Mocking is out for Czechs

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 21

Mocking is out for Czechs

A curious document has just come out of East Europe; the “expert testimony” of two members of the Czech censor’s office about “The Questionnaire,” a novel by the writer Jiri Grusa. Last summer Grusa was arrested and charged with “inciting disorder.” The novel, the authorities said, contained “grave calumnies against socialism and the Czech social system.” The accusation also claimed that Grusa made and distributed 19 copies among friends and sent three more to Switzerland. Grusa was released later last year but the charges still hang over his head. He is considered one of the best of the younger Czech writers, although since 1969 he has been able to publish only in the underground samizdat Press. He earns his living in a construction company. “The Questionnaire.” which has been highly praised by well-known Czech writers like Pavel Kohout and Ludvik Vaculik, is about a man who. in the course of looking for a job, has to fill in a questionnaire about his past. The novel consists of his answers, delving back into his own, his family’s and his country’s past. ” The two censors, Dr Jaroslav Nussberger and Mr Miloslav Hoferek, had to answer a series of questions about the book. First, what was its literary level?

This, they replied, is as much a matter of social morality as of aesthetics. Grusa “completely refuses to communicate by means of the generally accepted

criteria of moral and ethical principles of our society. The novel presents an ironic, not to say mocking, picture of present day life.” Mocking is immoral and is bad literature. Their answer to question two — does the novel attack the social and State system of Czechoslovakia? — is much the same. Yes it does, they say in their inelegant prose, because “the author’s diction is not just critical but condemnatory, i.e. hostile, to the people’s democratic order, for there is a prevalence of negative onesidedness, ridicule and condemnation. It expresses scepticism. . .” Question three was: Does the b.ook attack, slander or vilify another socialist state and if so, how? No doubt about it. “The novel offends the strong international feelings of our people and throws doubt on our friendship and cooperation with the people of the U.S.S.R. The author expresses disillusionment with the liberation role of the Soviet army and defames its international assistance in 1968” (the year the Soviet army intervened in Czechoslovakia). The next question was about the methods Grusa uses in his book to influence the reader. The two censors complain that Grusa stresses “the negative aspects” of the relations between people, and their ambition. He creates the impression that “power corrupts people, turning them into insensitive career-seekers with a lust for glory,” and he attacks “indirectly yet quite intensively”- Czech

socialist society and even “persons of merit, i.e. comrades.” In other words Grusa dares to suggest that some Czech Communists might be out to make a career for themselves or, like bourgeois politicians, are vulnerable to the corrupting effects of power. The answer to question five — could the novel be published in Czechoslovakia? is obviously no. The last question is whether Czechoslovakia might be harmed by the book being published abroad. Yes, of course. “The novel plays into the hands of those who, from antiCommunist positions, slander our political and State system on the grounds of our alleged infringement of human and civil rights.” The odd thing is that Grusa was very little known in the West before the authorities started to make such a fuss about “The Questionnaire.” And in Czechoslovakia, though his writing was circulated by the samizdat Padlock Press, he wasn’t, until his arrest, involved with Charter 77, the Czech dissident organisation. He apparently believed, as a matter of principle, that literature should be kept separate from politics. But the story is told in Prague that when Grusa was taken to prison after his arrest he shouted out to see if there were any Charter signatories there. When someone said yes Grusa called out that he, too, now wanted to sign. —-O.F.N.S. Copyright.