With Havel, the message mattered but it was words themselves that penetrated the heart.
--Madeleine Albright
Although I regularly read the obituaries of leaders in the New York Times, when I finished Albright’s memorial to Vaclav Havel, “the principled president,” I performed a unique act. I sat in front of my computer glued to her words, tears flowing down my face and clapped. I cannot remember doing such a thing. It was an automatic response, much like the silence followed by an overwhelming ovation after a great musical performance.
Admittedly, Albright had one of the few, truly magnificent leaders of the past fifty years in her sights. But this memorial focused upon Havel’s principled uniqueness while emphasizing his surprising, earthy, gutsy, poetic humanity. Facing the disintegration of the Soviet Union, he pleads with the Western world to assist the Russians. Albright’s panegyric emphasizes the contradictions in Havel, redefines what it means to be fully human and marked by contradiction. Invited to the US Congress, Havel does not celebrate the Czech Cold War triumph, but pleads for us to reexamine our moral values.
Summarizing the life work of Havel, Albright concludes with a reprise that speaks to us in our fragmented world.
Of the man who hates, Havel wrote, “He is incapable of making a joke, only of bitter ridicule . . . . Only those who can laugh at themselves can laugh authentically.”
As for ideals about governance, he concluded that “We may approach democracy as we would a horizon, and do so in ways that may be better or worse, but it can never be fully attained.” Summing up, he declared himself neither an optimist (“because I am not sure everything ends well,”) nor a pessimist (“because I am not sure everything ends badly”) but, instead, “a realist who carries hope, and hope is the belief that freedom and justice have meaning . . . and that liberty is always worth the trouble.”
Photo: Flickr.com, edition_of_one