“Spring with 36ers” January - May 2009
The Šestatřicátníci (“those born in 1936, or 36ers”) association was the first literary and artistic group which Václav Havel put together at the beginning of his career, in the years 1953-1954, as a seventeen year old man - and the association shaped his own creative beginnings. From the group, besides Václav Havel, came many writers and journalists, among them especially four authors, extremely important for the history of Czech culture - Jiří Kuběna, Josef Topol, Věra Linhartová and Viola Fischerová.
It is therefore appropriate to recall the “first fruit” of Havel’s literary and organisational activities, to bring the authors together again and present them to a wider audience. “Spring with 36ers” will consist of several interrelated cultural achievements:
Cycle of five literary evenings
The cycle will recall the work of five most outstanding authors of the group, five non-conforming teenagers of the fifties: Jiří Kuběna, Viola Fischerová, Josef Topol, Věra Linhartová and at the end the texts of Václav Havel himself.
Exhibition of art works of Jiří Kuběna – 13th January 2010
Jiří Kuběna is the author of two crafts, literature and art. However, his art work (paintings, drawings) has never been exhibited publicly in the Czech lands, as it stands in contrast with contemporary art trends. As the first volume of the second year of the Vaclav Havel Library Notebooks the catalogue of the exhibition will be issued.
Interviews with 36ers - May 2010
Reissue of the manuscript magazine from the fifties, the first “samizdat” of Václav Havel and his friends. Program considerations, poems, criticism. The first texts of Václav Havel and Jiří Kuběna. In the years when official Czech writers mourned at Stalin’s death - what these adolescents wrote? Issued as the second volume of the second year of the Vaclav Havel Library Notebooks.
Related events
- Spring with those born in 1936 13/01/10 – 30/05/10
Letters to Olga – essays written in prison, letter
„I am a child of the age of conceptual, rather than mystical, thought and therefore my god as well – if I am compelled to speak of him (which I do very unwillingly) – must appear as something terribly abstract, vague and unattractive. But it appears so only to someone I try to tell about him – the experience itself is quite vivid, intimate and particular, perhaps (…) more lively than for someone whose “normal” God is provided with all the appropriate attributes (which oddly enough can alienate more often than drawing one closer). And something else that is typical of my god: he is a master of waiting, and in doing so he frequently unnerves me. It is as though he set up various possibilities around me and then waited silently to see what I would do. (…) His Last Judgment is taking place now, continuously, always – and yet it is always the last: nothing that has happened can ever un-happen, everything remains in the “memory of Being” – and I too remain there – condemned to be with myself till the end of time – just as I am and just as I make myself.“
Václav Havel:
Letters to Olga – essays written in prison, letter
August 7, 1980
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