Poets and Playwrights as Politicians

Vaclav Havel died last month at the age of 75. He will be remembered as the poet and playwright who led the non-violent revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, then went on to become the country’s first president.

Havel enjoyed greater support abroad than in his home country as he took positions that were critical of his own country. He spoke out against the expulsion of the indigenous Sudeten German population after World War II. One of his first actions as a president was to offer an amnesty for those imprisoned by the former regime because they may have been communists. At his death he was a member of the Czech Green Party.

Havel once wrote,

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

I don’t suppose a poet and playwright would have much of a chance in our political system. Too bad.


Peter