WRITERS IN EXILE
495
ERAZIM KOHAK: I need not tell you that Professor Baranczak
is a hard act to follow. But as it is, I shall attempt
to
follow his
leading theme, because my particular concern is to try to get
some clarity about the meaning and significance of the dissident
phenomenon.
, One of the things that troubled me somewhat in our reflections
yesterday is that we tended
to
treat the dissidents as if they were a
literary movement, as if it were primarily a literary phenomenon,
the case of a group of authors who, because they subscribe
to
a
particular manifesto, find themselves in conflict with the
authorities of their native lands. Now, in some parts of the
world this may be what "dissident movement" in fact means–
primarily a literary phenomenon. But it would be very hard for
me to describe the situation in Czechoslovakia in those terms.
When I first tried to formulate an idea of the ideology and
politics of the dissident movement, I was very much at a loss.
If
I
were to tell the truth, I would have to say it is not a movement at
all, and it certainly has no ideology. We all were people living in
a highly ideological state, and what we shared was simply the
revulsion at all ideology. We were very effectively excluded from
politics, and, having been organized in one movement after
another, had an immense distrust of all movements.
If
I had to
describe the people whom Western observers ha,v,e labeled
dissidents-and they are no more happy with that label that
the Poles are-I would say that they are simply people who no
longer can keep up the pretense. The metaphor of breathing
under water is extremely apt. They are people who are tired of
repeating the same lies again and again. Solzhenytsin speaks of
not living the lie. Batzlab Habel, who is currently serving a
four-and-a-half-year sentence, is a Czech playwright who speaks
of living the truth.
If
I had
to
characterize the people whom you
label dissidents, they are simply people who have decided to
follow what our European cultural heritage makes both the
highest calling and the most elementary right: to live with a
clear conscience.
Now I know that among the dissidents the ones who come to
public attention will be the writers. But there are so many others.
I'll tell you about two of them. One is a laborer in his late forties.
When he lost his wife he decided that he would devote all his free
time to taking care of Gypsy children, who tend
to
be the flotsam
