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Dear guests,  welcome to our discussion. We are happy to open a debate which may deal with various topics. But, first of all let me ask: why are there here, at this one table and in front of one microphone, of all people you two – Ludvík Vaculík and Michael March?  

Ludvík Vaculík: Well, I don´t have the slightest idea, but when he asks me to come, I come.

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And you, Mr. March, how do you feel in the company of Ludvík Vaculík?

Michael March: Very naturally. We share the same ideology, I think that we look at things in a similar way. 

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About three months have passed since September 11, and since that day our perspective of the world has changed profoundly. What do you think literature can do for our world today? 

Michael March: You ask, what we could have learned since September 11. I believe that literature will simply continue much in the same way as it existed throughout centuries, ever since the beginning, since Gilgamesh. Literature cannot do more than to persist in the process of creation. Creation as a prayer and also as a reflection of human memories. The date of September 11 has not influenced literature; it has influenced social relationships between nations, the politics of individual countries, the structure of various communities, but as many other extreme and violent acts in history, from long-term perspective, it hasn´t in fact brought anything new.

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Ludvík Vaculík: Well, I myself don´t think at all that the event on that September day was anything that would change, as you say, our perspective of the world. Nothing new has happened – the events such as this one used to happen in many places all the time, in the same or even worse extent, only this time it has happened in America. The American people is not to be blamed, but America simply got punished for our joint guilt, for the guilt of our Christian, or let´s say Euro-American civilization. And I think that – historically speaking – the positive impact of this event will in due time overweigh the negative.

And what can literature do? Literature is not a person, nor it is a business company. Literature as such has no tasks and cannot do anything. Only an individual writer can do anything. And writers all together can do only as much, how much they did understand all these events and what consequences and responsibilities they have derived from them for themselves. But they cannot do anything in relation to the world, because literature has no means how to influence the world. Each author can only hope, and this hope is not very strong, that he may to some degree influence the government of his or her country, or his readers, or the public meaning generally. And even if he succeeds in this, who knows whether such influence can be measured or evaluated in any way. It is also a question of time, long periods of time.

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Sometimes we hear the complaints that our contemporary writers lack inspiration – that our literature today, as compared to the times before 1989, is being restricted by commercial and economic factors. 

Michael March: The world of literature is very vast. We may talk about poetry, fiction, non-fiction, popular science; many facts of our contemporary life are dealt with, for example, in historical novels. But we may also speak about the absolute literature. If we mention writers such as Mallarmé or Beckett, we speak about poetical reflection, and that is an eternal flow. Reality and historical events certainly belong to literature, they constitute a part of its poetical balance, but they do not represent any special break, because basically in the absolute literature there is only life and death.

Literature is a path, a process of human experiment. Each writer has his own strategy, alchemy, nervous system, and this is very individual. The term “literature” is therefore very abstract. Something politicians, not writers, like to talk about.

And I would like to mention one more thing: There are many roles for all of us and one of the most important roles is that of a social being, while at the same time any of us can also be an artist, and this implies isolation and modesty. As an author you are very isolated, you are a part of a creative process, and in this way quite estranged from the rest of society – at least until the next party…

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Ludvík Vaculík: If I understand it correctly, Michael says the same thing that I say: It is the responsibility of each individual author, and we all have our own strategies. But you have mentioned the complaints on the loss of theme or inspiration of the writers. Who are those complaining? If they are the writers themselves, then we have to pity them; if we hear the complaints of the readers, maybe they cannot choose the right books in the bookstores. I think that literature today is much more open – in the expression, in its aims, in personal message, in genres, and that, in fact, it cannot ever loose the themes or inspiration. It can only disappoint those who still have in their brains the remnants of ideological thinking – those who expect from literature any answers and solutions, who want literature to fulfil some social function.

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Mr. March, what is the role of poetry? Can a poet express his responsibility by reflecting a certain social and political situation? And, isn´t it sometimes dangerous?

