COURAGE

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The sermon is an ideal example of Anton Vovk's theological views, which included preservation of the honour of the Catholic Church and its struggle for human liberty and dignity. It served as a source of encouragement for the faithful. The message was cloaked in rhetoric that did not openly attacking the ruling regime. But the fact that it was very clear about the Christian worldview, which was in conflict with the worldview imposed by the regime made the sermon a very influential and important milestone in relations between Bishop Vovk and the state, showing that he was not deterred from propagating the Christian truth even after an extremely violent attack – the burning in 1952. Document is located in the Anton Vovk Collection and it is available for research purposes.

After Ivan Aralica had been granted the Vjesnik literary Ivan Goran Kovačić Award for literature, members of the Zadar branch of SUBNOR condemned this act. This was first commented by the local weekly Narodni list in a lead under headline “Vigilance fell asleep” written by the editor-in-chief Dane Vučenović. In the article, the frequency of attacks on self-management socialism is mentioned and the attempts of “defeated groups from the era of the so-called ‘massive movement in Croatia’.” Vučenović stressed that in that period the opponents of socialism increasingly came out openly in many centres, and so in Zadar, where the writer Ivan Aralica lives, the winner of the Ivan Goran Kovačić Award for the novel The Souls of Slaves (1984). He agreed with the SUBNOR Zadar branch, which criticized the Vjesnik jury for giving the award to a writer whose profile was inadequate because of his participation in the Croatian Spring in Zadar. “We think that such an attitude of the Zadar veterans has a positive significance, and that in the process of giving awards, the political profiles of candidates should be taken into account, at least when special awards are at stake,” Dane Vučenović concluded, indirectly pleading for interventionism in the assessment of literary works.

Ivan Aralica himself stated in his letter of 26 July 1985 to Zlatko Crnković that this lead was an overture for the attacks on him: “It has been a long time since I wanted to write to you, ever since I came to Zagreb at the beginning of July, because right on the eve of my departure from Zadar the campaign against me started with the lead in Narodni list (Aralica and Crnković 1998, 123).

Just few days after he was elected president, Václav Havel travelled to Ostrava on 3 January 1990. The so-called “Steel Heart of the Republic” therefore became the first city (besides Prague) visited by Havel as the president. Havel’s first steps led to Jaromír Šavrda’s grave at the Ostrava-Hrabová cemetery. There he paid tribute, by taking a bow and laying flowers, to the significant Ostrava writer, journalist, dissident and his own friend who died in May 1988 shortly before the Velvet Revolution. Havel’s symbolic gesture helped to spread awareness of Jaromír Šavrda; many Ostrava citizens first heard of him thanks to Václav Havel’s visit. The iconic pictures of the event are now part of the Jaromír and Dolores Šavrda Collection in the Ostrava City Archive.

Václav Havel’s correspondence is an important and valuable part of the Václav Havel Library collection as it reflects not only his thoughts and visions, but also the atmosphere of the times. The library’s collection includes digitized forms of his famous “Letters to Olga” (the original letters are stored in the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature), as well as an electronic version of Václav Havel’s correspondence with other important figures, including representatives of Czechoslovak exile before 1989. It contains correspondence with the historian Vilém Prečan, the physicist František Janouch (the original letters are stored in the František Janouch Archive) and the writer Josef Škvorecký (the letters are deposited at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, United States). Since 1989, Václav Havel’s correspondence has been published several times.

The manuscripts of Václav Havel’s plays and essays have great historical and cultural value. In addition, these texts remain relevant today, which is why his essays are still published and his plays still performed in many theatres in the Czech Republic and abroad. The Václav Havel Library collection includes a digitized version of the manuscript of Havel’s play “The Memorandum” (Vyrozumění) from June 1960 (the original manuscript is deposited in the National Archives of the Czech Republic). This black comedy based on the motif of an artificial, totalitarian language called “Ptydepe” was premiered in July 1965 at Divadlo na Zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade). The play was directed by Jan Grossman.