Stages : The ‘Temptation’ of Vaclav Havel

It is easy to walk past the entrance to the apartment block in which Vaclav Havel lives now that he is out of prison again.

These old, soot-colored, shabby buildings run along the banks of the River Vltava, upon which Prague is built. But the facades, propped up by tall, thick, wooden scaffolding, are a telling reminder of the decay that has slowly eaten into one of Europe’s most elegant cities.

Before World War II, a thriving, industrious middle class lived here. It disappeared soon after the 1948 communist takeover, swallowed up by prison, repression and submission.

But once you climb up the five floors of apartment block No. 78 and meet the playwright whose “Temptation” opens Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum, you enter a world untouched by decay, ideological or physical.

His large apartment, filled with life, overlooks the river. You can just about see across to Hradcany Castle, once the home of the kings of Bohemia, but now the fortress of the ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. A visitor might wonder if these dour, conservative party officials can peer down into Havel’s own apartment.

If they could, they would see white walls covered with modern paintings. Havel’s own bright study is decked with shelves of books surrounded by green foliage. But this is no ordinary writer’s apartment. No peace reigns here.

Throughout one recent afternoon, the 53-year-old Havel’s telephone rang incessantly.

Calls came through from Prague, Paris, Vienna. Would he be attending this play or that meeting? Young and old dropped in to talk to him. Some asked advice about politics. Others brought the latest news about growing support for a nationwide petition calling for greater freedom, which Havel himself had helped to organize.

His brother, Ivan, was bravely acting as Vaclav’s timekeeper for meetings, meals and interviews. Olga, Havel’s wife, so often seen seated quietly in the living room, was out shopping.

Havel’s patience was enviable. His voice was soft but authoritative, qualities needed in surroundings that resembled more a haunt for intellectuals than a writer’s solitary den.

But then, these are normal activities for a dissident author in Central Europe. What does perturb Havel are unannounced visits by the vigilant authorities. Over the years, the men from Hradcany Castle would send in the police to disturb Havel and raid his apartment.

“If I were to be completely honest, what makes my writing most difficult of all is something to the point of banality: The fear that the police will come and take away an incomplete or recently completed manuscript. The scattering of copies in various apartments, hiding pages somewhere behind the furniture whenever the bell rings, and so on and on. It is enough to make one a neurotic.”

This was how Havel described the raid in one of his many eloquent essays about the abuse of power in his country. Yet, despite these interruptions, Havel has continued writing. And when he has the time, which is all too rare, he retreats to his country cottage in North Bohemia. It was there, three years ago, that he wrote “Temptation.” It is a play that touches on the individual’s most basic problem: choice.

“Temptation” is unlike Havel’s earlier, more accessible plays (such as “Largo Desolato” and the one-acts in “A Private View,” all seen at Taper, Too). They present confrontations between totalitarian power--the Communist Party--and the individual.

Instead, this play, inspired by Goethe’s Faust, centers on man’s attempts to resist or to be ruled by temptation in the guise of the devil.

“Yes, yes, the play is different,” Havel says, lighting up one of his strong Czech cigarettes. “The idea occurred to me more than 12 years ago when I was in prison. I was in a very special situation. I felt myself to be tempted by the authorities. I thought the devil was in me. I felt I had made a bad step.

“This trauma, this feeling that the devil was around me, stayed with me. And then, one month in 1986, I was alone in my country cottage. I felt I had to write a new play. I sat down. In 10 days I had written ‘Temptation.’ Immediately after I had finished it, I (became) ill with a raging fever. For two days, I lay on my bed. I had no pills, no antibiotics. I thought maybe this was a punishment by the devil.”

Yet Havel insists that the play should not be seen as confined to his own experience.

“I do not like to comment on my plays. The audience must interpret them. But I will say that what I try to explain is the universality of the human condition.”

That, it seems is the task set for Foustka, one of the main characters in “Temptation,” a clever but morally weak scientist dissatisfied with the institution in which he works, aware that it is incompetent, but a man who has cultivated the art of obsequiousness toward authorities.

“I wanted to show that we cannot have it both ways,” Havel says. “Foustka would not choose between his career and courage. In the end he tried to collaborate with everyone, but that is impossible. You have to choose, not so much which side you’re on, but what for you is morally right and morally defensible.”

Havel knows all about making choices. Since the 1960s, he has chosen to resist what he’s called, in his writings, the Center or the Invisible Power, both metaphors for unchecked totalitarian rule.

The cost for refusing to share in this distortion of truth, often referred to by Havel as the Big Lie, has been high.

He has been prevented from having his plays performed in his own country and, has spent more than six years in prison--most recently for laying flowers at the statue of St. Wenceslas in the center of Prague. He has suffered months of police surveillance, deteriorating health, interrogations, police raids, trials and the confiscation of books, manuscripts and letters.

Undeterred, Havel has used the stage and the essay to stress that no one person or system, East or West, has the monopoly on truth and knowledge.

“Take the period of McCarthyism,” Havel says. “Here was someone having a claim on the Real Truth. Some people did not agree with him. Some never spoke out. Some were afraid of what would happen to them if they did. But here in Czechoslovakia, unlike the West, the Official Real Truth is invested in the Invisible Power.

“It is not like in the United States where you have a pluralism of bosses, where there are many options, many ideas from which to choose. In this system, one knows what to do, how to respond, because there is only one Truth, one boss: The Center. The omnipresent state. This is confirmed in our constitution, which clearly states that the (Communist) Party alone holds the leading role.”

When it’s time to leave, a moment of quiet descends on the apartment. As the visitor descends the cool, narrow staircase untouched by the sun’s rays, a young man on his way up clenching a plastic bag, steps aside.

“Is he in?” he asks.

The visitor nods. There is no need to explain who he is.