"I Cherish A Certain Hope"

By LANCE MORROW PRAGUE Vaclav Havel

The deepest layer of Prague is spiky, medieval, dark with coal dust. For years Vaclav Havel could look out from his dilapidated apartment building, across the fast, shallow Vltava River, and see the castle on the hill -- Hradcany, the high, elaborate complex that dominates the city. He could cross the river by the 14th century Charles Bridge, lined on either side with beseeching, tormented statuary -- church fathers, age-blackened saints.

On top of the medieval lies Prague's socialist layer, the residue of neglect and cynicism, the peeling paint, the shop shelves half empty from the day before yesterday when the Bohemians and Moravians and Slovaks were under occupation -- a nation landbound and Lenin-bound as well.

Above all that, quickening the surfaces now, is the newest thing, a lively entrepreneurial city -- Western glitz and electronics and hard money flowing in; the platzes swarming with backpackers; McDonald's opening a second branch, this one on Wenceslas Square, where the "velvet revolution" transpired in November 1989. The new McDonald's is in sight of the spot where Jan Palach set himself on fire for Czechoslovak freedom in 1969, the spot where Havel laid flowers in 1989 and was arrested for the deed. Now a deadpan sword swallower resembling Leonid Brezhnev draws a crowd of American children, and punkers with spiked Mohawk haircuts wander the medieval lanes.

On street corners the old communist empire is for sale: young Czechs peddle Soviet army garrison caps and belts and military watches, and even, forlornly, old Communist Party identification papers, with someone's staring photograph and years of official stamps layered like multiple exposures.

Peeping out everywhere is Franz Kafka's haunted, haunting face. Kafka is a poster and T-shirt industry. Shining out from the Central European confectionery window frames and snowflake Bohemian crystal: the consumptive's black, intelligent eyes. He is Prague's presiding household god, part of the city's neurotic Shinto.

It was Kafka who invented the castle as literature -- the Prague castle of his novel being the symbolic seat of mysterious, anonymous power, an effect the Communists had a genius for. That Havel came to preside over the castle seemed the Czechoslovaks' graceful, transcendent leap out of the dark, a sort of miracle -- and an impish historical touch.

Havel, born in 1935 and raised in a well-to-do bourgeois family, began as an absurdist playwright in the style of Ionesco or Pinter or Beckett. An attitude of surrealist paranoia turned out to be the right moral optic through which to see the Communist world clearly, and Havel had keen eyesight. Constricted as a playwright, he became a dissident. Imprisoned as a dissident, he became a symbol. Communism was brutal and stupid and corrupt. Havel was Czechoslovakia with brains -- the country's better self, its idealist, its moral philosopher, the visionary of "living in truth." When the Communist state fell away in November 1989, it made some giddy, noble sense to install Havel as the first President of Czechoslovakia's new age.

When Havel resigned the mostly ceremonial office last week, the ground beneath him was shifting. Czechoslovakia may soon split in two -- the Slovaks in the eastern half of the country breaking off to form an independent state, the Bohemians and Moravians in the Czech lands to the west organizing a faster-moving, more entrepreneurial state that might soon integrate with the European Community. In some ways a breakup would be logical. The Slovaks and those in the Czech lands were pieces of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire knit together in 1918, but they have deep differences of background, outlook and economic metabolism. Many Slovaks want to seize the moment to have their own republic, even though independence would cut them off from some $300 million in annual subsidies from the Czechoslovak federal government. Many Czechs react to the prospect of losing the Slovaks by thinking 1) How sad and 2) Why not? A breakup might cause anxieties among the 600,000 ethnic Hungarians who live in Slovakia but would not result in anything like the savage violence in the Balkans. The greatest danger to the Czechs is that a breakup might cause outside investors to pull back some of the billions of dollars now heading through the pipeline toward Czech projects.

Some Czechs believe that Havel is too idealistic for politics. But his resignation may prove to be the shrewdest move in the game. He may now help invent a new Czech constitution and then become the first President of the new Czech state, with powers greater than those he has just abandoned.

In any case, Havel's moral importance transcends Central European politics. His ideas aim toward formation of a kind of global civil society. The breakup of Czechoslovakia might be a sort of rehearsal for the problems involved in larger rearrangements of the world order. Havel asserts values not often advanced in world politics -- courtesy, good taste, intelligence, decency and, above all, responsibility. He asserted them against the Communist regime. , Anyone who thinks Havel's values are charming but useless in the real world must consider that the Communists are now gone.

Q. Are you relieved to have resigned?

A. I am quite relieved, almost happy actually, because always when I accomplish something or make an important decision, spurring others to act rather than reacting only to what is happening around me, it gives me a feeling of inner freedom and self-confirmation. And everyone needs such self- confirmation. It is one of the paradoxes of my life that I am experiencing such a creative feeling at the moment of my resignation.

Q. Some have said the possible breakup of Czechoslovakia would be a tragedy, some say it is inevitable, some say it is a good thing.

