The family of his mother, Katherine, née Jarešová, was also from South Bohemia. His grandfather Antonín Jareš and his great-grandfather Matěj Jareš were pond-keepers of theSchwarzenberg princes in Krč village No. 32.[3][4][5][6][7]
At the age of four, the doctor diagnosed aheart defect and "stuntedthyroid gland" in little Jaroslav. Because of this, he spent a lot of time in the country, with his grandfather from his mother's side, in the so-calledRažice dam-house, especially with his younger brother Bohuslav. In his childhood, Jaroslav was jealous of Bohuslav and even tried several times to hurt him as a baby.[11] Later they had an extremely strong relationship and traveled together a lot on foot. Bohuslav drank himself to death one year after Jaroslav's death.
Hašek's childhood was ordinary, boyish, imbued with adventures with peers and readingKarl May andJules Verne. However, this changed when Hašek was eleven: the retired sailor Němeček moved to Lipová Street, where the Hašeks lived at that time. Němeček wrapped the teenage Hašek around his little finger, pilfered the money that Hašek had stolen at home, and began to lead him into bars, including the infamousJedová chýše (Poison Hut) on Apolinářská Street, where he taught him to drink alcohol. In addition, he intentionally had sex with his girlfriend in front of the boy. It wastraumatic for Hašek. He later remembered these experiences with disgust and remorse. It probably influenced Hašek's relationship with women. In his discussions with his comrades in theRussian legions, it is said that he said the following aboutwomen:
"Can there be anything worse in the world than such a human pig? I didn't know anything about these things, and yet I felt such disgust and revulsion that it was enough to poison my whole life. I could never look at the woman again, and I have also been afraid of women since then."[11]
Some theories about Hašek'shomosexuality, spread mainly by the literary historian Jindřich Chalupecký (the essay "Podivný Hašek" in the bookExpresionisté), have also originated here, as well as in the testimony of Hašek's friend Rudolf Šimanovský.[12]
Shortly after Hašek began his studies at the grammar school in Ječná Street, his father died. In 1897, he was present at anti-German riots inPrague as a student. He was arrested and thegymnasium teachers forced him to "voluntarily" leave the institution. He then trained as adruggist in Kokoška's drugstore on the corner of Perštýn and Martinská Street, but eventually graduated from the Czech-Slavonic Business Academy in Resslova Street.[13] At the academy, he made friends withLadislav Hájek, and in 1903 they together wrote and released aparody of thelyrical poetry of May Shouts, in which Hašek first laughed atpathos and entered the field ofhumorous literature.
After graduating in 1902, he was employed by the Slavia Bank; however, he was dismissed on May 28, 1903,[14] for being absent without permission.
Thereafter, he began to earn his living exclusively injournalism andliterature. At that time, he also met Czechanarchists. He began to lead abohemian andvagrant life. Together with his brother Bohuslav, he walked through, among other places,Slovakia andwestern Galicia (now inPoland). Jaroslav Hašek published stories from these trips inNárodní listy.
In 1907, he became editor of theanarchist magazineKomuna and was brieflyimprisoned for his work.
In the same year, he fell in love withJarmila Mayerová [de] but, because of his bohemian life, her parents did not consider him a suitable partner for their daughter. When he was arrested for desecrating theAustro-Hungarian flag inPrague, Mayerová's parents took her to the countryside in the hope that it would help end their relationship. In response, Hašek tried to back out of hisradical politics and get permanent work as a writer. In 1908 he edited theWomen's Horizon. In 1909 he had sixty-four published short stories.
In February 1909, he was appointed editor of Svět zvířat (The Animal World), a popular bi-weekly magazine that focused on animals and animal breeding. Hašek's engagement with the magazine was only the second time in his life that he had been permanently employed, and now he kept the job longer than he had at Banka Slavia, probably around 20 months.[15]
Obtaining permanent employment at The Animal World was instrumental in overcoming Jarmila Mayerová's parents' resistance to her marrying Hašek, and the wedding took place on 23 May 1910.[16] In October 1910, Hašek was dismissed as editor of "The Animal World" and in November, he and his wife set up his own dog trading business named "Cynological Institute", an undertaking that failed after a few months. After a year of marriage, Jarmila returned to her parents after Hašek was detained after trying to feign his own death. According to other sources, however, this was a serious attempt atsuicide, motivated by the understanding that he was unable to live a marital life.[17] After this attempt, he was briefly hospitalized in apsychiatric hospital.
From 1911, he contributed to theCzech Word, then to theTorch,Humorist Letters,Nettle,Cartoons, and for some time led the Institute of Cynology,[10] which inspired his later bookMy Dog Shop.
In 1911, he foundedThe Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law. He founded it with his friends in theVinohrady pub calledU zlatého litru (The Golden Liter) to parody the political life of that time. He also wrote thesatirical workPolitical and Social History of the Party of Mild Progress within the limits of the law, but it was not published in book form until 1963.
