The Art of the Impossible: Politics As Morality in Practice Speeches and Writings, 1990-1996 by Vaclav Havel

by Václav Havel

This collection of 35 essays written by the Czech playwright and human rights dissident who became the president of his country in 1989, focuses on the challenges facing an East learning democracy from scratch and a West unused to the multicultural complexities this process involves. Their organizing principle is that what is necessary now in politics and statecraft is the reaffirmation of values. "It will certainly not be easy," Havel writes, "to awaken in people a new sense of responsibility for the world, or to convince them to conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day. Who knows how many cataclysms humanity may have to experience before such a sense of responsibility is generally accepted? But this does not mean that those who wish to work for it cannot begin at once." The best vehicle for pulling this off, Havel says, are "those organisms that lie somewhere between nation-states and a world community." What he has in mind are "regional communities" like NATO, world organizations like the U.N., and another force that he thinks might be the best suited of all for this task--the mass media.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Essays, Historical, Biography

Paperback

First published May 20, 1997

About the author

Václav Havel was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He wrote over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally. He received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award. He was also voted 4th in Prospect Magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. He was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.

Beginning in the 1960s, his work turned to focus on the politics of Czechoslovakia. After the Prague Spring, he became increasingly active. In 1977, his involvement with the human rights manifesto 'Charter 77' brought him international fame as the leader of the opposition in Czechoslovakia; it also led to his imprisonment. The 1989 "Velvet Revolution" launched Havel into the presidency. In this role he led Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic to multi-party democracy. His thirteen years in office saw radical change in his nation, including its split with Slovakia, which Havel opposed, its accession into NATO and start of the negotiations for membership in the European Union, which was attained in 2004.

Reviews

[Bart · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can rate the quality of a writer by how interesting are the strangers who approach you when they see you reading it, Havel is surpassed solely by Jorge Luis Borges.

A couple highlights:

The man who hates does not smile, he merely smirks; he is incapable of making a joke, only of bitter ridicule; he can't be genuinely ironic because he can't be ironic about himself. Only those who can laugh at themselves can laugh authentically. A serious face, quickness to take offense, strong language, shouting, the inability to step outside himself and his own foolishness - these are typical of one who hates. (p. 57)

and

Communism was not defeated by military force, but by life, by the human spirit, by conscience, by the resistance of Being and man to manipulation. It was defeated by a revolt of color, authenticity, history in all its variety, and human individuality against imprisonment within a uniform ideology. (p. 90)

This book comprises incredibly and unexpectedly vulnerable stuff from a world leader.

[Rachel Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to read everything by this man. I'm sticking with a 4.5 for some of the redundancies, but he is such a courageous and cogent writer and thinker. I'm extremely impressed - even literally - with his message that the only hope for our global civilization is in finding a renewed morality and resisting tribalism. His specific political -historical experience made his thoughts on democracy and totalitarianism particularly credible reminders worth heeding. So many bits were disturbing in their prescience ("The Anatomy of Hate", "United Nations Summit for Children") and I constantly wondered how he'd feel knowing Trump is the president of America and that countries the world over are reverting to their nationalist, xenophobic, or totalitarian tendencies. He wrote and delivered these speeches from 1990-1996, but the main crises he identifies are exactly the same. One of the most interesting aspects of his philosophy in my opinion was the metaphysical aspect. Since I'm becoming more familiar with certain branches of Buddhism, I found his references to Being really intriguing. I wonder what he believed and if he wrote religiously. I don't remember when I first became aware of Havel and enchanted by even the idea of him, a playwright / revolutionary turned world leader, but now after finally reading the man himself, the enchantment has grown only stronger.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll preface by stating that I revere Vaclav Havel, an astoundingly courageous & brilliant playwright, writer, revolutionary and finally, after degradation & imprisonment, President of his country.

This book is a selection of speeches he made after becoming Czech President, but these speeches are more than exhortations. They are clear, insightful statements of what political & moral acts should be, and how to accomplish them.

Oh, would that each country contained one person of his character & capabilities.

[Bryan Kibbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vaclav Havel is an inspiring thinker and politician. This book offers readers a collection of his speeches from the mid-1990s, wherein he frequently addresses the need to re-introduce a moral or spiritual dimension to politics and re-discover a greater sense of responsibility for human kind as a whole, now and in the future.

As someone that has become discouraged by the vacuous thinking and shallow ostentatiousness of modern politics in America, Havel's thinking proved to be invigorating and refreshing. Perhaps politics is not a lost enterprise, but rather is desperately in need of careful thinkers that are attuned to the context of life and its deeply interconnected nature.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thoughtful speeches written from 1989 through 1996 by a dramatist and leader of the Czechoslovak resistance to Communist rule who found himself president after the velvet revolution. These speeches were given all over the world as Havel was asked to speak about the beliefs that drove him to resist. While the speeches grow repetitive, collectively they articulate his belief in personal responsibility, development of a multicultural society, struggle to adopt democracy to a variety of cultures, respect and transcendence as a guiding force. My favorite quote: 'The gift of forgiveness, and thus freedom from one's own anger, can flourish only on the terrain of justice."

