ABSTRACT
The international association of writers (PEN) held its Sixty-First World Congress in Prague in 1991, five years to the month after the “revolution of the Magic Lantern” and the whirl of events that marked the beginning of the end of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and a rebirth of politics. The general political theme of the PEN congress posed a problem to politics, insofar as it raised questions about the role of the intellectual, and about the relationship of the intellectual to the professional politician. As Timothy Garton Ash (1995, 34 f.) reports, the problem was not merely a matter of academic debate but had itself become politicized in the Czech Republic “around the … magnetic polarity between the two Vaclavs, now better known as President Havel and Prime Minister Klaus.” Ash, who was himself an invited speaker at the congress, sought to clarify the problem by positing the following distinction:
The intellectual's job is to seek the truth, and then to present it as fully and clearly and interestingly as possible. The politician's job is to work in half-truth. The very word party implies partial, one-sided. (The Czech word for party, strana, meaning literally “side,” says it even more clearly.)
