The township of 12 people
which sells four million
cans of beer a year
Scotland
in the
heat
The Cafe
John Cameron (20 December), in his otherwise welcome tribute to the late Vaclav Havel, attempts to co-opt this eminent dramatist and
courageous politician to the cause of climate change denial. This
might have been thought merely gratuitous, if Mr Cameron had not
crassly confused Vaclav Havel’s views with those of his successor and
opponent, Vaclav Klaus – a free market zealot and, one would have
thought, a somewhat less congenial ally.
Terry Moody
Another superb article from Professor Humes (6 January). Opting out of television ownership is to be recommended (I am approaching a quarter of a century of non-viewing) but be sure to do some swotting here: www.bbcresistance.com
and here: www.tvlicensing.biz first.
No contact; no evidence; no conviction.
Alistair Spaulding
Today’s banner
Meikleour, Perthshire on New Year’s Day
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The audience gasped
as they prepared to
sing the national anthem
Michael Elcock
Em and I had been to Prague in the winter of 1986-87. I was back there again within a few short months of the Russians’ leaving; not long after the ‘Velvet Revolution’. What I saw in that early spring of 1990 was the reverse of George Kennan’s observation about 1940 Paris. What Kennan experienced after the German invasion of France, after the subjugation of Paris, was contained in his brilliant memoir ‘Sketches from a Life’.
‘I struggled all day to find a metaphor for what had happened,’ he wrote. ‘Could one not say to the Germans that the spirit of Paris had been too delicate and shy a thing to [with]stand their domination and had melted away before them just as they thought to have it within their grasp?…when the Germans came the soul simply went out of it; and what is left is only stone. So long as they stay (and it will probably be a long time) it will remain stone. Their arrival turned the walls of a living city into the cold stones of historical monuments. …In short the Germans had in their embrace the pallid corpse of Paris…’
What Kennan saw in 1940 Paris is what Em and I had seen in that Prague winter; a subjugated, fearful people living in a cold, grey city devoid of spirit. But that Christmas Eve – if we had recognised it for what it was – we witnessed the first glimmerings of the Prague Spring that was to come.
Em somehow managed to get the last two tickets for a Christmas concert in the Dvorakhalle, the Prague opera house. I had heard of the Dvorakhalle; the story of the ReichsProteckor Reinhardt Heidrich gazing down through his binoculars from his office in the Hradcany – the Prague castle – at the circular roof of the old opera house. The Dvorakhalle’s magnificent roof was circled with the statues of famous composers. Heydrich picked up the telephone and called the manager. ‘You have a statue of Mendelssohn on the roof. I do not want to see it there when I get up tomorrow morning.’ Mendelssohn was Jewish of course.
The panicked manager – who well knew what happened to people who disobeyed orders from Heydrich – sent his two top maintenance men up onto the roof with strict orders to get rid of Mendelssohn’s statue. It was getting dark; it was hard to see properly.
‘Which one is Mendelssohn?’ asked one of the maintenance men. ‘I don’t know,’ said the other, ‘but Jews have big noses, so we’ve just got to find the one with the biggest nose; that’s all’.
They felt their way round the roof. ‘This one,’ said the workman. The supervisor agreed. It had a much bigger nose than the others. They toppled it down into the street where it smashed to bits.
Heydrich looked through his binoculars at first light and froze. Mendelssohn was still there on the roof of the Dvorakhalle. It was Wagner who was missing, lying in pieces in the street below.
‘We are going to sing the Czech National Anthem,’ she whispered. ‘We
are not allowed to sing it; not since the Russians came, not since the
Germans before that. It has been banned for years.’
On Christmas Eve in 1986 Em and I went along to the concert in the Dvorakhalle. The magnificent old Bohemian concert hall, with its crystal chandeliers and plush seats, was packed. The concertmaster came onto the stage in a magnificent red jacket, and spoke to the children in the audience. A lady beside us translated. ‘All the children have brought bells,’ she explained. ‘The concertmaster is telling them that they must not ring their bells until he gives the order. On no account.’
The musicians played magnificently. The choir sang beautifully. The children rang their bells with an attention to the concertmaster’s instructions that would have been rare in western Europe; only when the conductor told them to and at no other time. When the concert was finished the concertmaster came to the front of the stage and stood for a moment, looking over the audience. Then he made an announcement in a soft voice. An audible gasp went through the hall. Even though we spoke no Czech we could feel an electricity in the great old hall.
We turned to the lady beside us, our translator. ‘We are going to sing the Czech national anthem,’ she whispered. ‘We are not allowed to sing it; not since the Russians came, not since the Germans before that. It has been banned for years.’
The orchestra began to play and everyone stood, and we stood with them. The voices rose until the crystal rang in the chandeliers overhead. We did not know the words, but that didn’t matter. The music was uplifting and ethereal and as we looked around we could see that there were tears running down all the faces. It was a remarkable thing and we were there.
I went back to Prague again, soon after Havel had become the president of this new, re-established state. I walked up to the Hradcany. My Czech friends had told me that Havel didn’t like the idea of having to live up there in the ministerial apartments; he preferred his flat in the old town.
Havel was supposed to use the official car for state occasions; even for getting around town. This was a big, black Russian Zil. But Mario Soares, the Portuguese president, had given Havel a little Renault as a present. Havel loved the little Renault, and he didn’t like being driven around. In fact he often walked to where he had to go in the city.
The Renault sat up in the courtyard beneath Havel’s office at Prague Castle. Tourists painted the windscreen with lipstick kisses and hearts. When there was no more space on the windscreen they decorated the fenders and bodywork. The old chauffeur, who had driven the Zil for generations of puppet leaders, had little to do but watch. When the crush grew too great around the Renault he would start up the Zil and drive it slowly into the adoring crowd and force it away from the Renault. Then he would reverse back to the parking place at the other side of the square and wait until he had to do it all over again.
Havel was that rare leader – an individual with the gift of leadership who disliked the machinations of political life so much that he was reluctant to deploy his gifts. He brought spirit, and spirituality, back to his country; breathed life into it in ways that few of the politicians that the rest of us encounter know how to.
