Dynamics of Trauma: Václav Havel Writing Through Prison Bars

• In Event: Performing History and Trauma in Literature: Artistic Responses to the Dictatorial Challenges of the 20th Century in Central Europe

Abstract

The dissident movements of the former Eastern Bloc have been recently in the centre of scholarly interest of many specialist of the region. The experience of a long-term political oppression, such as the effects of a political dictatorship is considered by theoreticians of Trauma Studies as one of the recognized sources of trauma. Thus, we would like to read several texts written by Václav Havel: as a performance of intellectual and ethical opposition to political oppression. Indeed, throughout his life as an opponent to the Czechoslovakian communist dictatorship, Havel was sentenced four times to long prison terms. Existentially speaking, the most significant detention period is the first one in 1977 and then the longest one, which lasted from 1979 to 1983. Havel had left two direct testimonies that relate his essential existential experience: his 1977 Diary (Zápisky obviněného, published in 2016) and the well-known Letters to Olga (published in 1983). Having submitted an application for release while imprisoned in 1977 (a document which was later used by the authorities to discredit him publicly), Havel was freed feeling profoundly guilty; as related by himself in Long-Distance Interrogation (1986), he was good then for the psychiatric asylum. In the Letters to Olga, Havel put in place a certain type of cathartic thinking that would allow him, at least partially, to make amends for what he perceives as his earlier failure. The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics of existential trauma and literary performance of re-acquisition of moral integrity.

Author

• Astrid Muls, U Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)