Protest: Locating the Spark of Social Change
Chapter 3: Act II, Scene 1 And Now, A Word from Pavel Kohout: An Alternative Face of Vaněk
Chapter 4: Act II, Scene II And Now, A Word from Pavel Landovský: Yet Another Face ofVaněk
Chapter 5: Part II, Act III And Now, A Word from Jiří Dienstbier: A Vaněk Sequel
Chapter 6: Post-Performance Panel Discussion Meet the Authors: Confronting the Many Faces ofVaněk
Conclusion: Who is Ferdinand Vaněk Anyway?
