Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

My friend read untiringly: in Czech, French and German. His German was so good that it irritated me. What point was there in using the language of those who wished to annihilate us?

The language was not at fault, he explained. Every language could be used to express good or evil, in the same way that a cup could contain good beverages or bad ones. Even so, most people, when they drank, paid more attention to the cup than what it contained.

During our last summer holiday but one we went on a bicycle tour in the then backward regions north of Prešov (little did I suspect I’d return there one day against my will). Most nights we slept in haylofts or in wooden barns on bits of straw. We each took with us only the bare necessities that would fit in the packs fixed to our carriers. His bare necessities included several volumes of the Henriada series, the books stuffed in the side-pockets of his pack where matches, tinned rations and soap properly belonged. Each morning at daybreak when outside the bells were ringing their summons to morning mass, the dogs beginning to bark and the primitive pump starting to shriek, he would sit up in his sleeping bag, open the book he had left ready next to his head the previous night, take out his two-colour pencil and transport himself to distant worlds. Sometimes he would even read aloud to me as I lay there still half-dreaming:

God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

That sentence stuck in my mind at the time, along with another statement:

Nietzsche, that candid and persuasive writer, overlooked the truth that in history only one code of decent and noble behaviour has ever applied, the code that was laid down by Homer, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, the medieval knights and their gentlemen successors…

He used to lend me books, and I would then hump them around with me everywhere like he did. And one scene springs to mind. We are lying on some lakeside or river bank somewhere reading Seneca or Rádl, surrounded by tantalising scantily clad female bodies. This was a better and more valuable activity, more spiritual than just lolling around and doing the same as everyone else. Besides, Buddha abandoned everything and everyone and went off into exile.

I had no talent for philosophy, however. I had neither the ear nor the patience for it. I saw little sense in contemplating the meaning of concepts such as beauty, happiness, justice, well-being or even truth. Far more important, it seemed to me, was to reflect on how to make sure that people had access to beauty and an opportunity to hear, proclaim and discover the truth. Again and again I would steer the conversation around to consideration of the practical aspects. From the heights of Plato’s Republic I plummeted to the mundane world of newspaper editorials. He tried to win me over to the ideas of the Stoics. One’s first duty was to strive for wisdom and self-improvement. One must act in harmony with nature and not be deflected from the path of tranquillity by matters one cannot influence. When one has achieved all that, when one has attained the state of ‘apathy’, one loses all interest in power, politics and physical passions, and along with them, all worldly anxiety and fear of death.

I did believe, however, that in most of our arguments I had truth on my side, because, after all, I had behind me an unrepeatable experience of life, one that he too acknowledged and respected. But how was I to convince him?

My ideal state was situated on an island that was so cold that people had to work very hard for their living. Work too was a path to virtue and thus also to bliss, as was rapidly understood by Aram, a journalist personally invited to the island by its president, Sylvio Ruskin.

The two of them sat in the simply furnished presidential palace, which contained no more than a heavy wooden table and two wooden armchairs, elaborately carved though of quite simple design, made by one of the president’s ancestors in his spare time. He had been a philosopher-cum-woodcarver by profession.

‘I have been given to understand,’ the journalist Aram declared, ‘that your country has no criminals or even petty delinquents, so has no need of courts, prisons or even executioners. How did you achieve this?’

An inspired smile played on the president’s face. ‘The basis of all crimes,’ he rejoined, ‘— so we believe, at least — is inequality, and material inequality above all. That then leads to poverty and despair, and they for their part arouse envy.’

‘And what about laziness?’ Aram enquired. ‘Is not mankind’s innate laziness perhaps the cause of many crimes?’

‘Laziness is not innate,’ the president smiled. ‘Idleness goes hand in hand with unearned wealth. You may take our republic as proof. We have eliminated material inequalities, and lo and behold, you will find here neither envious nor lazy folk, and no criminals.’

‘But the innate desire for evil?’ the journalist interjected once more. ‘Psychology teaches us that there will always be individuals who do evil solely from a pressing inner need.’

‘Psychology is wrong,’ the president retorted. ‘It ascribes to human nature what the citizen acquires through upbringing, bad example, poverty or ignorance.’

The journalist reflected a moment, before continuing stubbornly with his objections: ‘What do you do when a man is overcome with jealousy that his neighbour is cleverer or possesses a more attractive wife than he does? What if he decides to obtain her for himself even at the cost of something as horrifying as murder?’

‘You are an incorrigible sceptic,’ the president admonished him. ‘However, it is clear that you have not yet understood the spirit of our state. Why should anyone be jealous of his neighbour, when each has the opportunity to excel in something, be it only diligence, truthfulness or physical prowess? And as for wives? Everyone chooses the wife of his taste, and tastes vary.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ the journalist exclaimed with incredulity, ‘that your people never commit misdemeanours, offences or any misdeeds at: all?’

‘Of course they do,’ the president admitted, ‘but we allow for such failings. Once a week — once a fortnight at harvest-time or during other peak work periods — the entire community meets together at district level, and at those assemblies each citizen carefully examines his actions and even his private thoughts, and of his own free will confesses anything questionable he discovers in them…’

Mirek received my composition with interest. He always used to show greater interest in my doings than I in his; therein lay his superiority over me: that he perceived the need I had to be someone worthy of attention. When he had read my essay — I think it only took him a single evening — he told me I had written something very stimulating, albeit rather inductive. General rules were easy to formulate, and they tended to neglect the various contradictions, variables and possible objections that praxis necessarily concealed. He also criticised my excessive trust in reason, saying that I forgot that the human soul sometimes defied all rational explanations; reason was its creation, after all, so the soul was naturally higher and more complex than its product. It was all excusable, however, and I would probably become a politician rather than a philosopher.

His commendation, which, had I been wiser, I would have taken as disparagement, filled me with a sense of elation that as always in my case took the form of talkativeness. We argued into the night about the future shape of the world and I preached about what we must do to achieve a perfect order of things, an order that would confer well-being and happiness on the whole of mankind.