In the summer of 1912, Hašek spent several weeks in a pub inChotěboř, where he could not be gotten rid of and the proprietors waited in vain for payment. He described his stay in Chotěboř in the stories "Traitor of the Nation in Chotěboř", the "District Court in Malibor", and "How about the birthplace of Ignát Herrmann or the Consecration in Krivice".
At the outbreak of theFirst World War, Hašek lived with the cartoonistJosef Lada, who later illustrated theGood Soldier Švejk.[18]
In February 1915, Hašek was called up to the replacement battalion of the91st Infantry Regiment of theAustro-Hungarian Army inČeské Budějovice. With the Regiment's 12th March Battalion, he was in early July transported to theEastern front inGalicia (nowUkraine). He served on the front until 24 September 1915 when he was captured by theRussians and sent to theTotskoye camp inOrenburg Governorate. Here he joined theCzechoslovak Legion in 1916. Then he wasdrafted into the 1st Regiment, where he worked as a scribe, emissary of the recruitment committee and gunner. Then he was transferred to the connecting section, machine-gun section (in which he participated in theBattle of Zborov against the Austrians) and the office of the 1st Regiment. From July 1916 to February 1918 he published in the journalČechoslovan and Cs. soldier, and was the author of a number of anti-Bolshevik articles.
Jaroslav Hašek in 1920.
At the end of February 1918, he joined theCzechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party (forerunner of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia, 1921–1992). What led Hašek to abandonanarchism and to acceptsocialist ideals has nowhere been clarified. In March, the Czechoslovak legions embarked on theirwell-known retreat, with the aim of joining the Western Front viaVladivostok. Hašek disagreed with this and went toMoscow, where he began to cooperate with theBolsheviks. In April he transferred from the legions to theRed Army. He was sent toSamara and the following year he was director of the army printer inUfa, chief of the department for work with foreigners, etc.[19] At the end of 1918 he served as commander of theChuvash troops in the Red Army and as deputy military commander of theBugulma district. He then worked inSiberia, where he published several magazines. One of them was also the first magazine in theBuryat language,Jur (Dawn).[20]
Jaroslav Hašek in 1921
In 1920, he was wounded in an assassination attempt[21] inIrkutsk, where he served as a member of the city soviet.[22] In the same year he fell ill withtyphoid fever, and in May he married a printing worker named Alexandra Grigorievna Lvova, called Shura, who took care of him after his illness. After his return toCzechoslovakia, he was not tried forpolygamy because of the lack of order and recognition of various international treaties in Russia.
In December 1920, Hašek returned to independent Czechoslovakia. He was initially placed in quarantine inPardubice, and on 19 December he arrived in Prague with Shura. TheSoviets had sent him to Czechoslovakia to organize thecommunist movement. However, he was prevented from doing so by two circumstances: on the one hand, in support of theKladno riots, he received from the Russian authorities an amount of 1,500 marks, which, however, was completely devalued byGerman inflation. In addition, even before Hašek's arrival in Prague, Jaroslav Handlíř, leader of a clutch of Russian agents whom Hašek was to contact, was arrested in Czechoslovakia. In this way Hašek's interest in communist politics ended and he returned to his bohemian way of life. He visited pubs in Prague and its surroundings, where he wrote his stories. Many stories describing this period were written by Hašek's friend Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj.
On 25 August 1921 Hašek left with his wife Shura and painterJaroslav Panuška forLipnice nad Sázavou. By this time he was seriously ill and dangerously obese. In Lipnice he began writing his masterpiece,The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War. Eventually he was unable to write, yet he continued to dictate Švejk's chapters in his bedroom. On 3 January 1923, he died ofheart disease. The last known photograph was taken in December 1922.
In theCzech andSlovak public imagination Jaroslav Hašek is fixed as abohemian, perhaps even the prototypical bohemian of the early twentieth century. In fact, this is largely a legend and represents Hašek's self-stylization. An internally disciplined author, Hašek was very productive. From his works it is also apparent that he had an extensive (perhaps a little unsystematic)humanistic education.
It is most instructive to consider Hašek's work inRussia during 1916 to 1920. He has never been and still is not perceived as a mere bohemian orhumorist writer in Russia, but, on the contrary, as a very responsibleBolshevik army official and a respectedintellectual.[23] He was also a relatively skilled soldier. In 1918 he distinguished himself as a courageous commander of theCzechoslovak Red Army troops in the defense ofSamara.[24] Samara was at that time threatened from the direction ofLipyagi station by theCzechoslovak legions, which were fighting alongside theWhite troops to restore the imperial regime, although the legionnaires tried to maintain essential neutrality and fight against the Bolsheviks only when inevitable. On 8 June 1918, Samara was conquered by the legions.[25] It is possible that at this time, Jaroslav Hašek met with Czech "brothers" and may have encouraged them to leave theWhite-Russian party. After the fall of Samara, he was in hiding in a territory controlled byWhite troops (and Czechoslovak legions) for several months.[22]
It is possible that in specific revolutionary Russian conditions, Hašek was given the opportunity to assert those aspects of his character that could not manifest themselves in stabilized and essentially small-town Czech conditions. It was also important that Hašek was banned by his Party organization from drinking alcohol.[26] He was basically sent to Czechoslovakia with the aim of organizing thecommunist movement, which also supports the thesis that he had to be perceived as a responsible person and a capable organizer in Soviet Russia.
