The Good Soldier Švejk is the abbreviated title; the original Czech title of the work isOsudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War). The book is the most translated novel of Czech literature, having been translated into over 50 languages.
Hašek originally intendedŠvejk to cover a total of six volumes, but had completed only three (and started on the fourth) upon his death from heart failure on January 3, 1923.
The novel as a whole was originally illustrated (after Hašek's death) byJosef Lada and more recently by Czech illustrator Petr Urban.[1]
The volumes are:
Behind the Lines (V zázemí, 1921)
At the Front (Na frontě, 1922)
The Glorious Licking (Slavný výprask, 1922)
The Glorious Licking Continues (Pokračování slavného výprasku, 1923; unfinished)
Following Hašek's death, journalist Karel Vaněk was asked by the publisher Adolf Synek to complete the unfinished novel. Vaněk finished the fourth book in 1923 and in the same year also released the fifth and the sixth volumes, titledŠvejk in Captivity (Švejk v zajetí) andŠvejk in Revolution (Švejk v revoluci). These later novels were not published until 1949. In 1991 volumes 5 and 6 were again released asŠvejk in Russian Captivity and Revolution (Švejk v Ruském zajetí a v revoluci), in two volumes or combined.[2]
The novel is set duringWorld War I inAustria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire full oflong-standing ethnic tensions. Fifteen million people died in the war, one million of them Austro-Hungarian soldiers, including around 140,000 who were Czechs. Hašek participated in this conflict and examined it inThe Good Soldier Švejk.
Many of the situations and characters seem to have been inspired, at least in part, by Hašek's service in the 91st Infantry Regiment of theAustro-Hungarian Army. The novel also deals with broader anti-war themes: essentially a series of absurdly comic episodes, it explores the pointlessness and futility of conflict in general and of military discipline, Austrian military discipline in particular. Many of its characters, especially the Czechs, are participating in a conflict they do not understand on behalf of an empire to which they have no loyalty.
The character of Josef Švejk is a development of this theme. Through (possibly feigned) idiocy or incompetence, he repeatedly manages to frustrate military authority and expose its stupidity in a form ofpassive resistance: the reader is left unclear, however, as to whether Švejk is genuinely incompetent, or acting quite deliberately withdumb insolence. These absurd events reach a climax when Švejk, wearing a Russian uniform, is mistakenly taken prisoner by his own side.
In addition to satirisingHabsburg authority, Hašek repeatedly sets out corruption and hypocrisy attributed to priests of theCatholic Church.
Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. He is arrested by a member of the state police, Bretschneider, after making some politically insensitive remarks, and is sent to prison. After being certified insane he is transferred to a madhouse, before being ejected.
Švejk gets hischarwoman to wheel him (he claims to be suffering fromrheumatism) to the recruitment offices in Prague, where his apparent zeal causes a minor sensation. He is transferred to a hospital formalingerers because of his rheumatism. He finally joins the army asbatman to armychaplain Otto Katz. Katz was well able to avoid being sent to the front, managing to have a soft military job in Prague. However, Katz loses Švejk in a bet over a game of cards to Senior Lieutenant Lukáš, whose batman he then becomes — which would eventually lead him to the front.
Lukáš is posted with his march battalion to barracks inČeské Budějovice, in Southern Bohemia, preparatory to being sent to the front. After missing all the trains to Budějovice, Švejk embarks on a longanabasis on foot around Southern Bohemia in a vain attempt to find Budějovice, before being arrested as a possible spy and deserter (a charge he strenuously denies) and escorted to his regiment.
The regiment is soon transferred toBruck an der Leitha, a town on the border between Austria and Hungary. Here, where relations between the two nationalities are somewhat sensitive, Švejk is again arrested, this time for causing an affray involving a respectable Hungarian citizen and engaging in a street fight. He is also promoted to company orderly.
The unit embarks on a long train journey towardsGalicia and theEastern Front. Close to the front line, Švejk is taken prisoner by his own side as a suspected Russian deserter, after arriving at a lake and trying on an abandoned Russian uniform. Narrowly avoiding execution, he manages to rejoin his unit. The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in aPOW camp, much as he himself had done.
The book includes numerous anecdotes told by Švejk (often either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot.
