Helena Kašperová

“What would you tell an eighteen-year-old if asked what was worst about the 70s and 80s Czechoslovakia?” – “The stifling atmosphere. It was figuratively impossible to breathe, nobody knew how far it would go. TV was unwatchable, I sought refuge in books, the Semafor theater, and my friends. It was an age of darkness. I think the experience is untransferrable. Some things can’t be expressed in words well enough. It was as if living in a hole.”

“President Havel was permanently taking my breath away with his bashfulness and shyness of sorts. I haven’t seen him shout at someone, he nearly always said thank you for everything, and not only when he was ill. But he had such flames in his eyes…”

“It was Presitent Havel’s birthday in October. I tried to come up with something, and so I had the idea to call to Brno where the most famous pyrotechnicians resided, and asked them to come and make fireworks. Because what could one give President Havel for his birthday?! It was raining that day and I was arranging with the pyrotechnicians not launch the fireworks high bove Prague’s castle so that the journalists would write something bad about it. We had an agreement that at a given time, Jirka Křižan would bring President Havel to the window. He did, the fireworks began, all was beautiful and then Mr. President said: ‘So, I felt like it was communism again.’ It wasn’t a good present.