The Good Soldier Švejk

Jaroslav Hašek in 1911.

© LA-PNP

Jaroslav Hašek (30 April 1883 - 3 January 1923) was an author and satirist from Prague who he lived a short and extremely turbulent life.

He is best known as the author of the famous satirical novel The Good Soldier Švejk (literally L(The Fates of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War)) but also wrote more than 1,200 short stories/feiulletons/articles, numerous poems, and co-authored some cabaret plays. His literary output may have been even greater than these numbers indicate because he flooded newspapers and magazines with his stories and used at least 100 pseudonyms.

Childhood

Hašek's parents were from South Bohemia, with a background in the so-called educated peasant classes. His father was an assistant teacher, later an employee of Banka Slavia, but died already in 1896. After the father's death, the family landed in economic difficulties and they moved no less than fifteen times during the childhood and adolescence of the young Jaroslav.

Education and budding writer

Despite the changing circumstances, Hašek obtained a higher education but soon showed himself incapable of living an orderly life. He had graduated from the Českoslovanská akademie obchodní (1899 -1902) with good marks and was the same autumn employed by Banka Slavia. Here he was dismissed after less than six months after having been absent from work twice without permission. After that, he turned into a creative and productive writer and journalist, despite his untidy lifestyle and high alcohol consumption. As early as 1901, still a student at the commercial academy, he published his first stories in Národní listy and one of his teachers recognised his literary talent and saw in him a “Czech Mark Twain”. In 1903 he published the poetry collection Majové vykřiky (The Cries of May), together with his friend Ladislav Hájek.

Wanderings

During the summers of 1899 through 1905 Jaroslav Hašek undertook long journeys in G(Central Europe), and even in the Balkans. These provided rich material for his short stories and the later masterpiece The Good Soldier Švejk. During these travels, he was often penniless, slept outside, and partly traveled on foot. He got to see society from its bottom perspective, something that strongly influenced his writing and political outlook. The region he visited most frequently was Slovakia, but he also made trips to Bavaria, Switzerland, Italy, Galicia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. In addition, he visited the areas of modern Romania and may have set foot in current Ukraine and Serbia. It has also been claimed that he visited to Bulgaria and Macedonia in 1903.

Anarchist and police encounters

Hašek some time before 1909

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Even before writing The Good Soldier Švejk (1921-22) Jaroslav Hašek had a reputation as a prominent satirist but was also viewed as controversial due to a period as an active anarchist. Hašek had repeated conflicts with the police, mostly due to drunkenness and public disorder. He was however also under surveillance due to his involvement in the Anarchist movement. He was jailed several times, the most serious case was in 1907 when he was sentenced for inciting violence against the police during a demonstration on 1 May 1907.

In the Animal World

In early 1909 Hašek succeeded his friend Ladislav Hájek as editor of the natural science magazine Svět zvířat. The job was quite well paid and here enjoyed the longest period of permanent employment ever. The stable income and permanent position enabled him to finally married Jarmila Mayerová whom he had been courting since 1906. Her parents had been vehemently opposed to the relationship because of Hašek's anarchist connection and his unorthodox lifestyle, but in the end consented after the prospective groom became permanently employed. The bliss was however short-lived as Hašek was dismissed in the autumn of 1910. His presence in the office had become increasingly rare, and worse: readers had started to question many of the facts presented in the journal.

The early Švejk

As early as 1911 Hašek had thought up The Good Soldier Švejk. During the summer five stories about the soldier were published, although very different from the later novel in style and content. The stinging satire was lacking, Švejk tells no anecdotes, and the stories obviously lack the strong connection to military reality that the author’s own experiences in the army lend to the novel. Švejk also appeared in a couple of cabaret plays around this time.

A mock party

Simultaneously as Švejk was born Hašek with some friends founded the mock party called Strana mírného pokroku v mezích zákona. According to its manifest this happened in April 1911. It was partly a forum for ridiculing the political elites, and partly founded to increase the turnover at the pub where the party meetings were held.