A. If we become two stable democratic states, then the fact that we are not a large state is not a tragedy. If the breakup of our common state should lead to inner instability, chaos, poverty and suffering, then it would start to become a tragedy. The fact in itself that two states shall emerge out of one is not a tragedy. I do not feel any sentimental ties to the Czechoslovak state. I do not place the highest value on the state, but rather on man and humanity.

Q. Is there a possibility of ethnic violence?

A. In the entire postcommunist world there exists an imminent danger of nationalistic and ethnic conflict. In some cases nations were not able to search freely for and find their own identity and form of statehood and gain their independence for tens or even hundreds of years. We cannot be surprised that now, when the straitjacket of communism has been torn off, all the countries wish to establish their independence and self-determination.

A second reason is that for many years the individual citizen was not used to living in freedom. The people got used to a certain structure of guarantees, albeit unpleasant ones. The people are shocked by the freedoms to a certain extent. They are looking for replacement guarantees. And the guarantees of one's own tribe seem to be the most accessible.

On the other hand, Czechoslovakia is not so serious as the cases of other countries, such as those in the Balkans. We have no tradition of hostility and national conflict. The Czechs and Slovaks have always lived in friendship; they have never fought against each other.

Q. You have had an unusual career, from playwright to dissident leader to President. Are you going to return to writing full time, or will you stay in politics?

A. When I consider my life as a whole, it has been very adventurous. But it was not because I am an adventurer. I am a very calm and order-loving person, with a bourgeois background. I like things to be constant. In this respect I am even a little conservative. If someone had a bald spot 20 years ago, I would like him to have that same bald spot now.

Despite these characteristics, fate and history and my almost chronic sense of inner responsibility have made my life full of paradoxes and absurdities. I was always active in public life as a citizen. This is something I considered an integral part of my mission as a writer. This is something I will have to continue doing. Knowing myself, I won't disappear from public life. It may become another absurdity and paradox of my life that I could be the President of two different states within a short period of time.

Q. You use a vocabulary that is not heard very often in American politics. You talk of decency, good taste, intelligence.

A. When I became President, I tried to bring a more personal dimension back to politics, because this world is endangered by a large "anonymization." We are becoming integral parts of mega-machineries, which move with their own uncontrollable inertia. I tried to accentuate the spiritual and ethical dimensions of political decision-making.

In this I even foresee a way of saving the world from all global threats to mankind. I do think that no more technical tricks or systemic measures could be created capable of preventing these threats. Certain changes of the human mentality are necessary in order to deepen the feeling of global responsibility. The renewal of global responsibility is not thinkable without a certain respect for a higher principle above my own personal existence.

Q. Three years ago, a U.S. State Department analyst named Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of History?"He said the contest with communism was over and that democratic pluralism has won. If capitalism and a market economy are the way the world is going, are those things compatible with the civil society as you describe it?

A. I for sure do not think that history ended with the fall of communism. The world is full of problems that are more serious than ever before. It would be a mistake to blame communism for all of civilization's problems and to think that its fall would make them disappear. The recent explosion of unrest in Los Angeles proved that even in a country with democracy and an advanced economy, conflicts may erupt to which the system has no answers.

Q. As we approach the year 2000, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

A. I cherish a certain hope in me, hope as a state of spirit -- a state of spirit without which I cannot imagine living or doing something. I can hardly imagine living without hope. As for the future of the world: there is a colorful spectrum of possibilities, from the worst to the best. What will happen, I do not know. Hope forces me to believe that those better alternatives will prevail, and above all it forces me to do something to make them happen.

Q. I have been fascinated by a phrase that you have used in your writings and that translates into English as good taste. I wonder what you mean by that?

A. I have found that good taste, oddly enough, plays an important role in politics. Why is it like that? The most probable reason is that good taste is a visible manifestation of human sensibility toward the world, environment, people. I came to this castle and to other governmental residences inherited from communism, and I was confronted with tasteless furniture and many tasteless pictures. Only then did I realize how closely the bad taste of former rulers was connected with their bad way of ruling. I also realized how important good taste was for politics. During political talks, the feeling of how and when to convey something, of how long to speak, whether to interrupt or not, the degree of attention, how to address the public, forms to be used not to offend someone's dignity and on the other hand to say what has to be said, all these play a major role. All such political behavior relates to good taste in a broader sense. What I really have in mind is something more than just knowing which tie to choose to match a particular shirt.

Q. Do people respond when you appeal to them on the basis of atmosphere, good manners, good taste?

A. I feel that this appeal of mine is finding a positive echo, but a very indirect one. Here, as in every democracy, we witness all the aspirations, ambitions, battles and hunger for power. My position seems to be the one of a dreamer who mumbles something about ideals, completely untouched by real life, whereas politics takes a different course. But this is a very banal view. In reality it seems to me that my constant repetition of certain things planted seeds. I do see this right now, in the moment when my federal presidency is over. From various sides I seem to be hearing voices that call for exactly such a person who would be constantly reminding the society of the values I stand for. These voices also maintain that such a person should be leading this state. These voices paradoxically enough seem to be coming from those who have never listened to my advice, and who blocked my nomination for the presidency. What happened cannot be undone, but the seeds I planted in the subconsciousness of the people are there acting indirectly.