The protagonist of The Memorandum (1965) is not a particular individual but ptydepe, an omnipresent – yet elusive, incomprehensible and unmanageable – artificial language. Václav Havel demonstrates language’s immense power over mankind. Over our thoughts, actions and attitudes. But above all, he shows how easy it is to become part of such an artificial and ultimately nonsensical and aimless system in which we can in the end lose ourselves.

Czech historical fictions and hoaxes, their role and how to come to terms with them in art and public life will be among the issues discussed by Miroslav Pudlák, writer of the opera Sasíci v Čechách aneb marnost boje proti RKZ (The Saxons in Bohemia, or the Pointlessness of the Struggle Against the Green Mountain Manuscript) and the authors of the monograph Rukopisy královédvorský a zelenohorský v kultuře a umění (The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts in Culture and Art) (Academia 2019).

The event will be moderated by Dalibor Dobiáš from the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Kateřina Kadlecová, a journalist with the weekly Reflex, will chair this debate involving Argo publishing house authors Kateřina Blažková, Pavel Bušta, Vratislav Kadlec, Igor Malijevský and Michal Vrba.

Ukrainian Studies expert Tereza Chlaňová and poet Marie Iljašenko will discuss the difficulties of translating literary classics with translator Tomek.

The book contains interviews with novelist Petra Dvořáková, Slovak filmmaker Zuzana Piussi, writer Alena Wagnerová, artist and personal development instructor Tereza Tara, history professor Dana Musilová, filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, art theorist Michaela Peško Banzetová, ethnographer Eleanore Rasmussen, activist and documentary filmmaker Apolena Rychlíková, documentary filmmaker Olga Sommerová, sociologist Marcela Linková, journalist and author Judita Matyášová, journalist and humanitarian worker Petra Procházková and more.

Bára Šichanová will host the evening and helm a talk with Barbora Baronová.

Taking part in the debate will be historian and journalist Oleksandr Zinchenko, one of the most important Maidan activists (who also pushed through the renaming of a Kiev street as Václav Havel Street) and David Stulík, an analyst at the European Values think tank who served as press spokesperson of the European Commission in Kiev at the time of the Maidan.

Interpretation into Czech provided.

The book Tváře normalizace (Faces of Normalisation) has been brought out by Deník N as a contribution to the mosaic of understanding of the country’s past. The authors opted to tell specific human stories that, despite their specificity, deliver a stronger sense of the mechanisms and atmosphere of the time than academic studies. Together, the stories of the regime’s well-known and rank and file protagonists form a convincing portrait of that time.

The publication will be discussed by historian Libor Svoboda, writer Jiří Padevět and its editors Eliška Černá and Jan Wirnitzer. 

Introduced by Ján Simkanič, director of publishers N Media.

Deník N journalist Jana Ustohalová will moderate.

Guests: historians Jaroslav Pažout and Adam Zítek and legal historians Lukáš Blažek, Ivana Bláhová and Daniela Němečková.

Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes as part of the 14th edition of the Mene Tekel festival against totalitarianism, evil and violence and for national memory.

Jana Šedová, who played Mánička, was the only original cast member to survive the Holocaust. In 1961, with the help of Darek Vostřel, she reconstructed it “from memory”. This version was the basis for a play by American writer Naomi Patz that has been performed many times, particularly at universities in the US and Mexico. A 2017 production by Edward Einhorn at the La MaMa Theater was filmed and will be presented to viewers – almost symbolically – at the Václav Havel Library.

Einhorn, a director and playwright, heads New York’s Untitled Theater #61: A Theater of Ideas, which he set up 25 years ago. His authorial and directorial focus has been marked by two passions: Jewish culture and Theatre of the Absurd. Both gradually led him also to Czech culture. In 2006 he organised the now legendary Havel Festival in New York, during which the complete plays of Václav Havel were performed, most with the author in attendance. Einhorn also organised a festival of Jewish theatre in New York in 2009.

Organised by the Václav Havel Library as part of the 14th edition of the Mene Tekel festival against totalitarianism, evil and violence and for national memory.