A subject of debate and speculation is how Hašek behaved in theRed Army, especially at a time when he was a Commissioner – and deputy commander – ofBugulma.
Hašek had close contact with a number of revolutionaries includingLeon Trotsky.[27] Hašek's closest collaborators in Russia – Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov ("Artem Vesely") or Vladimir Yakovlevich Zazubrin – later became victims ofStalin's repression.[28]
There is also speculation about Hašek's mysterious mission toMongolia, which he probably undertook inSoviet service. The writer Pavel Gan claims that he was there in conjunction with the Chinese revolutionary Chen Chang-Hai, alias Vanya Chang, and was going to go with him toChina, for which reason he probably learned solid Chinese.[28]
A not-well-known aspect of Hašek's biography is that after returning to hishomeland he found himself somewhat isolated. He was uncomfortable from left to right. After he left communist politics, for example,Stanislav Kostka Neumann described him as a "traitor to theproletarian revolution." For the poetKarel Toman he was branded a "traitor of the nation" by his red arm band and refused to shake his hand when he met him in a café after the war.[29] There were more such hostile reactions. Hašek's departure toLipnice, where he wroteŠvejk, was motivated by the hostile atmosphere he met inPrague.[30]
Initially Hašek wrote mainly travel stories, features and humoresques, which he published in magazines. He wrote most of his works in Prague pubs.[31][32]
His prose was based on his own real experiences, confusing investigation of his actual life, because it is not always clear what is true and what is only poetic hyperbole.
Hašek hated pretense, sentimentality, settled life, to which he ironically reacted in satiric verse. Another characteristic feature of his work is resistance to moral and literary conventions.
In his life, he wrote about 1,200 short stories. Most of his short prose is scattered throughout various magazines and newspapers. Over the years nearly all the stories have been collected and printed in book's form. Some texts may however have been lost, for example, the story "The History of the Ox."[10] There is also a number of texts of which Hašek's authorship is likely, but not confirmed.
Words flowed easily from his pen, but this does not mean that he was not creative.František Langer stated that "he was attracted, controlled, absorbed by writing, driven by his almost passionate passion for his writing."[29]
His most famous text by far, the four-part humorous novelThe Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, has been translated into 58 languages and several times filmed and dramatized. Individual parts of the novel have the names: "In the Background (1921)", "At the Front (1922)", "Famous Spanking (1922)" and "Unfinished Continuation of the Famous Spanking" (1923). Hašek's most important work is associated by many people with congenial illustrations byJosef Lada. Hašek did not manage to complete the book. The completion of the work byKarel Vaněk is far from Hašek's original conception. Vanek's completion was based on the continuation of 1921, but was highly criticized (Viktor Dyk,Jaroslav Durych,F. X. Šalda etc.). At first, the work had few followers.Ivan Olbracht was probably the first to mark it as a major work in the cultural section ofRudé právo. "It is one of the best books ever written in the Czech Republic, and Svejk is quite a new type in world literature, equivalent toDon Quixote,Hamlet,Faust,Oblomov,Karamazov," Olbracht wrote.[29]Karel Čapek,Josef Čapek,Julius Fučík andVítězslav Nezval, who connected Hašek's work withDadaism, also adopted a positive attitude,[33] as didDevětsil theoreticianBedřich Václavek. Discussions on the value of the work continued in later years. For example,Václav Černý opposed Švejk, but a wide range of Czech literary theorists, artists, and intellectuals had other views – the philosopherKarel Kosík saw the novel as "an expression of the absurdity of the alienated world"; he described Švejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism. The aesthetistJan Grossman associated Švejk with existentialism; the literary theoristJindřich Chalupecký described Švejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism,"; and the writerMilan Kundera described the novel as "the pure irrationality of history.".[34]
Švejk has been dramatized several times, Hašek himself performed the first dramatization for theEmil Artur Longen "Revolutionary Scene"; in 1928 Švejk turned into a theater performance of Hašek's friendMax Brod, in 1963 byPavel Kohout. The international adaptation was achieved by the adaptation ofSchweik in the Second World War by the German playwright and directorBertold Brecht.
^abMalevič, Oleg (December 2015).V perspektivě desetiletí (monograph) (in Czech). Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press.ISBN9788024628448.Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved2 October 2020.
^Oleg, Malevič (December 2015).V perspektivě desetiletí (in Czech). Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. 399 pages.ISBN9788024628448.Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved2 October 2020.
Pytlík, Radko; Laiske, Miroslav (1960).Bibliografie Jaroslava Haška; soupis jeho díla a literatury o něm [Bibliography of Jaroslav Hašek: a list of his work and literature about him] (in Czech). Praha: Státní pedagogické nakl.OCLC4573600.
