Statement of the Prime Minister
An Official Apology and Personal, Handwritten Letter, with Package Included, to President Albína Reiserová, Mother of the Czechoslavonic Nation
Most Honorable President,
I thought I was wise. I thought I was learned. I thought that my fifty-two years had given me some mystical knowledge of the world hidden to all others, that I and I alone knew, always, best.
I have found that I was wrong - wronger, perhaps, than anyone else ever has been. The three months of reality I have had have shown me that the whole of my life before them was spent in an ivory castle, above and well away from the struggles of the people.
What I believed was my wisdom I discovered was my folly; what I believed was my learnedness I discovered was my gross ignorance; what I believed was my knowledge I discovered was simply mental excrement. Everything, from the moment I emerged from my castle up on high to gaze upon the truths of the world, was turned on my head, and I was left to see myself for what I truly was - a silly, idiotic child, who screamed and yelled, throwing her tantrums, tearing at the skirts and pants of the real adults, who she believed were silly when it is she who was silly and the adults who were, in fact, entirely sober and clear-minded.
A dear and truly wise friend of mine, Madam - or Doctor, although she insists, with her characteristic humility, that we do not use the title - Évretas Iketemar, who directs our national institute for music, told me, in the rightfully scolding tones of someone who knew and still knows better, that you and your government have noted down all of my infantile outbursts, that you all remember them quite well, that, because of them, you have come to see me as a madwoman.
I tell you that you all were - are - entirely right to judge me such. I was mad - all my ramblings and denunciations were the products of a mind entirely disordered, addled by overexposure to the world of theory and underexposure to the world of reality - material and spiritual. Even now I struggle to cast off all of my old predilections - my mind is still too caught up in the patterns of sanctimony - so deep inside the insanity was.
But mad as I may be, there are some things I have nevertheless learned. Strict adherence to book-knowledge, life in a world of forms - these things I have discovered have no place in reality. My short term in office has shown me the necessity of tending and adjusting according to the national condition, national consciousness, national spirit - of recognizing the real truths of the people and the wisdom that may lie among them, deep in the land on which they live, or within, beneath the distortions of the centuries, the tradition they may still hold deep in their hearts, and acting accordingly, with justice, with love, with respect.
I apologize, thus, for my denunciations of your party and my efforts to force my own into collective opposition to its efforts to bring good governance to Czech Slavia. I apologize for the horrific set of poems I sent to your contest, horrible, distorted, insulting caricatures not merely of you and all the good men and women who surround you but also of your kindest of allies. I apologize for having tried to create parody films insulting you, trying to sully your name, because of my infantile hatred for decisions that I refused, in my stubbornness and simplicity, to understand. I apologize for having, in my blindness and theory-obsession, had the audacity to call your efforts to reconnect with the real spirit and consciousness of your country "cultism."
Every act I have made against you I apologize for; I prostrate before you and beg for your forgiveness. I am a worm, and you the sun; my dirty actions have made me unfit even to bow before you, so brilliant, loving, kind, have condemned me to burn before someone so good as you, but still, in foolish hopes to receive some respite from the terrible condition I, through my foolishness, have foisted on myself, I have come before you to ask, humbly, for mercy.
By great effort - as you may know, it is difficult for anyone with power in Istkalen to obtain anything of value or use, and even now, I risk prosecution for my having done so - I have included in this package a set of all the common wonders of my country: a set of pressed flowers, all unique to my Istkalen dear, a traditional tea set, with instructions for use, a specially prepared and treated box of native bark which you may use - there are instructions for that, as well - to make tea, a music box which plays one of our folk songs, and a traditional harp, with a comprehensive set of lesson, song, and étude books - written by Évretas, who, as an aside, tells me that the Festival of Veles was a real marvel, in an edition she made especially for you, one which includes her personal annotations.
You will also find a form with some questions. If you reply and fill it out - which, of course, I do not expect you to, given the abuses I have hurled so unfairly on you - I will have it sent to a stampmaker to have an Istkalenic stamp, which we use in place of signatures here, made for you, which I hope to be able to present at a meeting between us, if you agree to one.
As the worm to your sun, as the whining child before you, the mature mother, and with my deepest and sincerest of apologies,
Elizabeth Íkrat
Prime Minister of the Republic of Istkalen
