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Karel Hvížďala: Gruša's Guard on the Rhine

Illustration
  • Where: Montmartre Gallery
  • When: December 12, 2011, 16:30 – 18:30

The festive launch of Karel Hvížďala's interviews with the poet and diplomat Jiří Gruša.

"Gruša's Guard on the Rhine" contains interviews held in the course of almost thirty years mostly in Bonn, Wien and Prague. If Jiří Gruša considered Edvard Beneš an Austrian, then he, just like Adalbert of Prague, John Amos Comenius and Milan Kundera, to name just the most-known personalities, was a European.

When we met for the last time, on the 1st October 2011, he told me:

"We haven't come to understand that diplomacy and politics is not only about defending national interests but also about extending common sense. That is the general purpose; and this is no ideological task but an exhausting search for arguments for a meaningful dialogue. And if another Crisis comes, God save us: Because in politics, when it comes to evel acts, justification is needed. And Crisis indeed provides one to those who long for power at any cost.

I am going for a surgery in a few days and He (pointing to the skies) will decide whether He still needs me and wants me to write something, or whether He does not want me to witness our homeland turning into a trap."

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