These days Tehran is polluted with all kinds of toxins. It is as if the spirit of this city, graying and noxious, is hanging heavy over our heads. I have not seen many cities, but it appears that I live in one. I know of its dimensions only through the time spent in idle commutation beholding the renewed ugliness outside.
Some time ago, the red cover of a book attracted my attention on the window of a bookstore. The name of its author was {Ivan Klima}. I had read about him in Shahrvand magazine last year, introduced by Iranian author {Khashayar Deyhimi}, who had made the Czech writer's name household to Iranian readers. I bought the book because of that introduction.
When I reached home, I picked The Spirit of Prague from the few titles that I had bought. Klima had thrived in a Europe that was in the grips of repression. Authorities shut down Klima's newspaper and he was barred from writing for other publications, which, much like our own hard-line papers, Keyhan and Jam-e Jam, he wouldn't have liked to work with in any case.
He is considered one of the major figures of the "samizdat" underground literary movement of Czechoslovakia. The collection of essays in The Spirit of Prague was penned over fifteen years in different places. In many of the essays the author talks about his own life and personal likes and dislikes, and in others he focuses on literature. In one long article, which is not rendered well in translation, he talks of {Kafka}.
Klima was born in 1931 and studied literature. He has been through the Second World War, the Prague Spring and the fall of the Soviet block. He has interesting observations regarding freedom and literature. He writes simply and doesn't want his words to be understood by only a few. In other words, he has something for everyone.
I like to repeat some of this words here so that you can read for yourself:
"When a criminal regime steps on the laws of a country, when crime becomes commonplace, when some individuals are put above the law, when they try to deny others their honor, pride and basic rights, social morality is deeply affected. The criminal regime knows this but tries to maintain a semblance of moral and proper conduct, which no regime can do without, through the use of terror tactics and the instillation of fear. But it is a proven fact that where people loose their motivation for moral behavior, fear and terror cannot do much."
Klima lived in society that was similar to ours, with the exception that the society and culture that Klima was living under was much more advanced than ours in many ways. In another place he writes, "Any kind of prejudice and hard-headedness has a psychological precursor and is a signs of violence and terror. There is no ideology in the world good enough to justify a biased action.
In this book, Klima also talks about his affinities with Prague and enumerates some of its peculiarities. In an interview with {Philip Roth}, the former says: "I compared the situation of American authors with their Czech counterparts and said to myself, over there nothing happens and everything is important -- here everything happens and nothing is important."
The Spirit of Prague is an interesting read. Agah Publishing House has put it out and the book's translator is {Forough Puriavari}, priced at 32'000 Rials.
Top