Michael March: First of all, you can have a role of bred and salami, which you eat to survive. It similar to what Ludvík said. I would say that there is something above and something under (something visible and something hidden). Everybody is responsible individually but every individual is influenced by the particular social and historical circumstances, because the role of poets and authors changes in time and in various societies and communities. As Ludvík said: We are here together because underneath our talk we understand each other. It is an existential situation.

What the poet needs most, in my opinion, is empathy. Maybe he is born with it. The world exists in parallel opposites. Whatever you do, at the same instant you create its opposite. This is true not only in poetry but also in dynamics, physics. It is of course very depressing to know it. Such as when you discover in your childhood that there is death, and you have to live with this knowledge. How can you live between life and death? The roots of poetry are in the search of such a balance. To be a poet or a writer is a great gift but it is also frightening. You have the responsibility towards yourself, you prove to yourself immediately every lie you utter. You are constantly in war with yourself. You cannot be in conflict with society, you don´t have enough time to be in conflict with society, because you are constantly in war with yourself. And these reflections, maybe prayers, are the source of the work which is essential to you, to your own existence. How it appears for the outside world is something quite different..

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Mr. Vaculík, have you ever been dangerous to yourself?

Ludvík Vaculík: All my life. Only sometimes I am more careful and other times I cannot avoid it. Dangerous to myself? Of course! 

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Can an author combine his role of a writer with his political and public activities?

Ludvík Vaculík: This connection is of course very natural, only each of us has his own individual mixture of both. I think that the public impact of an author´s work derives from the fact that writers address the public naturally: it is inherent in your writing that you need an audience, you expect some feed-back. If I am really deeply moved by something to the degree that I need to put into my writing, then it must be, whether I want it consciously or not, some reflection of public affairs and the pressure of the outside world on me. This is one of very frequent and popular, but also very theoretical, questions asked in all discussions.

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I would like to how would you compare the position of an artist in a post-communist country such as Czech Republic and in capitalist countries? Mr. March, could you say something about politics and art from this point of view?

Michael March: In literature you are sometimes surprised by things which can be explained very naturally. Stendhal said: “Word-pun opposes murder.” and this sentence really reaches beyond life. It is abstract and very real at the same time. I am greatly honoured to be here today with Ludvík Vaculík, because he is the author whom I admire both as public figure and a writer. So, to answer you question: it depends on what social class you are born into, on your upbringing and education, on the country you come from, and also very much on the historical context. Vladimít Holan, for example – he wrote in the 30s of the last century, but also in the time of Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, and even later, as a banned author. Ludvík Vaculík is closely connected with his manifesto 2000 Words. My experience is completely different. I was born in New York in 1946, that is after WW2, and this was a very exclusive situation. I lived in New York, I could study, I could think, react to public events. But then I somehow realized that as a poet I could hardly achieve anything in this kind of civilization. Therefore I have left America. Everybody has to sacrifice something for his ideals. So I have decided to live and work in London. During these years I had time to read books, to read poetry (European poetry) – things very close to my heart. And I realized that there is nothing more important than time. Marcel Duchamp said: “There is no solution when there is no problem.” The world is more or less always the same, and you can only choose your way of life, if you are lucky enough to be able to choose. I know that in countries at war or suffering from great economic crises such a choice is very difficult or even impossible. When we look at the chain of changes appearing after 1989, we certainly see that writers today have to fight commercialisation. It is terrible, but it is reality, because after all the political changes these societies have set out on this path. It should not really profoundly influence the author´s way of looking at the world, because he should create regardless of any economic profit. Czech Republic is just now undergoing a transitional period. It is a period of re-thinking. I think that writers today have to be much more attentive and considerate and above all honest.

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Mr. Vaculík, you have been accused by the press of using the terrorist attack on New York as a pretext to criticize globalization. How do you think globalization influences a writer?

