Havel’s perception of nature does not in - volve a scientific interest in its mystery and beauty, he suspected science of ultimately aiming to just utilize the nature. Nature is above all the endangered victim of the man’s unscrupulousness and exploitation. Hence Havel highlights landscape rather than nature in his texts. When he talks about nature protection, he also includes landscapes, villages and settlements, he often speaks about lapses with regard to present-day urbanism, and about human pride towards the environment. In contrast, he advocates reverence and respect for „nature, land and the historical heritage“. and Jan Sokol.
Autor se zastavuje u archetypálního půdorysu „komedie“, který si Jiří Suk vypůjčil od literárního teoretika Northropa Fryeho jako výkladový rámec své knihy, a zamýšlí se nad tím, nakolik se dá použít i pro porozumění Havlovým dramatizací absurdity a absurdní povahy politiky. Podle jeho soudu je lépe vystihuje žánr grotesky, spočívající na napětí mezi nesmiřitelnými protiklady a paradoxy. Právě jejich existenci a působení v životě a činnosti Václava Havla ve sledovaném období dokázal Jíří Suk velice plasticky ukázat. Z jeho knihy lze usuzovat, že Havel nevěřil na historický happy end, dějiny pro něj byly naopak otevřeným, neukončeným a nenaplánovatelným děním. Tento způsob intelektuálního vztahování ke světu zůstal podle autora Havlovi vlastní i v prezidentské roli po změně režimu v listopadu 1989. Sloužil mu k distanci od stávající reality i k ironické distanci od sebe sama a tematizován byl například v antinomiích morálky a politiky nebo občanské společnosti a stranické demokracie. Patří k přednostem Sukovy práce, jak účelně významově strukturuje bohatý pramenný materiál s použitím vlastních metahistorických pojmů i převzatých metafor typu „obnovení pořádku“ nebo „šedá zóna“. Suk ukazuje Havla přesvědčivě jako centrální osobnost Charty 77 a politického převratu, jeho výklady jsou vysoce poučené a představují dosud nejhlubší vhled do dané problematiky., The author focuses on the archetypal plan of ‘comedy’ which Jiří Suk has borrowed from the literary theorist Northrop Frye as the interpretational framework for his book about Václav Havel. Moreover, the author questions the extent to which it can properly be used to understand Havel’s dramatizations of absurdity and the absurd nature of politics. In the author’s judgement, these would have been better classified under the genre of the grotesque, which consists in the tension between irreconcilable opposites and paradoxes. It is their existence and operation in Havel’s life and work in the period covered by the book, which Suk has so vividly demonstrated. From this book, one can reasonably conclude that Havel did not believe in a historical happy ending; indeed, history for him comprised open-ended and unplanned events. This way of intellectually relating to the world remained, according to the author, true of Havel also in his role as President after the Changes beginning in November 1989. It helped him to maintain his distance from reality at that time, and also to maintain ironic distance from himself; it is thematized, for example, in the antinomies of morals and politics or civil society and the multi-party system. Among the strong points of Suk’s work is how he has structured the wide range of primary sources according to their meaning and for his own purposes, by using his own meta-historical terms and also adopting metaphors such as the ‘restoration of order’ or the ‘grey zone’. Suk persuasively shows Havel as the central figure of Charter 77 and the Changes. His interpretations are well informed, and constitute the deepest probe into the topic so far., [autor recenze] Miloš Havelka., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Tři hlasy k jedné knize
Given our troubled history in the 20th century, how is it that nationalism and populism have come to raise their heads again in Europe over the past 20 years? What have we lost? What is it about our liberal, democratic political structures that creates the current atmosphere of mistrust, xenophobia and shortsightedness? How has this development come about, and what is driving it? How should we understand this desire for authoritarianism? In this paper, I will address these questions through a reading of two essays that can be considered to have been written as warning signs regarding a very common tendency within social psychology that entails a development of communities towards authoritarian structures. Simone Weil’s essay “Human Personality”, written in 1943 during her wartime exile in London, and Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless”, written in 1978 during his house arrest in Czechoslovakia, both address the potential relapse of Europe into authoritarianism. Neither of these essays should be read as developed theories within political philosophy. They are notes from a dire predicament of crisis, on both a personal and a macro-political level, that investigate the relationship between the subject and society in order to understand the dynamics of totalitarianism. Their strength lies exactly in that they address a present unfolding situation that the authors perceive to have potentially unbearable consequences. This tone of urgency, their way of addressing us from a positionality void of any real power or privilege, and their bold demands for envisioning change beyond given political ideologies, make these essays into unique backdrops for thinking about our current political questions. Both Weil and Havel advocate an open society that permits the subject to cultivate a form of life beyond collective ideology. Both essays address the sensibilities of the subject that do not appeal to identity, common ideology or collectivity in order to thrive. The aim of this paper is to outline this redefinition of the relation between the individual and society in Weil and Havel, as a remedy for our desire for authoritarianism.
This study is dedicated to documenting the relationship between these two important musicians on the basis of excerpts from extant written sources. The most important documentation of contacts between Vaclav Jan Tomasek (1774-1850) and Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), who worked in Prague from 1813 until 1817 as Kapellmeister of the Estates Theatre, is Tomaseks autobiography published in Prague in 1845-1850 in a yearbook titled Libussa. We find additional brief documentation in Weber's diaries and in the correspondence of both men addressed to other persons. Tomasek's autobiography is also important documentation of how Weber's works were viewed by the German public and music critics., Obsahuje seznam literatury, and Anglické resumé na s. 82.
The musicologists examining the share of liturgical chant in Czech language in the Jagellonian period often encounter the problem of lacking historical sources. Therefore it is surprising that the treatise of Václav Koranda the Younger, an important official of the Utraquist church in his time, has not yet been studied in detail. My study tries to square up with this; it analyses first the content of the treatise and its possible outreach to the liturgical practice, then it brings new observations on the development of liturgical chant translation into Czech made on the basis of the study of the Kolín cantional. At the end I have attached the complete edition of the Koranda‘s treatise.