LETTERS Open letter from Prague
Dear Friends: Ivan Jirous and Jiri Tichy have been arrested in October of last year for protesting against the increasingly rep- ressive measures taken by the Czechoslo- vak authorities, which have so far culmin- ated in the still unclarified death of Pavel Wonka, a prisoner of conscience. This is not the only legal action taken against critically thinking citizens in our country, but the case of Ivan Jirous, an art historian, journalist and poet, the father of two young children, is especially alarming. If totalitarian forces succeed in sending Ivan Jirous to prison this will mean that he will spend years among murderers and violent people in the worst of all Czechoslovak prisons, at Valdice.
Jirous has already been imprisoned four times for his free expression and for his extensive activities in unofficial culture. Of the last 15 years, he spent eight in prison. Most recently, he was imprisoned at Val- dice for three and a half years. After his release he was subject to 'protective super- vision' by the police (a form of probation), and it was only with great difficulty that he was able to adjust to normal life again, after the time he had spent with violent criminals. If he will now be sentenced for the fifth time, this will mean not only another blow to his mental integrity, and of course his artistic work, but it will be a threat to his very life. The place that Ivan Jirous has in the spiritual and art world of contemporary Czechoslovakia is absolutely irreplaceable.
Ivan Martin Jirous was born just before the end of World War II on 23 September 1944 in the town of Humpolec, which is found in the Bohemian-Moravian high- lands. In 1969 he graduated from Charles University in Prague with a degree in the history of art. For a brief time he worked as one of the editors of the magazine Vytvar-na prace (Art Work), where he devoted his attention to modern art. The magazine soon became a victim of the 'normalisation' period after the Soviet invasion of 1968 and Jirous lost his job; he continued to earn his livelihood as a worker.
The offical cultural policy of Czechoslo- vakia in the Seventies provided less and less freedom for any spontaneous activities and free artistic creativity. It was Ivan Jirous who was the initiator, organiser and qualified exponent of independent culture which was coming into existence at the time He was in the centre of most counter- culture activities, he organised various musical festivals, which provided opportu- nities for the playing of independent music- al groups, he edited samizdat collections, started the publication of the journal Vok- no (Window) and devoted his energies to
the visual art which had been expelled from the galleries into private studios. Jirous is known, both in this country and abroad, as the first theoretician of Czechoslovak independent culture and one of the creators of the independent spiritual climate of the Seventies and Eighties.
At the beginning of the Seventies he became the artistic head of the rock group The Plastic People of the Universe, which during the long years of its existence has become a living symbol of independent culture in Czechoslovakia. It was the absurd persecution of this group by the government authorities in 1976 and the imprisonment of Ivan Jirous and other members of the group, that provided the direct impetus for the founding of a Czechoslovak movement for adherence to the Helsinki agreement — Charter 77.
Jirous is also highly respected as a poet. In 1986 he was awarded the Tom Stoppard Prize for his collection of poems Magorovy labuti pisna (Magor's Swan Songs), which he wrote in the terrible Valdice prison.
Dear friends, please help us to free Ivan Jirous from prison! Help us to free one of our best people, whose life is in peril! Inform the public about this case, write to newspapers and magazines about him. Speak about him at rock concerts, exhibi- tions or other cultural activities. Please send petitions and letters about him to our government. Protest against his imprison- ment at our embassies everywhere. Jirous is a poet and journalist and one of us, we must do everything to get him out of prison! If the Jirous cause were to become a 'fashion' among young people in the free world, we might be able to do it. We think that both we here and you there want the same thing: the opportunity for free ex- pression of the creative human spirit, without fetters and crippling limitations. Jan Brabec Vaclav Havel Ivan Lamper David Nemec Petr Placak Jaska Skalnik Jachym Topol
Prague, Czechoslovakia
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