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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI14103415/00001
Notes
- Scope and Content:
- Anticommunism, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Charter 77, Civic Forum, Congress (American), Dissent, Disturbing the Peace, Divadlo Na zábradlí, Dubček (Alexander), Havlová (Olga), Heidegger, Human Rights, Jirous (Ivan), Laterna Magika, Legacy (Havel), Letters to Olga, Media, Memo, Morality, Power of the Powerless, Prague Spring, Russia, Škvorecký (Josef), Tvář, Writers’ Union. ( , )
- Summary:
- Paul Wilson was born in 1941. He moved to Czechoslovakia to teach English in 1967. There, Wilson became involved in the underground music scene, through which he came to meet Václav Havel. On account of his activity in alternative musical circles, Wilson was barred from Czechoslovakia in 1977. Back in Canada, he worked to translate and promote documents produced by the individuals involved in Charter 77. He also began to translate Václav Havel’s essays and letters.
Wilson returned to Czechoslovakia at the time of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, which occurred while he was recording a series of radio documentaries about the political changes taking place in neighboring Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe. In Prague, Wilson witnessed events as they unfolded at Civic Forum’s headquarters in the Laterna Magika theatre. In this Havel Conversations interview, he offers a firsthand account of how Václav Havel’s life changed overnight as the Revolution propelled him into political office. Wilson also reflects here on the applicability of Havel’s political ideas in different times and places, and on the particular skills that Havel brought from dissident circles to the Czechoslovak presidency.
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