In a short samizdat essay from 1977 (The Trial), Havel talks about one of the turning points of the Czech dissident movement, the arrest and trial of an underground rock band from Prague.
"It doesn't often happen and when it does it usually happens when least expected: somewhere, something slips out of joint and suddenly a particular event, because of an unforeseen interplay between its inner premises and more or less fortuitous external circumstances, crosses the threshold of it usual place in the everyday world, breaks through the shell of what it is supposed to be and what it seems, and reveals its innermost symbolic significance. And something originally quite ordinary suddenly casts a surprising light on the time and the world we live in, and dramatically highlights the fundamental questions."
"....if a certain event slips out of joint - and if it does in the deeper sense that I have in mind here - then inevitably something slips out of joint in ourselves, too: a new view of the world gives us a new view of our own human potential, of what we are and might be. Abruptly jerked out of our 'routine humanness,' we stand once more face to face with the most important question of all: How do we settle accounts with ourselves."
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