Enquanto todo mundo só fala do Grande Líder (que acho que já deve ter morrido há algum tempo, apesar do Politiburo só ter dado a boa notícia agora…), continuo a homenagem deste site a um verdadeiro líder que morreu no fim-de-semana: Václav Havel.

Basta de ficar falando do pequeno ditator do Oriente… Ele já teve mais tempo de fama do que merecia… Melhor lembrar de quem lutou pela liberdade.

Segue um texto de Havel, escrito em 1987 e, naturalmente, censurado pelas autoridades comunistas da então Tchecoslováquia… É longo, mas recomendo a leitura… Afinal, é o testemunho de alguém que conheceu por dentro as “benesses do comunismo” (a partir das prisões para onde essas democracias populares mandavam aqueles considerados ameaças ou inimigos do regime). Vai aí um trecho, apenas para dar o gostinho:

Visitors from the West are often shocked to find that for Czechs, Chernobyl and AIDS are not a source of horror, but rather a subject forjokes.

I must admit this doesn’t surprise me. Because totalitarian nihilization is utterly immaterial, it is less visible, more present, and more dangerous than the AIDS virus or radioactivity from Chernobyl. On the other hand, it touches each of us more intimately and more urgently and even, in a sense, more physically, than either AIDS or radiation, since we all know it from everyday, personal experience and not just from newspapers and television. Is it any wonder, then, that the less menacing, less insidious, and less intimate threats are relegated to the background and made light of?

There is another reason for the triumph of invisibility. The destruction of the story means the destruction of a basic instrument of human knowledge and self-knowledge. Totalitarian nihilization denies people the possibility of observing and understanding its processes “from outside.” There are only two alternatives: either you experience it directly, or you know nothing about it. This menace permits no public reference to itself.

The foreign tourist can form the legitimate impression that Czechoslovakia is a poorer and duller Switzerland, and that press agencies have a legitimate reason for closing their bureaus here: how can they be expected to report that there is nothing to report?

A conclusão é que, no final das contas, a democracia permanece a única opção para garantir dignidade à pessoa humana…

Václav Havel: Stories and Totalitarianism

“Stories and Totalitarianism” (April 1987) was written for the underground cultural journal Jednou nohu (Revolver Review), and dedicated to Ladislav Hejdánek on his sixtieth birthday. In English, it appeared in Index on Censorship, no. 3 (March 1988) and, in a slightly different version, in The Idler, Toronto, no. 18 (July-August 1988). Translation by Paul Wilson.

 A friend of mine who is heavily asthmatic was sentenced, for political reasons, to several years in prison, where he suffered a great deal because his cellmates smoked and he could scarcely breathe. All his requests to be moved to a cell with nonsmokers were ignored. His health, and perhaps even his life, were threatened. An American woman who learned of this and wanted to help telephoned an acquaintance, an editor on an important American daily. Could he write something about it, she asked. “Call me when the man dies,” was the editor’s reply.

It’s a shocking incident but in some ways understandable. Newspapers need a story. Asthma is not a story. Death could make it one. Continuar lendo →