Chvění je naděje

Journalist and essayist Karel Hvížďala is known for his interviews with prominent figures of primarily Czech political and cultural world. This time, he presents his very personal narrative, building on interviews with Jiří Přibáň In Search for History and In Search for Responsibility, and on a series of memoirs published under the title Sentence as a Profession. In his “diary” entries, written in under a year, he captures his innermost, private reflections, memories, comments and worries against the backdrop of domestic and international events, escalating in a fatal aggression of Russia against Ukraine, a war. The mosaic of news from media on domestic pre-election and post-election situation includes information on the pandemic and the escalating tension on the international scene as well as little, seemingly picturesque stories. The text is interspersed with extracts from correspondence with close friends such as Jiří Suchý and Jacques Rupnik. The book paints a vivid picture of (not only) the author’s “private” planet.

In 2021, a year of the thief of happiness, Karel Hvížďala undertook to engage in a dialogue with time, which is all the more silly: it has very few ideas and who knows whether what it has are really ideas. Thanks to this book we know why this is so: they lack a significant condition, the awareness, as said here, of the fact that thinking is a moral task.
Miroslav Petříček (philosopher, Charles University)