At home, I was surprised that my party card was not met with approval. Father merely said, “It was your decision!” Mother looked doubtful. “Couldn’t you have waited just a little while?”
And thirteen-year-old Jan said that people like me in his class were called freshly hatched reds.
“They’re in your school already too?” cried Mother in astonishment.
No, my brother explained, but all around us.
Essay: The Party, p. 438
5
I was nearly twenty years old when I graduated from high school. Despite the number of unlucky circumstances, I had acquired some knowledge of chemistry, physics, and geography along with ancient and medieval history and Czech literature. I excelled in mathematics and was able to translate some less complicated Latin texts. I also read Lev Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata” in the original Russian. Thanks to my aunt Eliška, who owned the collected works of Karel Čapek, I devoured almost all of his works. I knew a little German and even less English, even though our English teacher was a notable translator of Thackeray and studied at Oxford. I had read (not studied) several works by Plato and Aristotle. I had also read some of the books of the Bible, mostly Ecclesiastes, several times.
I still hadn’t kissed a girl; I’d never been interrogated; I wasn’t interested in the fates of those who had been unexpectedly arrested and condemned; and it didn’t even occur to me to compare the activity of the current government to that of the Nazis. It was as if the walls of the fortress where I had been forced to spend part of my childhood had hindered me from seeing the world in its true colors.
Despite the prevailing conditions, most of my classmates were accepted into the university. What was I supposed to study when I figured out that the only work I might be any good at was some sort of writing?
How did a writer actually make a living? And who could tell me if anybody would be interested in my writing? The most appropriate thing seemed to be to become a journalist. Karel Čapek had been one, after all, and his was the only work I knew fairly extensively. At the same time, however, I wasn’t aware that journalism had changed since Čapek’s time. It had become one of the least free occupations and was in such ethical decline that any decent person would have avoided it.
I learned that journalism was taught at the University of Political and Economic Sciences. I knew nothing about this school, so I went to the dean’s office to get some information. I was told I could apply in theory, but the school was unique in that it trained primarily political officers and therefore accepted only graduates of workers’ training schools, not high school graduates. He didn’t tell me — perhaps he himself wasn’t aware — that journalism was no longer going to be taught. I applied even though I definitely did not want to become a political officer.
In the cadre questionnaire, I mentioned my two uncles who had been executed; it was definitely owing to them that I was accepted.
The very first day we were divided into groups. We were to help each other in our studies, culturally nourish one another, go on brigade work, and learn about the new relationships among comrades in general. My classmates were indeed originally blue-collar workers or Youth Union members or party functionaries. Most of them had attended a one-year — in some cases, a several-month — course that was supposed to replace four years of high school study. But even the school administration was aware that such hastily acquired knowledge was insufficient. And so half of the lectures covered high school material. Since time immemorial, the life of a student has always been arduous, but it offered many joys.
When I entered the university, student life was not inordinately merry. Any unauthorized gathering, unorganized debate, unregistered and uncensored written expression was considered antisocial or even antistate.
By some miracle, a small private shop selling stationery and books had survived on Albertov Street, where our lectures took place. Once I went in, and there was not a single customer to be seen, so I started talking with the owner about books. I complained that there were so many authors I’d heard or read about, but it seemed they had ceased to exist. You couldn’t find their books anywhere.
He asked whom I had in mind, and I recalled Čapek and Dos Passos, whose 42nd Parallel sounded like an ingeniously conceived novel.
The bookseller agreed and went on to explain the present state of book publishing. All private publishing houses had disappeared, and only a few were permitted to operate. These had to belong to certain organizations and they were told what they could publish and primarily — here he grimaced — what they could not publish. Then he asked what I was studying. Journalism, I told him, even though I had no desire to be a journalist. I wanted to write books. But at the same time I wasn’t studying journalism, because the subject had been abolished.
“So, you’re a budding writer.” Most likely he’d intended it ironically, but then he said, “Wait here a moment.” He disappeared into the back of his shop and brought out two leather-bound books. “These are two of the greatest American authors, but you won’t find their books anywhere.” They were Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle and Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not.
To my shame I had not heard of either author.
*
My mother noticed an article in the journal Tvorba mentioning the field of literary studies, which had just opened at Charles University’s School of Humanities.
I went to the dean’s office to inquire about the requirements for acceptance. Once again I learned that literary studies (considered an ideological field) did not accept high school graduates. He added, however, that I could of course submit an application.
So I did. I explained in the application that I wanted to change universities because the department of my studies had been abolished.
During this short period of my life, everything was panning out. It was certainly due to my membership in the party. I was accepted and could leave the school that was so senseless that it was closed two years later.
I knew that Charles University was an old and venerable institution. Three years earlier it had celebrated six hundred years since its founding. But I was unaware that the faculty had been purged that very year, and all of its traditions as a free university had been debased. The new students no longer had a chance to take part in those traditions, and the professors who were now here (most had entered the Communist Party) didn’t even mention them. (Many of the professors had probably participated in the purge.) I had only a smattering of education and was blind. I paid no attention to the purges that had occurred not only at this university but at the others as well, along with all the newspapers, journals, and radio stations. I didn’t even notice the news about sentenced, banned, or imprisoned writers. I didn’t follow the discussions concerning socialist realism, the new type of hero, or ideology in literature.
Of course I understood well enough that subjects such as the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Introduction to Marxist Philology, or A Marxist View of Literature certainly could not until recently have been compulsory.
*
The university (like every school) thrusts a lot of knowledge upon the student, most of which he will never need and will sooner or later forget. The university should teach students a systematic and responsible approach to research. It should teach them how to seek out sources and work with facts. And the most important thing it can offer is contact with figures who can serve as mentors — an example for both the student’s work and his civic conduct.