JAN KAVAN
105
Havel and others are allowed to write letters only to their nearest
relatives and these letters are carefully censored. Some of them have
now been .made available by the Palach Press Agency.
In
one of his first
letters, written after he was transferred together with his friends Vaclav
Benda and Jifi Dienstbier to the prison camp Hermanice, in northern
Moravia, following the Supreme Court's rejection of their appeal,
Havel reminds his wife of the existence of the censor:
As I was told by my " educator," I am allowed
lO
write to you that I
am working in the Vitkovice steel works but I am not allowed to tell
you anything else about it, except perhaps that I don't need to lift
heavy things which I would be unable to carry anyway. But despite
this, I have severe worries about whether I will be able to fulfill my
quota.... I am still not able to imagine how I will be able to survive
five years of this life.. .. On the other hand, I have to tell you, and
perhaps I am allowed to, that although, understandably, there are all
sorts of people here, they are treating us well and trying to help
us.. . . I was surprised and touched by the way we were wel–
corned. . . .
Havel is not allowed to describe his thoughts on general subjects, nor
may he use foreign words, quotations, symbols which the prison censor
may not understand, or allegories. Letters which do not meet these
criteria are simply confiscated. Those which do arrive frequently have
sections crossed out. Havel the playwright is punished by not being
allowed to write anything else besides the restricted letters:
There is no way I can think in terms of any real existential or literary
questions. Any attempts in this direction seem to me, in confronta–
tion with this experience, futile or, more correctly, premature. First
of all, I need to digest, to live through, and to understand all this. I
would love to write a diary but that's not possible... .
Havel couldn 't explain why it is not possible. Article 19 of the
prison regulations explicitly specifies that the prisoner shall be "per–
mitted to keep books, writing material, newspapers, legal regulations,
photographs of members of his family.... " This regulation is even
more clearly violated in the case of Petr Uhl who is serving his five-year
sentence in a prison camp in Milov:
It is strange that they have confiscated my copy of the prison
regulations. . .. I've seen the television news once, but I still cannot
borrow any books. I am not allowed to keep any family photographs,
let alone to have an English textbook or any other publications....
