In fact, he regards his own, personal loss of freedom as a sacrifice he makes for the freedom of others.A German friend recently sent me a little essay the dissident Havel wrote in 1987, when Gorbachev visited Prague. Havel, taking his dog for a walk, is drawn to join the crowd greeting "Gorby" outside the National Theatre. He describes the "rather small" world leader, looking like "a friendly little ball", and then discovers an unexpected burst of sympathy for him: "I imagined his life. The whole day long he has to see the unpleasant faces of his guards.
He must have a full programme, with endless meetings, negotiations, the obligation to talk to innumerable people and to remember who they all are. He has constantly to say something witty but also correct so that the world, which is always waiting for sensations, won't create one - and then people could use it against him."There's the necessity of always smiling and fulfilling engagements such as today's, when he would certainly much rather have had a rest. And after such a hard day he can't even have a quiet drink in the evening!" Well, today Gorbachev can relax over a drink, and it's Havel's days that look like that.As we approach the 10th anniversary of his elevation to the presidency of Czechoslovakia, it seems there is a little outbreak of "Havel revisionism". A new biography has been published here, curiously sub-titled "A political tragedy in six acts". It has been the occasion for some scathing reassessments of the Czech president, in places as different as The Spectator and the London Review of Books. Elsewhere, some profiles suggest that he is a sad, isolated figure, a lame-duck president, still esteemed abroad but no longer at home. Echoes of Gorbachev again.I have known Havel for more than 15 years and we have become friends, so I cannot deliver a strictly "objective" verdict.
(But then, who can?) However, in writing about him, I have always tried to stand back and look critically. In part, this Havel revisionism seems to me a typical reaction against an earlier idealisation. Having put him up on a pedestal as a saint, the West now tears him down as a sinner. Havel himself comments ironically on the "fairy tale" told whenever he receives one of his many honorary doctorates: the story of a simple, good man in the dungeon who reduces Bluebeard's castle to ashes with one word of truth from his goosequill pen.In fact, Havel's biography up to 1990 does have a certain fairy-tale quality. The millionaire's son, unable to study properly under the communist regime because of his social origins, is compelled at one time to work manually in a brewery. His absurdist plays are promoted in the West by his German publisher and by Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. The dissident leader of Charter 77 writes marvellous, penetrating essays about the nature of totalitarian rule and "the power of the powerless".
He's imprisoned, and from prison writes his moving Letters to Olga. Then, miraculously, he goes from a spell in prison early in 1989 to directing the velvet revolution from the stage and dressing rooms of the Magic Lantern Theatre in Prague And so to the Castle. No wonder the novelist Milan Kundera, once a critic of Havel's "moral exhibitionism", now describes his life as a work of art.Yet certainly it was always a misunderstanding to see him simply as a writer cast into politics against his will. From an early age, he was a political animal, both in small groups (which he has a knack of convening and animating) and on the larger stage. His dissident "anti-politics" were not only moral action but also the politics you pursue when ordinary politics are impossible.
Some of his writer friends now feel, with benefit of hindsight, that for him politics always came before literature.Moreover, he has made his fair share of mistakes as president. He himself now acknowledges that he might have helped to shape the political party landscape better in the early 1990s. Perhaps he could have done more to prevent the split of Czechoslovakia into Czech Republic and Slovakia, one of the most painful episodes of his decade. Even his admirers in Slovakia resent the fact that his first trip as president was to Germany rather than to Slovakia. Not all his speeches and interventions have been well- judged, even given the extreme provocation by the country's supremely arrogant, long-time prime minister Vaclav Klaus.It is also true that he now often seems tired and lacklustre - which is not surprising, considering that he has lost half a lung and come close to death three times in the last three years.There is no doubt that his popularity has declined at home. Having held for years at 80 per cent or more, it took a nose dive when, soon after the death of his much loved and admired first wife, Olga, he married Dagmar (or "Dasa") Veskrnova, a beautiful actress some 17 years his junior.