INTELLECTUALS ' NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
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say, "Yo u sho uld do this; you sho uldn ' t do that." This is part o f our
disappointment.
William Phillips: I
take it that is the heritage of Communi sm .
Eda Kriseova:
That is no t o nly the he ritage of Communism . I think
people are the same all over the wo rld .
William Phillips:
W e should be grateful to the commentator from the
audi ence who just reminded us that intell ec tu als are neither intell ectual
angels nor moral angels.
Q uestioll:
I have a questi o n fo r Eda Kriseova. I was fortunate to be in
Czec hoslovaki a in 1978, and I saw a work in Prague that won an inter–
nati o nal award in 1968 at th e Mo ntreal W o rld 's Fair. Prague has th e
most bea utiful arti sti c wo rk I have eve r witn essed - music, theater, and
film all at once. That one parti cular work I saw in Prague was so mov–
ing that I was wonderin g, in li ght of the art being produced at the time
in Prague, whether it possibly expressed people's aspirati ons for freedom.
Eda Kriseova:
Yes, it was an expressio n of the aspirati ons for freedom .
But whil e we ca n say that peopl e made their art to combat the system in
some way , I think it's wo rth noting that Prague has a lo ng cultural tra–
diti o n , and people were doing what came naturally to them .
Q ues tioll :
I am co-directo r of a proj ect o n the arts based in Prague. I'm
wonderin g abo ut your R omani an neighbo r's comment about the C astl e
and its heritage, abo ut Rudolph II's occupati o n of Prague, the architec–
tural loca ti on and heritage. What abo ut the history of the Castle? Presi–
dent Have l has been stro ngly assoc iated w ith the First R epublic and in
some cases criti cized for his vivid memory of what seem to be quite good
things to remember. In terms of your description of how a writer moves
into a positi o n of political power and respo nsibility, what is the histori–
cal reference for you? I don 't necessarily mea n the Holy Roman Empire,
but the architecture. Wh ere do you loo k , if you do look to models and
precedence, both negati ve and pos iti ve, give n the presence of hi story
embodi ed by Prague? Is that in any sense an influence on your own posi–
ti o n?
Eda Kriseova:
O f course we are very grateful to have the democ rati c
traditi o n of th e First R epublic. T here are people still li ving who remem–
ber the democrati c system in Czechoslovakia. President Havel is somehow
fo rging a connecti o n between the First R epublic and the contemporary
