Ludvik vaculik biography sample

Following the "Two Thousand Words," Leonid Brezhnev 's party leadership, seeing a situation similar to that in Hungary developing, [ 11 ] used the term "counterrevolution" to describe the Prague Spring for the first time. Others followed with their own series, despite harassment from the party's secret police. Their car was pulled over by the Party secret police, and all three were taken in for interrogation.

Other signatories were subsequently subjected to interrogations and searches of their homes, as well. His criticism worked against a mythologisation of the Charter and ensured a continued discussion of its position and role. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects.

Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Czech writer and journalist — Pre [ edit ]. Impact of the "Two Thousand Words" [ edit ]. After communism [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Bibliography [ edit ]. This list is incomplete ; you can help by adding missing items. September Novels [ edit ]. Compilations in English [ edit ]. Essays [ edit ]. See also [ edit ].

References [ edit ]. The New York Times. New York: Routledge, Paul Wilson New York:Knopf, The Guardian. Retrieved 7 June Two Thousand Words manifesto became a key document of the Prague spring reform movement that contributed to the Kremlin's decision to invade Czechoslovakia Gordon Skilling Oxford: Macmillan, I ludvik vaculik biography sample that in fact his greatest feuilletons were written in adversity.

He has become a columnist, like any great columnist, such as James Cameron in the case of Britain. In a sense now, his columns, you can take them or leave them. They always are written with enormous skill. But, as time goes by his causes are not always those I particularly share. A great writer like Vaculik is not going to write works of genius every week.

So I see them [the feuilletons] on odd occasions, and on the odd occasion I relish the old fire that is there—that is still there. The pithiness with which that man can write! I think the environmental cause is one that he has always espoused. I think it goes back to his time as a kid in the hills, in Wallachia. Gerry Turner One of my favorite feuilletons is precisely on that theme, of how human sinfulness is really playing fast and loose with what humans have been given as an environment.

The word bristly comes to mind immediately, and that's not only his whiskers or his chest hairs, both of which are very prominent. Vaculik is a very difficult person to know, and a lovely person to be with. When I first went to talk to Ludvik about translating what I'd consider his seminal novel, Cesky Snar, which we can either translate as 'The Czech Dreambook' or 'The Czech Dream Diary' as it's not yet published it doesn't have an official titleI had the impression of entering an audience with a monarch, or facing a TV camera.

He is—as he rightly vaunts himself—a microscopic observer of humans, the human condition. There is a moment in 'The Dreambook' where he's observing the whiskers of Karel Trinkewitz, and it is so microscopic that we are actually at the roots of the hairs on his face. I found that one of the most shocking moments in the novel, that he has this ability to see minute details on the surface, but naturally also within the person, within their soul.

His critics call it regional activism, and others say it's typical Vaculik: he always looks out for the little guy.

Ludvik vaculik biography sample

Yet what about this issue of Ludvik Vaculik's Moravian identity, how deeply does it run? I asked Gerry Turner, who has known Vaculik for thirty years. He's chosen to live in Prague. I think of the feuilleton "Tramcar," particularly where he recalls coming to Prague back in the s, and his awareness that he is a stranger here. Certainly in my case, I find it hard to think of Vaculik apart from Milan Simecka, who was a great friend of Vaculik's.

Simecka was Moravian, living in Bratislava, and he became almost indistinguishable from his fellow citizens in Slovakia. I personally can't feel Vaculik as a Moravian activist or nationalist—I don't think that he thinks in those terms anyway. I suppose Professor Masaryk would have been pleased to find that there actually is a Czechoslovakian still alive.

Ludvik Vaculik belongs to a generation of central European intellectuals from whom we still have much to learn.