"Havel's new absurdist tragicomedy, 'Leaving' - his first play in about 20 years - depicts a womanizing former political leader who grudgingly confronts the political wilderness," NYT writes. "Much has been made of the parallels between the plot and Mr.
Havel's life. The main character, Vilem Rieger, the chancellor of an unnamed country, leaves office and is being pushed from his extravagant government villa by a pompous Czech, US experts close talks on industrial cooperation agreement ...
Rice says Czechs might travel to USA visa-free by year end ...
U.S. portal lists Czech Havel among world's best intellectuals ... former deputy, Vlastik Klein," it adds. "He just happens to share the initials of Vaclav Klaus, Mr. Havel's archrival, who succeeded him as president of the Czech Republic," NYT writes. "Havel, who stepped down as president five years ago, acknowledged that the play - which will have its foreign premiere in London in September before going to the United States - is a semiautobiographical 'King Lear' - like meditation on the seductiveness of power," NYT writes. "But he insisted he was happy to have exited the stage - at least the political one - and to have escaped a tumultuous life that, he contended, had accidentally thrust him into the spotlight," it adds. "Now 71, with sparkling but sunken eyes and a mere whisper of a voice, Mr. Havel was emphatic that he was ready to disappear after what many critics hoped would not be his last artistic statement. One of the cold war's most celebrated dissidents could be forgiven for craving invisibility," NYT writes. "He has led a revolution that overturned four decades of Communism in his native Czechoslovakia, languished five years in prison, written 19 plays, survived nearly drowning, and served 13 years as president - all while remaining one of his generation's most nonconformist writers," it adds. "I have had a very adventurous life, but not because I have an adventurous nature or yearned for a life full of adventure," NYT quotes him as having said. "Fate just wanted it this way," Havel added. "Yet while the West has lionized him, in his native Czech Republic, 19 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he remains a source of ambivalence, if not sometimes downright resentment," NYT writes. "Havel gets attention in the West by saying banal, kitschy things," said Bohumil Dolezal, a leading right-wing commentator, who once worked for Mr. Klaus. "One who tries to be responsible for everything isn't responsible for anything." "Why such contempt for a figure some have compared with Gandhi?," the daily asks. "Some have contended that for someone who claimed to be a reluctant president, Mr. Havel held on to power too long," it writes. "Others, like Erik Tabery, a Czech journalist who is writing a book about the Czech presidency, said some Czechs resented Havel because he held up an uncomfortable mirror to their own history of chronic passivity," it adds. "While the Communists ruled for 40 years, most Czechs stayed at home and did nothing," Tabery said. "Havel did something," he added. Havel has his own theory. "If you look at somebody for a long time and you encounter him over such a long time, on television in the evening, it will eventually begin to annoy you slightly. The person will begin to bore you, especially if he keeps repeating minority views," Havel told the paper. "It is perhaps a sign of Mr. Havel's mixed legacy that his successor is Vaclav Klaus, a right-wing maverick who has fashioned himself as the anti-Havel by railing against issues Mr. Havel championed, like the European Union and the fight against climate change," NYT writes. "In the play, Vlastik Klein, Mr. Klaus's doppelgaenger, orders a cherry orchard to be cut down and replaced with a casino, shopping mall and brothel - a barely veiled attack on Mr. Klaus's brand of unbridled capitalism, which Mr. Havel resists," NYT writes.
(Ceske Noviny)
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