Ludvík Vaculík: This is not exactly true. I was criticized when two days after the event I wrote that we cannot simply label this attack as an act of terrorism, but that we should try to analyse the causes, the background, and also to look for the guilt in ourselves. And this was seen as unacceptable by some of my readers, though since then this approach has become central to all thinking about September 11. What is its cause, what is its meaning, how should we really understand it. And globalization is a natural process so far as a man – human culture – is a part of nature itself: then it is also natural. The basic meaning of globalization and its individual factors, whether positive or negative, depends on our way of looking at things, on our sensitivity. Until now I perceive globalization as a massive material suppression of everything. Commercialization of everything. Its raping and destructing, insensitive control and managing the whole world, as if the world belonged to them who are now in power.

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Michael March: I would like to ask Ludvík something which really interests me very much, and I´d like to ask him as an author of 2000 Words and a signatory of the Charter 77: how do you perceive the changes after 1989 as far as bureaucracy is concerned? Because, as I see it, bureaucracy is really growing; I´m afraid there are more bureaucrats with computers on their desks than ever before. And this seems to me to be the weakness of the democratic process. In other words, if I were born here, I would feel the history of 300 years of the Habsburg bureaucracy, suppressing, absurd bureaucracy, after which came the Nazis and then Soviets and after that finally the movement of the Charter 77. And I would certainly like to see all those bureaucrats thrown out in the street, to do some real, proper work. So that in Ludvík´s place I would probably feel a bit disappointed, because Czech society surely had an opportunity to enter different spheres. 

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Ludvík Vaculík: Of course I´m a little bit disappointed by the new development, but at the same time I have more or less expected all this crap which we have to put up with. You know, I am not a very good democrat, I would not deal with anybody and everybody… I would classify the rights of people individually according to their responsibility towards the society. I do not consider freedom to be the most precious thing in the world: freedom has the value only in comparison to what a man does within this freedom. And various kinds of freedom of a man are not equal to each other. Yes, I am disappointed, but at the same time I am not a pessimist, and I am do depressed by it. Why should our times, our century, our regime, here and now, in this place in Europe, be any happier than other times?

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Literature does not have borders, its meaning is in transferring and sharing ideas. How do you see Czech writers taking part in this dialogue with writers in other countries?

Michael March: But literature does have borders, borders of language. In many countries these borders of language are very precisely set – Czech, Finish, Hungarian – and there are certainly boundaries set by words within language. We can ask why we need translations. Maybe the reason is in the universality or picturesque of literature; there simply must be a reason. By translating we free the words and put them into new verbal context. Translations enable our thoughts to cross these borders and help people in different societies to have spiritual contact.

As far as Czech writers and their translations are concerned, many books need to be translated – there are translations mainly into German, not so much into English. I think that Czech literature should be exported more, it needs promoting abroad. This is very important. So far the focus has been put more in music or film. We are trying in our Festival to invite outstanding world´s authors to Prague to the dialogue with Czech writers and also Czech public.

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Mr. March, you made an interview with Arthur Miller this spring in New York, where he spoke about the destruction of culture in our times, and he said that “art stops time”.  

Michael March: Arthur Miller is a very wise man. I don´t believe that culture can be destroyed. Civilization can be destroyed, many things which are part of our civilization, many elements like human thinking, the way how we receive culture. You can limit the creative process financially, but you cannot really destroy culture itself. It would mean to destroy human life itself. Culture will persist, in a stronger or weaker form, but it will never vanish.

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Mr. Vaculík, what would you write in your Manifest 2000 Words after the year 2000?

Ludvík Vaculík: Words cannot help us. What can words do? What is the sense in all these discussions between writers from various countries? No more than any conversation between two of their readers. But this seems to be contradictory to what Michael here does – his international Festival of writers certainly helps to enliven the cultural atmosphere in our country and to show people, who come to Festival events, that the world is larger than they thought.