WRITING PHILOSOPHY WITH ONE’S HANDS TIED: LETTERS FROM CZECHOSLOVAK COMMUNIST PRISONS

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how Czechoslovak intellectuals and philosophers from the dissident movement coped with the difficult situation of normalization and their own imprisonment. The failure to invoke justice led many to identify with characters from Franz Kafka’s novels concerning the dead-end situations. Writing philosophical texts in official publishing houses and journals was impossible and unimaginable even for those who were at liberty. The dissemination of ideas was even more difficult for those who were in prisons. One way was to write letters from prison, which became a peculiar tool of communication and a specific genre of writing. Letter-writing was subject to the rules of prison life, which forbade writing about politics and the regime. It was up to the creativity
of the political prisoners how they managed to sneak civic themes into their letters. They did this either like Václav Havel, who used long
philosophically sounding reflections and carefully chosen code-words, or like Milan Šimečka, who chose to philosophize about ordinary, intimate life, real or oneiric memories of his family, and supposed conversations with his loved ones as a way of thinking freely. Although in retrospect one can accuse both of various shortcomings (and this has happened, even from the milieu of the dissidents themselves), it is important to remember that these texts were not produced in quiet study rooms and with access to the necessary literature in libraries. Even if they were philosophically “leaky”, fragmentary or interpretively weak, it is in this “writing-at-thismoment”
that their historical and philosophical value lies.