"I received a letter from an academic senate in Olomouc asking if I would be willing to take over the philosophy department, because they had no one (in '89) who was not Marxist-minded and was a graduate of Masaryk University. And I was the only one far and wide. I lived for about three days in such euphoria that it might have been true. That I could go to Olomouc for the interview. But another person took the position in the end. They made him head of the department, he was a teacher of civics. So I lived for three days in euphoria that this could be true, that I could be seriously involved in philosophy. Only, judgment, which is a tremendously important quality that one has to take great care of, led me to decline the offer. Because I knew that for fifteen years I had been working in completely different fields and I didn't have the confidence... I still can't teach anyone, because I don't think I am good enough. I've set up some academies here, but it's more of a funny kind of thing where it doesn't have any particular recipient. It has a lot of recipients. The effect is completely unnoticeable. I have my media, I have my ways of expressing myself. That's the best I could come up with.
"Of course, they commented, 'You as a literary man.' And I replied, 'Sorry, but I'm a waiter. You mean because I write? Because they taught me that at school.' That's one of the few sensible things they taught me at school. So I write. I'm testifying. I testify. About my life, how it is. You know, when I talk to someone who is eighteen years old, I say to them, 'I don't know what I would do today. I would probably go to the army. I certainly wouldn't sell myself to some scoundrels.' If you don't put up a barrier to evil immediately, you'll soon find yourself with the NSDAP, then in the SS, and suddenly you shoot a Jew, because it's better to kill one than ten... You know, these things are very close to each other, very close. No. No to evil. No. Any question? No."
"Because it's my country and it belongs to me as much as to any thief or scoundrel. It's my country, it's my ancestral land, I'm not the exile type. Moreover, I have experienced it by living there for some time as an expatriate. They treated me, and all of us, extremely well. But the people that I couldn't stand were my fellow citizens, because they had been uprooted from their country and moved to a foreign country and they were frightened, especially when they learned about the invasion on 21 August 1968... I learned about it soon after midnight. When my friend woke me up. I was living in this consecrated chapel, with a number of others, we were sleeping in sleeping bags next to each other, and this friend of mine woke me up and said, 'Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia...' - that something was happening. I didn't speak that much French, but I understood that this drama meant the invasion of my country by foreign troops. I left after that, I travelled around Scotland, visiting different places and finding out where I was and what I was supposed to do. I was doing various jobs to earn some money, but after a while I realised that this was not my way, that I needed to return home. It didn't matter what was happening there. It was my country and I needed to go back. So I came back. Of course, from today's point of view it is hard to understand, because the criteria are completely different."
Jaroslav Erik Frič, poet, musician and underground personality, was born on 14 August 1949 in Horní Libina near Šumperk. He graduated from the grammar school in Ostrava and after passing the state exams at the language school he left for England in 1967. He observed the events of August 1968 from London. At the end of that year he decided to return to Czechoslovakia and began to study English and philosophy. At the same time, he made a personal decision not to get involved in public affairs. He graduated from university in 1974 but left to work as a waiter because of his personal beliefs. From 1969 he distributed copies of texts, and later samizdat. After 1989 he founded the publishing house Votobia, Vetus Via and other civic associations and cultural and social projects. From 2007, he was writing a blog, for which he was nominated for the Blog of the Year Award at the Magnesia Litera Awards in 2017. In 2016, he received the Brno City Award for his literary activities and journalism. He died on 24 May 2019.