The characters ofThe Good Soldier Švejk are generally either used as the butt of Hašek's absurdist humour or represent fairly broad social and ethnic stereotypes found in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. People are often distinguished by the dialect andregister of Czech or German they speak, a quality that does not translate easily. Many German- and Polish-speaking characters, for example, are shown as speaking comedically broken or heavily accented Czech, while many Czechs speak broken German; much use is also made ofslang expressions.
Some characters are to varying degrees based on real people who served with theImperial and Royal 91st Infantry Regiment, in which Hašek served as a one-year volunteer. (Much research has been conducted into this issue and the results are part of thecatalog of all 585 people, both real and fictitious, that appear in the novel.)
Josef Švejk
The novel's hero: in civilian life afence specializing in stolen dogs. Based partly on František Strašlipka, the young batman to Oberleutnant Rudolf Lukas, Hašek's company commander.[3]
Palivec
The foul-mouthed landlord of Švejk's local pub – the "U Kalicha" ("At the Chalice") on Na Bojišti street, Prague. Despite refusal to discuss any politics ("it smells ofPankrác") Palivec is eventually arrested by Bretschneider (see below) after commenting that flies shit on the portrait ofFranz Joseph in the pub.
Police Agent Bretschneider
A secret policeman who repeatedly tries to catch Švejk and others out on their anti-monarchist views. He is eventually eaten by his own dogs, after buying a succession of animals from Švejk in an attempt to incriminate him.
Staff Warder Slavík
A cruel and corrupt prison official (revealed to have himself ended up in prison under theRepublic of Czechoslovakia).
Has a fondness for drinking, especiallycommunion wine, and gambling. Švejk seems fond of Katz, but the latter loses the services of Švejk to Lieutenant Lukáš in a game of cards.
Švejk's long-sufferingcompany commander. A Czech from South Bohemia, Lukáš is something of a womanizer but is depicted in a broadly sympathetic manner by Hašek (the records of the real-life 91st Regiment show an Oberleutnant Rudolf Lukas – the same rank as the character – at the time of Hašek's service; Hašek admired Lukas and even wrote him a number of poems. Lukas was Hašek's company commander.[4]) Though Švejk's actions eventually lead to Lukáš' being labelled as a notorious philanderer in the Hungarian national press, he starts to miss Švejk after the latter is promoted to company orderly.
Colonel Friedrich Kraus von Zillergut
An idiotic Austrian officer with a penchant for giving his colleagues long-winded, moronic explanations of everyday objects (such as thermometers and postage stamps) and situations; run over by a cart while attempting to demonstrate what apavement is. Kraus's dog is stolen by Švejk as a gift for Lukáš; the enraged colonel subsequently arranges Lukáš's transfer to the front.
Captain Ságner
One of the regiment's professional officers and commander of Švejk'smarch battalion; an ambitious careerist, he is later revealed to have been a closet Czech patriot in his youth. A Captain Vinzenz Sagner served in the 91st Regiment, where he was Hašek's battalion commander.[4]
Colonel Schröder
The bad-temperedcolonel of Švejk's regiment, and a caricature of typical German-speaking senior officers of the Austrian army.
Jurajda
The battalion'sspiritualist cook; before military service he had edited an "occultist" journal. Spends time attempting to avoid frontline service through letters he is writing to his wife, in which he details meals he is intending to cook for senior officers.
2nd Lieutenant Dub
Dub is a Czech schoolmaster, reserve officer, and commander of the battalion's 3rd company: he has strongly monarchist views. As a conservative, pro-Habsburg Czech, Dub is the subject of some of Hašek's most vicious satire. Repeatedly placed in humiliating situations, such as being found drunk in abrothel or falling off a horse. (In allSlavonic languages the worddub ("oak") itself is a common synonym for a dull, idiotic person.)[citation needed] He is said to have been based on a lieutenant of the reserve, Mechálek, who served in Hašek's regiment. The novel is ended by words of Lieutenant Dub: "With the district governor, we always said: Patriotism, loyalty to duty, self-overcoming, these are the real weapons in war! I remember this especially today, when our troops will cross the border in the foreseeable future."[4]
Quartermaster Sergeant-Major Vaněk
Another recurring character, Vaněk (a chemist fromKralupy nad Vltavou in civilian life) is an example of an easy-going but self-serving seniorNCO, whose main concern is to make his own existence as comfortable as possible. A Jan Vaněk served in Hašek's regiment, and has some traits in common with the figure from the novel (domicile and occupation).[4]
Volunteer Marek
The character of one-year volunteer Marek is to some degree a self-portrait by the author, who was himself a one-year volunteer in the 91st. For example, Marek – like Hašek – was editor of a natural history magazine. Marek is appointed the battalion historian by Ságner and occupies himself with devising memorable and heroic deaths in advance for his colleagues.
