The Free Academy | Tereza Matějčková: The Increased Radioactivity of the Word – Between Irony and Moralising
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: April 13, 2022, 19:00 – 21:00
Havel the playwright was famous as an ironist. Havel the president was regarded by many as a moraliser. But this is not a contradiction: both the ironist and the moraliser highlight that which is absent but still important. In this way they point to another motif of Havel’s work: in the light of virtue, we are unseemly, even embarrassing. But this is the very place where the grin of both the ironist and the sermoniser is born. To the extent that we are aware we should be different, the impression of embarrassment is an element of irony and moralising. But above all it is perhaps an element of mankind itself.
We are launching a new series of public lectures at the Václav Havel Library. Leading Czech and international intellectuals will select timeless topics that rise above the quotidian problems of society. They will proffer connections, search for lines of disintegration but also constant points, islands and continents in the dramatic mutability of the 21 st century.
Recordings of the lectures can be found at www.havelchannel.cz