In the historical present

Memoir provides authors the rare opportunity to be completely subjective, but it is difficult to balance subjectivity with insight.

Second Exile, a fascinating example of collaborative memoir by Aleš Macháček and Jane Kirwan, achieves deep personal insight into the Czech communist era and its effects on individuals. Macháček's life as a dissident and his forced exile is retold in straightforward prose written in the historical present tense, accompanied by short lyric poems from Kirwan, a noted British poet, and period photographs.

Macháček told The Prague Post how this unique collaboration took place between himself and Kirwan, his partner.

"My written English is terrible, so Jane turned my stories into prose, and she asked me questions. Her intention was to make the prose follow my tone as accurately as possible. The prose seemed to only reflect one part of the story, and I've always found her poems more precise while at the same time independent and compassionate," he said.

Second Exile traces Macháček's life story in illustrative patches, beginning with his arrival as an exile in London in 1985. The narrative then jumps back to his childhood in Prague and wends through his education and short career as a manual laborer before being sent to prison in 1977 for anti-communist activities like passing out copies of Charter 77.

What is most interesting about Second Exile is the way Macháček equalizes personal and national history. The timeline at the beginning of the book is telling, juxtaposing "Havel succeeded by the Euroskeptic economist Václav Klaus" with the next and final entry, "roofing the second cottage in Slabce."

This gesture is made throughout the book, as Macháček relates his firsthand experiences of historic events such as Prague Spring, while bringing the past into the present. One paragraph shifts from a pastoral description of the village of Brdy during the 1960s to the recent debate about the placement of a U.S. radar base in the area.

Macháček achieves further depth when describing how it felt to read his StB files, which were made public in 1997. The prose sections of Second Exile thus have several levels of interest: general descriptions of historical events, Macháček's personal take on those events, and the insights he gains from time, reconsideration and freedom.

Describing the process of being interrogated, Macháček writes: "It hasn't actually occurred to me to stay silent, not to answer their questions. It's only later I realize that would have been a good idea. I'm just preoccupied with covering my tracks; say what I know they know and nothing else. It's much like bridge: having to remember each day the state of play, where the trumps are.

In 2001, I'm allowed to read my secret police files and can see I haven't given any missing links. I'm relieved the strategy works."

Macháček explained that his style of moving seamlessly between personal and public events was more a result of destiny than design.

"That was what life was like living here," he said. "And I've always felt that it is important to see our lives in the context of historical events."

Throughout the text, Kirwan's lyric poems provide sidelong insight into the events Macháček describes, sometimes mentioning them explicitly and sometimes honing in on one particular detail. "Shed in Bohemia," which describes a farm woman's discovery of runaway dissidents hiding in her shed, ends this way:

She heard them behind bolted doors

praying, not believing.

She didn't betray anyone,

sat by her stove, waiting

as now - cold, old, strangely agitated.

Published in London and recently made available in Prague, Second Exile offers rare personal insight into crucial events of Czech history, and balances that insight with quietly evocative poems that recall the tumult of communism from the relative tranquility of the present.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com