Give me a place to stand on and I will move the Earth, Archimedes said. Václav Havel applied this belief in the physical essence of the world to the very essence of human existence and tested its strength on his own person. He himself had become the place to stand on in our human universe and ended up moving history. The huge global response to his death shows that the outside world has been more profoundly and fully aware of the strength of Havel’’s personality than many Czechs. For there are few people in the entire history of our civilization […]

Given that ever since the Renaissance Europe has been so definitively split into Catholicism and Protestantism and so entrenched in its habits, I wasn’’t in the least surprised to learn from a Swiss acquaintance that coffee was more Protestant while tea was more Catholic. In response, I ostentatiously sipped from my cup, proud of the fact that it happened to contain coffee. And even though no one on either side of the barricade really believes in God that much, the dichotomies of habit remain, allowing us to speculate endlessly and to keep dividing the world in two halves. Thus the […]

The great Russian writer Nikolay Gogol once noted in a private letter that his unwritten works were his “heavenly visitors”’. That is, they already existed in heaven and just had to descend to earth, safely landing in the author’’s mind. That’’s basically what I have to say about the Duma elections due on 4 December, as well as the presidential election due in March. The good news is that their results have already been written in the Kremlin heaven and that all state politics has to do is bring them down to earth safely without any scandals and misunderstandings. I’’m […]

Známými městy prochází člověk po paměti a mnohdy je to škoda. Málokdy nás napadne věnovat pozornost sochám, které v evropských městech často odlišují jedno náměstí od druhého. Už si nepamatuji, kdy jsem se naposledy u nějaké zastavil. Proč tady asi jsem? – ptají se přitom němým pohledem. Budapešť je krásných soch plná, patří to jaksi k její atmosféře – to je asi tak jediné, co mě napadá. A pak to, že jsem se kdysi měl s někým sejít u Petőfiho, ale přišel jsem pozdě. Kdo jsem? Nepovím Zrovna takový Sándor Petőfi je ale tak slavný, že jsou po něm pojmenována […]

Ve Vídni si můžete dát kávu na nespočetný způsob. Můžete na to jít klasicky a vypít si ji v jednom z tradičních mondénních podniků na Ringu – například v Café Landtmann nebo Café Schwarzenberg. Za kávu s mlékem nebo šlehačkou (podle zvyklostí domu), takzvaný kleiner Brauner, teda dáte klidně čtyři eura. Zato tu ale něco uvidíte a budete viděni. Nebo můžete zajít do jedné z mála přeživších uměleckých a literárních kaváren, které se tímto označením ještě mohou chlubit právem. Třeba do Café Korb v centru. Kouří se tu o sto šesť a nábytek je ošuntělý, ale zato původní z 50. […]

Historie Protokolů sionských mudrců, po Mein Kampfu nejsmrtonosnější knihy v dějinách, má všechny rysy politického thrilleru, černé kroniky a románu v žánru pláště a díky. Hemží se to v ní dvojitými agenty a mezinárodními špehy, hochštaplery a plagiátory, jezuity a svobodnými zednáři, satanisty v kněžských sutanách a ruskými mystiky v sandálech, korunovanými hlavami, sebevražednými atentátníky i tvůrci spikleneckých teorií. Je to hotový materiál na bestseller, který právě zaplavil knihkupecké pulty v Česku a Polsku. Pražský hřbitov, nejnovější román Umberta Eca, se má stát hitem tohoto podzimu. Nejjedovatější květ magické Prahy Recenzovat bestseller má asi takový smysl jako vozit dříví do […]

The American political scientist Joseph Nye has provoked a great debate with his reflections on the role of soft power in foreign policy. He suggested that a state can assert its will in its relations with other states either by economic or military means (hard power), or by means of its attractiveness or sex appeal.  One might say that national states emanate charisma in that they are formed around civilizational values, a term [the late Czech philosopher] Jan Patočka coined for systems of ideas and experiences capable of being universally human by definition rather than through the assertion of the […]

Fear is spreading around Europe. It is gripping those who live by their own labour, the young as well as the old, the middle classes as well as those who are less well off. From Madrid and London, through Rome and Paris, to Berlin and Warsaw labourers, students, businessmen and intellectuals are scared. A Europe of peace is turning into a Europe of fear. And into a Europe of anger. It is mainly the fear of a global crisis, indeed of disaster, that is destroying the life of societies, pushing them into shortages, chaos and violence, accompanied by growing anger […]

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, goes the American saying. The American warning doesn’’t apply to me though, as for many years my greatest wish was for the European Union to stay together, a wish that is beginning to look less and less realistic. What seems to be coming true these days instead is my concern that the EU might fall apart. Mentally I have been preparing myself for a disintegration for a long time although until recently the actual picture had been quite hazy. But lately international press and academic networks have been teeming […]

In his latest book, my friend the Ukrainian writer Taras Prochasko proposed a rather daring thesis. He suggested that, had Germany won the last war, Ukraine would have ended up in the European cultural sphere. My initial response to this statement was that of profound resentment. Of course, I understood that Poland and Ukraine fared very differently during World War II. In a way, Hitler had flirted with the Ukrainians, holding out the prospect of some rudimentary autonomy (or so, at least, it seemed to the Ukrainians), forming Ukrainian SS units and various auxiliary and police units. Poland had simply […]