[Geraldine]

Madeleine Albright told me to read this. Okay, well, she recommended it in an interview in the NYT that I happend to read, samesies?

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about the way a non-traditional leader thinks. A great man in extraordinary circumstances.

[Yifei Men · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone like me who has almost no interest in history or politics, I am surprised that I stuck through the entire book. Yes, there are large swathes of lectures about democracy and the toils of history that I glossed over, but there are also many many gems of pure beauty in Havel's writing. If anything, Havel strikes me as a deeply introspective, thoughtful and sensitive leader, one who has a charming character and an endearing voice -- a credible storyteller whom you're willing to listen to, even when the historical context is completely lost (to me).

The most memorable passages in the book for me are Havel's examination of human nature, for example in his speech at the Oslo Conference on "The Anatomy of Hate"

We are, rather, uneasy observers of this phenomenon (hate), and thus we try to reflect on it only from the outside... So I, too, relate to hatred only as an observer, whose understanding of it is not profound, but whose concern about it is"

or in his address to the Salzburg Festival:

For us, fear of history is not just fear of the future but also fear of the past....
All too often... fear of one lie gives birth to another lie, in the foolish hope that by protecting ourselves from the first lie we will be protected from lies in general. But a lie can never protect us from a lie.

[Nick San Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating to read the words of such an eloquent politician which comes as no surprise given his background as a playwright. Really fascinated by his repeated emphasis on a need for spirituality in politics, not really in a religious sense but in more of a humanist one. That desire for greater meaning is something I’ve thought about often and certainly has ramifications in politics all over the world.

[Chris Brimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could have been shelved eight ways to Sunday. Havel's eloquence puts Obama to shame, the humble presentation of soaring rhetoric, deep thinking and grand ideas. In a world of politicians this man was a statesman.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankly, it gets a little tedious at times, but the insights are worth it, as are the relevance and resonance of these speeches with current issues.

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of speeches given by playwright Vaclav Havel during his first several years as President of Czechoslovakia and later as President of the Czech Republic, covering 1989 through mid-1996. Havel was a major intellectual leader of the resistance to communism during the 1970's and 1980's, but he was genuinely surprised to be given the office of president by his peers after the communist government collapsed. Nevertheless, he rose to the occasion, and served four years as President of Czechoslovakia, then another ten as President of the Czech Republic after Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1993. Havel's presidency was one of the only occasions in human history in which a head of state has been a prominent intellectual, and because I absolutely love his plays I was wanting to read his writings as President for a long time.

To say that I was disappointed would be inaccurate, but nevertheless this is a very difficult volume to read all at once. It's more a collection of political philosophy than anything, as well as a series of observations about the problems that Eastern Bloc countries had in transitioning to democracy. Because it's a collection of separate speeches in translation, the content is very repetitive and often very similar from year to year. Havel's trademark humanism is on display throughout and there are plenty of quotable quotes and good observations, but these are generally buried within the same speech given eight different ways on eight different days. There are also several anachronisms to a modern reader, particularly Havel's passive-aggressive distaste for the now-thoroughly obsolete and discredited Samuel Huntington essay "The Clash of Civilizations", which was very popular with international policymakers at the time and is still taught in polisci courses today. I personally can't stand even the premise of Huntington's work, which desperately grasped at straws to find a new "evil empire" for Americans to hate after the fall of communism, and neither could Havel, but 20 years later the world has moved on (Dick Cheney excepted) and it's just not something I want to think about.

In short, this volume does a good job of shedding some light on how people who were "behind the iron curtain" saw the redevelopment of Europe after the Cold War, and many of his observations still hold true today - especially the idea that we now live in one world community in which nationalism has diminished meaning - an especially interesting observation originally given years before the EU came into being. It won't be of interest to many or an easy read for most, but it's still worth looking at if you want a humanistic bent on political philosophy by an actual practitioner of both and/or are curious about what people were thinking in Europe during the post-communist realignment.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

the perfect book to be reading during these times of change in the Mid-East -- While I think (understandably) Havel is blind to the negatives of free-market capitalism (he doesn't acknowledge the possibility that capitalism has helped bring about the immoral, selfish, materialistic attitudes and loss of the spiritual that he decries) but his perceptions are always thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful. If only there were more "intellectuals" on our political stage.

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a collection of speeches, which, without context are merely average.

[David Simonetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is well worth reading and inspiring. I have great respect for havel's message and his eloquence. This is powerful and forceful defense of freedom.