Biegler is a young junior officer with pretensions to nobility, despite being the middle-class son of afurrier. Biegler takes his military duties so seriously that he is ridiculed even by his senior officers, and is mistakenly hospitalised as a "carrier ofcholera germs" after medical staff misdiagnose (for army PR reasons) a cognac-induced hangover. Cadet Biegler also had a real-life model in the 91st regiment (Cadet Johann Biegler, later lieutenant).[4]
Captain Tayrle
The brigadeadjutant and a particularly disgusting example of a headquarters officer, whose interests appear to lie mainly in crude jokes and sampling of local prostitutes.
An aristocratic, vicious and near-insane senior Austrian officer and commander of the garrison fort ofPrzemyśl, Fink treats his men with extreme brutality. He almost succeeds in having Švejk executed after the latter is taken prisoner by his own side. His name and look in 1958 film is based on Prussian generalKarl Fink von Finkenstein.
Chaplain Martinec
A chaplain plagued by drink-induced spiritual doubts, whose attempt to provide spiritual consolation to Švejk ends in disaster.
"Sergeant Teveles"
A man in possession of a silverMilitary Merit Medal, purchased from aBosnian, and claiming to be a Sergeant Teveles, who had previously disappeared along with the entire 6 March Company during fighting inBelgrade.
A miller fromČeský Krumlov in civilian life, and Švejk's successor as Lukáš'sbatman, Baloun is a glutton and is regularly punished for stealing Lukáš's food. He eats raw dough, sausage skins, etc., when nothing else is available.
According to John Willett in his 1959 bookThe Theatre of Bertolt Brecht,Brecht, in an unpublished note, said ofThe Good Soldier Švejk: “If anyone asks me to pick three literary works of this century which in my opinion will become part of world literature, then I would have to say one of them is Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk.”.[5]
JP Stern quotes critic Macdonald Daly as saying ofThe Good Soldier Svejk:
...the only genuine popular creation of modern European literature; popular in the sense of immediately appealing to unliterary and relatively unsophisticated readers; popular in the sense of being modelled on them; and popular in the sense of being the product of an unliterary, naive creative imagination. Svejk’s immediate grip on the imagination of the new Czechoslovak Republic was revealed by a number of plays of the 1920s which stole the character and transplanted him to often bizarre new situations: Svejk Has Twins, Svejk as a Football Player, even Svejk on Mars! But Svejk endures transplantation across time as well as across space. In a Europe in which a major empire has so recently dissolved under the impetus of popular discontent, Hasek’s hero speaks to us of the value and importance of being ordinary. He teaches us that those who make history are usually not aiming to make history.[9]
"Every harassed negotiator, every beleaguered political wife and anyone given to ever-increasing moments of melancholy at the way things are should keep a copy of Hasek's classic 'don't let the bastards get you down' novel to hand. It's anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-religion and - praise indeed - even funnier than Catch-22."[10]
The seeming idiocy and suspected subversion of Švejk has entered the Czech language in the form of words such asšvejkovina ("švejking"),švejkovat ("to švejk"),švejkárna (situational and systemic absurdity), etc.[11] The name has also entered the English dictionary, in the form ofSchweik, "A person likened to the character of Schweik, pictured as an unlucky and simple-minded but resourceful little man oppressed by higher authorities," and the derivative formsto Schweik,Schweikism, andSchweikist.[12]
In the British television documentaryHollywood (1979), a history of American silent films, directorFrank Capra claimed the screen character of comedianHarry Langdon, which Capra helped to formulate, was partially inspired byThe Good Soldier Švejk.