A broken marriage

Jaroslav and Jarmila at Karlovo náměstí

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In May 1912 their son Richard was born but soon afterward Hašek left the family, only to see them again in 1921. The constraints and rigours of family life had not suited him, and again he took up his bohemian way of life. After leaving his family, his life spiralled downwards and he virtually became homeless, sleeping over at friends. Again he started to travel, now locally in Bohemia, mostly together with his friend Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he was staying with the painter Josef Lada.

In the Austro-Hungarian army

The war led to big changes in Hašek’s life. Never having served the compulsory military service (probably for health reasons), he was deemed fit for duty in 1914. On 17 February 1915 he was enlisted with Infanterieregiment Nr. 91 in Budějovice, was sent to the front in Galicia in early July and was captured by the Russians on 24 September 1915. His time in the army eventually provided rich material for The Good Soldier Švejk. In the novel, many geographical details and other circumstances reflect the author’s experiences when serving with IR. 91. Hašek's time with the regiment is investigated in more detail in the entry Jaroslav Hašek in the Who's who section.

Captivity and the Legions

Jan Šípek, Jaroslav Hašek, Václav Menger.

Berezne (Ukraine), 12 October 1917

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In Russian captivity in the Totskoye camp Hašek contracted typhus, a disease that killed thousands of his fellow prisoners. In the spring of 1916, he volunteered for the M(Czechoslovak Brigade) (later a.k.a Legions), was released from the camp in early July, and was formally enlisted on 29 June 1916. In the Legions, he worked as a recruiter amongst prisoners of war. He also worked as a journalist for the tsar-loyalist weekly Čechoslovan in Kiev. During this period Hašek voiced strong nationalist sentiments and even supported the Tsar Nicholas II's regime which he saw as the strongest supporter of a future Czech state. After several episodes that embarrassed the Czech volunteers, he was sent to the front as an ordinary soldier in May 1917. His satirical article The Czech Pickwick Club, led to further disciplinary measures. On 2 July 1917, Hašek took part in the battle of Zborów where the Czechoslovak volunteers for the first time faced their own compatriots as a unit.

Communist

Hašek announced that he is leaving the Czech Army, disagreeing with the transfer to France (13 April 1918).

The Russian October Revolution in 1917 and the ensuing peace treaty between the new Soviet state and the Central Powers made continuing the war from Russian soil impossible for the Legions. They were formally placed under French command, and it was decided to transfer them to the western front via Vladivostok. This was a decision that Jaroslav Hašek disagreed with. He preferred that his countrymen remain in Russia, presumably in the hope that the front against the Central Powers would be reopened. From the beginning of 1918, he also became increasingly influenced by communist ideas. Witnessing the Bolshevik occupation of Kiev in February may have contributed to this shift. According to Josef Pospíšil, he judged the Bolshevik leaders as very capable. He may also have been influenced by the young communist Břetislav Hůla, his co-editor at Čechoslovan from November 1917 onwards. At this stage, many left-wing groups disapproved of Lenin's Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, and it would have been natural for Hašek to align with those.

In March 1918 Jaroslav Hašek and Břetislav Hůla, fleeing from the advancing Germans, travelled to Moscow and reported to the Czech social democrats (Communists). In April Jaroslav Hašek put in writing that he left the Czech Army (i.e. Legions), stating that he disagreed with their transfer to France. During the spring of 1918, the relationship between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks deteriorated, and at the end of May, an armed rebellion broke out. This led Hašek into direct conflict with his former comrades. He and other Czech Communists were branded as traitors, and arrest orders for the more prominent of them were issued, with a particular emphasis on Hašek (Omsk 25 July 1918). By now all bridges had been burnt and from October he worked directly for the Bolshevik’s 5th Army.

