Why I Love Prague: Part 1
- After enduring centuries of occupation by one empire or another, from what I hear, the people have cultivated a healthy distrust of authority, regulations, and bureaucracy.
- Out of that distrust of authority, they are a majority atheist country (only Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Vietnam and Japan join them in having at least 50% of the population not believe in God.)
- In fact, one of the original heretics of Catholic Europe was Czech. Jan Hus became a national hero when he fought against church corruption and planted the seeds of Protestantism for Martin Luther to pick up.
- Czech stop-motion and puppet animation provided a way for artists to express their criticisms of totalitarianism and communism in abstract ways that sometimes passed through the censors. Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka, and Jiri Barta made animations that were deeply insightful about life under communism, artistically gorgeous, and even had a great sense of humor! They are very dear to my heart.
- One night, long ago, I was being pervy and browsing nerve.com back when it was still good, and I happened upon this photographer named Jan Saudek. Yep, he's Czech too. His photographs combine unspeakable beauty, a playful sense of humor, and a deep appreciation of a wide variety of body types. So much love.
- I almost forgot! The first Czech president was a rock star! But not Arnold Schwarzenegger-like stardom... his band, the Plastic People of the Universe, was (naturally) inspired by Frank Zappa, and their music might be considered inaccessible even to some fans of Zappa. But I think their music's pretty freakin awesome, especially since the communist government saw fit to revoke their “musician's license” (how ridiculous!) to cut off their rabble-rousing. Vaclav Havel is also well-known as a playwright, but I haven't seen any of his plays so I can't comment, but they're probably pretty awesome too. It's awesome enough for the simple fact that a playwright and musician could become a president, which blows my mind as an American where we only have career politicians. (Havel also attempted to appoint Frank Zappa as an ambassador in the Ministry of Culture. The US State Department wouldn't allow it.)
- Speaking of playwrights, Tom Stoppard is Czech-born.
- And speaking of literature, I've been reading “The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk”, which is regarded as sort of the Czech national book, and it's incredible. Joseph Heller said he couldn't have written Catch 22 without having read this book. It's one of the first modernist books, and maybe even the very first anti-war novel (according to Wikipedia, so I'm scratching my brain trying to think of earlier ones). It's a shame it's so obscure in the West. Oh, and the author, Jaroslav Hasek, was an anarchist. The author as essential to Czech culture as Mark Twain is to American culture was an anarchist. I need not say more. Anyway, I've also read Bohumil Hrabal's “Too Loud A Solitude” (sort of a Czech “Fahrenheit 451” except that the protagonist is extremely well-read and considers book characters to be his friends), of course Kafka's "Metamorphosis", and, eh, I saw the movie version of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which probably does the book no justice.
- And according to lonely desperate men on the Internet, “Czechoslovakia [sic] is where you go to get a girlfriend. Poland is where you go to get a wife.”
*snicker*
- Out of that distrust of authority, they are a majority atheist country (only Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Vietnam and Japan join them in having at least 50% of the population not believe in God.)
- In fact, one of the original heretics of Catholic Europe was Czech. Jan Hus became a national hero when he fought against church corruption and planted the seeds of Protestantism for Martin Luther to pick up.
- Czech stop-motion and puppet animation provided a way for artists to express their criticisms of totalitarianism and communism in abstract ways that sometimes passed through the censors. Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka, and Jiri Barta made animations that were deeply insightful about life under communism, artistically gorgeous, and even had a great sense of humor! They are very dear to my heart.
- One night, long ago, I was being pervy and browsing nerve.com back when it was still good, and I happened upon this photographer named Jan Saudek. Yep, he's Czech too. His photographs combine unspeakable beauty, a playful sense of humor, and a deep appreciation of a wide variety of body types. So much love.
- I almost forgot! The first Czech president was a rock star! But not Arnold Schwarzenegger-like stardom... his band, the Plastic People of the Universe, was (naturally) inspired by Frank Zappa, and their music might be considered inaccessible even to some fans of Zappa. But I think their music's pretty freakin awesome, especially since the communist government saw fit to revoke their “musician's license” (how ridiculous!) to cut off their rabble-rousing. Vaclav Havel is also well-known as a playwright, but I haven't seen any of his plays so I can't comment, but they're probably pretty awesome too. It's awesome enough for the simple fact that a playwright and musician could become a president, which blows my mind as an American where we only have career politicians. (Havel also attempted to appoint Frank Zappa as an ambassador in the Ministry of Culture. The US State Department wouldn't allow it.)
- Speaking of playwrights, Tom Stoppard is Czech-born.
- And speaking of literature, I've been reading “The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk”, which is regarded as sort of the Czech national book, and it's incredible. Joseph Heller said he couldn't have written Catch 22 without having read this book. It's one of the first modernist books, and maybe even the very first anti-war novel (according to Wikipedia, so I'm scratching my brain trying to think of earlier ones). It's a shame it's so obscure in the West. Oh, and the author, Jaroslav Hasek, was an anarchist. The author as essential to Czech culture as Mark Twain is to American culture was an anarchist. I need not say more. Anyway, I've also read Bohumil Hrabal's “Too Loud A Solitude” (sort of a Czech “Fahrenheit 451” except that the protagonist is extremely well-read and considers book characters to be his friends), of course Kafka's "Metamorphosis", and, eh, I saw the movie version of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which probably does the book no justice.
- And according to lonely desperate men on the Internet, “Czechoslovakia [sic] is where you go to get a girlfriend. Poland is where you go to get a wife.”
*snicker*