At Prague'sNATO summit in 2002, a man dressed as the Good Soldier and using Svejk's typical crutches to support himself, appeared at an anti-alliance protest, shouting at the top of his voice: "ToBaghdad, Mrs Muller, to Baghdad...", showing just how deep the character is etched on the Czech psyche.[13]
Švejk is the subject of films, plays, an opera, a musical, comic books, and statues, even the theme of restaurants in a number of European countries. The novel is also the subject of an unpublished operetta byPeter Gammond. Švejk has many statues and monuments, for example, atHumenné inSlovakia;Przemyśl andSanok inPoland;St. Petersburg,Omsk, andBugulma inRussia andKyiv,Lviv, andDonetsk inUkraine. InKraków, there is a plaque on a building where the author was imprisoned for 7 days for vagrancy by the Austrian authorities. There has been speculation that Hašek got the idea for Švejk at that time, based on one of his fellow prisoners in the jail.[14] The first statue of Švejk in the Czech Republic was unveiled in August 2014, in the village ofPutim in South Bohemia.[15]
1962:Velká cesta ("The Long Journey") is a Czechoslovak-Soviet black-and-white co-production film, made atMosfilm studios in Moscow, recounting parts of Hašek's life that inspired much ofThe Good Soldier Švejk. It stars Josef Abraham as Jaroslav Hašek and is directed by Jurij Ozerov.
1986: Czechoslovakpuppetoon versionOsudy dobrého vojáka Švejka (The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik) appears.[18]
2009:The Good Soldier Shweik [uk], animated film, United Kingdom/Ukraine, written by Robert Crombie and directed by Rinat Gazizov and Manyk Depoyan.[19]
1967–68: In Finland the book was adapted for television as a ten-part black-and-white series calledThe Good Soldier Schweik [fi] (Kunnon sotamies Svejkin seikkailuja), starring Matti Varjo in the eponymous role.[21]
1935:Arthur Koestler mentions in his autobiography that in 1935 he was commissioned byWilly Münzenberg, theComintern propagandist, to write a novel calledThe Good Soldier Schweik Goes to War Again. He adds that the project was cancelled by the Communist Party when half the book had been written due to what they termed the book's "pacifist errors".[24] Writing in 1954, Koestler stated that "about a hundred pages of the manuscript survive, and are in parts quite funny, in a coarsely farcical manner". However, Koestler – by then a staunch anti-Communist – never tried to get it published.
The Good Soldier Švejk is the most translated novel of Czech literature (58 languages in 2013).[29] Excerpts from the first chapter, translated into German byMax Brod asDer Brave Soldat Schwejk, were published two days after Hašek's death in the Prague German language paperPrager Tagblatt on January 5, 1923.[30] Following Max Brod's first steps toward a German translation, he introduced the book toGrete Reiner, executive editor of the anti-fascist magazineDeutsche Volkszeitung. Her translation of Švejk into German in 1926 was largely responsible for the speedy dissemination of Švejk's fame across Europe. It was one of the books burned by theNational Socialists in 1933. Her translation was said to be one ofBertolt Brecht's favourite books.[31] Reiner was murdered inAuschwitz on 9 March 1944. After the war, many other translations followed and Švejk became the most famous Czech book abroad.
The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, Book One,The Centennial Edition, tr. Zdeněk "Zenny" K. Sadloň, 2024; (IngramSpark: ISBN 979-8218487089;Amazon:ISBN979-8327723146)
The first English translation, by Paul Selver, was heavily abridged, reducing the novel to about two thirds of its original length.[33] Selver's translation alsobowdlerized the original text, omitting paragraphs and occasionally pages that may have seemed offensive; despite this he has been praised for preserving some of the tension in the work between Literary and Common Czech.[34] Cecil Parrott, former British ambassador to Czechoslovakia, produced the first unabridged translation of the work. Parrott is a rather literal translator, sometimes unimaginatively so. This literalness and uncertain command of English slang registers sometimes leads Parrott into awkward-sounding English.[34] The translation by Sadloň (and Book One collaborator Joyce) is the latest, an American translation by a native Czech speaker.
^Jareš, Michal; Tomáš Prokůpek (2010). "Translated Title: The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War and Comics".Czech Literature (5):607–625.
^Červinková, Hana (2004)."Time to Waste".The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies.1. Archived fromthe original on 2008-05-29. Retrieved2008-06-04.
^Schweik. Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2005.