In Russia Hašek's career made rapid progress. He worked for the political department of the 5th Army and he journeyed all the way to Irkutsk. Hašek was mainly responsible for propaganda and recruitment among the many foreign prisoners of war who still remained in Russia. He published in Czech, Russian, German, Bashkir, Hungarian, and Buryat. In Siberia, he married again, Alexandra Lvova (Šura). This was despite him not being formally divorced from Jarmila. During his time in the Bolshevik 5th Army, he proved himself a capable organizer and had also ceased drinking.

Returning home

Hašek some weeks before his death. Lipnice 1922.

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In the summer of 1920 circumstances changed again. The Bolsheviks had in effect won the Russian Civil War, and the many foreigners in their service were not needed in Russia any more. They were deemed more useful as agitators in their home countries and Comintern issued directives that they were to be dispatched to help the national Communist movements. On 26 August 1920, the Irkutsk section of the party received a telegram that ordered Hašek to relinquish his duties and report to the Central Bureau of the Czech section of the Communist Party. On 24 October he left Irkutsk for Moscow where he appeared on 26 November. He arrived in Prague on 19 December after having travelled via Narva, Tallinn, Stettin, and Berlin and having spent a week in quarantine in Pardubice. By then the communist uprising that he was supposed to take part in had failed and the organisers had been arrested. Back in Praha he soon reverted to his former habits, and he was of little use to the Communist movement thereafter although he still contributed to their newspapers and never renounced his convictions. If Hašek was controversial in pre-war Prague, he was even more so now; there was the threat of legal proceedings because of bigamy and he was widely unpopular due to his Bolshevik past. Gustav Janouch also claims to have witnessed an attempt to lynch him.

A satirical masterpiece

Around February/March 1921 he hit on the idea to re-kindle his soldier Švejk, now in the form of a novel, and he started to write The Good Soldier Švejk, a book that was planned in six parts. The first part and at least the first chapter of the second was completed in Žižkov and was initially sold in instalments. Although The Good Soldier Švejk sold well it was only after Švejk was performed on stage from 1 November 1921 onwards that glowing reviews first appeared in influential newspapers. Max Brod, Ivan Olbracht, and Alfred Fuchs were the first enthusiastic reviewers. Soon after Hašek signed a contract with the publisher Adolf Synek.

Already before the novel's November 1921 breakthrough, Hašek had moved to Lipnice (on 25 August 1921) where he completed Part Two, wrote Part Three, and started on the fourth part of The Good Soldier Švejk. Unfortunately, his health took a downward turn, the hard life had taken its toll and he had also become dangerously overweight. Jaroslav Hašek never managed to complete the fourth part of his epic novel and died on 3 January 1923. The causes of death were stated as pneumonia and heart failure. The claim that he drank himself to death is widespread and though alcohol was not the primary cause of death, it was surely a contributing factor.

Biographies

Jaroslav Hašek is the subject of a number of biographies, although most of them are available exclusively in Czech. Autobiographical material is almost non-existent, apart from those elements of his own life that he frequently mixed into his writing. This information should be viewed with scepticism, as Hašek was an accomplished mystificator who mixed facts, half-facts, and inventions in a convincing manner. Almost all that is known about him today is therefore based on the accounts from people who knew him and material from various archives and newspapers.

For the international reading public, the best source of factual information is no doubt The Bad Bohemian (1978) by Cecil Parrott, the author of the second English translation of The Good Soldier Švejk. Parrott’s biography is to a degree based on Radko Pytlík,s de-facto standard Toulavé house (1971).

A rare but valuable book is Emanuel Frynta’s Hašek, the Creator of Schweik. It comes with many illustrations and has been competently translated into English. It focuses more on the artistic view of the author, rather than the biographical details that other biographies lean towards.

There is also literature about Jaroslav Hašek in German, for instance, the well-documented but speculative Der Vater des braven Soldaten Schweik by Gustav Janouch (1966). Jan Berwid-Buquoy has also written books in German about Hašek. These are entertaining but of dubious veracity.