Havel's cheerfully beaming appearance is deceptive. His plays are very funny, certainly, but there is a core of deep pessimism, even despair in them. They are a mixture of political satire, absurdist images of the human condition, philosophical parables, and zany, black humor. Kafka and Hašek, the twin tutelary spirits of Prague, are equally present in them. (p. 139)

Kafka built up a picture of human anguish in the face of the mysteries of existence that was both dreamlike and concrete, fantastic and real. Kafka's subject matter is the most universal, his imagery the most local; it owes everything to Prague, its atmosphere and history.

Hašek's Good Soldier Schweik is also both local and universal. Here too we have the Czech's reaction against the incomprehensible, the blatantly idiotic rule of an alien and stupid militarist caste: Schweik reacts against the stupidity of his oppressors by taking their...