INTELLECTUALS' NOTES FROM T H E U N DERGROUND
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One reason, o f course, is utopian thinking. But the answe r to the ques–
ti on of how utopian thinking is conn ected to the processes of modern–
iza tion is not clea r at all. Even the brilliant minds that have come to–
gether fo r this conference still rely upon individual existenti al experi ence
in approaching what has happened , w hile I as a social scientist am look–
ing fo r mo re obj ective answe rs. Communi sm is over, but th e much
deeper problems o f all o f W estern civili za tion still need to be addressed.
William Phillips:
Thank you . Th e next speaker is Mircea Mihaies, a
R omani an editor and writer.
Mircea Mihaies:
I have no ti ced that the o nl y rul e respec ted at thi s
confe rence has been to di srega rd the topi cs indi cated by its organi ze rs.
The titl e of my remarks, too, is no t the one listed in th e conference
program . Instead , I have ga th ered no tes from my own personal under–
ground. T he town I come from is situated in a semi-imagi nary space I
would call th e East of Central Europe . And I am someone who is proud
to have li ved in Pericles's Golden Centu ry . From this point o f vi ew, my
paper may be considered a report on the life during neo-Periclism . My
paper, "The N eighbors of Franz Kafk a," is a semi-touristi c and semi-po–
litical study. You soon w ill see why.
N o t lo ng ago, I happened to spend a few days in Prague and th en a
few days in my nati ve Transylvani a. My experi ence - at first purely that
of a to uri st - proved to be full of surprises. It especially cl ea red up a
number of th e unkn own elements among whi ch we have been li ving
during th e past two yea rs. Undoubtedly , Prague is one of Europe's most
beautiful cities. Perfectly prese rved , it reigns in the middle o f the conti–
nent , th e undeni able capital of Central Europe. In between Franz Kafka
and Vaclav Havel, th e town has always proved to be a radiant po int for
Europea n spirituali ty. And perhaps it was not by chance alone that Havel
was bro ught to th e Hradcany Palace, the o ffi cial residence o f the presi–
dent of Czechoslovakia, w hi ch is just a few steps away from the Golden
Lane, whe re at Number 22, o ne can find Kafka's house.
After the Second W orld War, Soviet-type socialism triumph ed in
Czechoslo vaki a, just as it did in R omani a. In both countries, the troops
of the R ed empire blocked the natural mechanism of social life. As in the
rest of East Central Europe, the sun rose from Moscow . And yet , what
are the origi ns o f the Czech abilities to preserve, unaltered , the distincti ve
marks of the past? Thro ugh what miracle did Prague succeed in surviving
the steamroll er of Communism, preserving its beauty? " It may be that the
Czechs never had the money of a Cea usescu to destroy their city," my
Ameri ca n fri end , Jim D ento n, suggested with black humor. But the
Czechs did have August 1968, when they rose against Communism - the