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Article: Godot is here. (Samuel Becket and Vaclav Havel)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- January 29, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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`Godot Is Here'
On December 20, 1989, two days before Samuel Beckett's death, I delivered to Vaclav Havel in Prague a signed manuscript copy of Beckett's Catastrophe. In 1982 Beckett dedicated the play to Havel, then serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Beckett, whose plays were banned in Czechoslovakia by the Communist regime, became a hero to the opposition there. A poster circulated depicting a gagged Beckett and bearing the legend, "If Samuel Beckett had been born in Czechoslovakia, we'd still be waiting for Godot." Now, outside the Civic Forum office in Wenceslas Square, there were posters proclaiming "Godot Is Here." Havel, whose works expose the ...