4. Czech Republic

“The Good Soldier Svejk” – Jaroslav Hasek. Translated by Cecil Parrott.

Most compare the Good Soldier Svejk to Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) and they are not wrong: it is a riotous and ridiculous send up of war and military pretensions.  Starting with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, we follow ordinary Private Svejk through various Austrian state prisons, into the army, out of the army, off to war, away from war, back to war and god knows where else.  All the while he drinks, tells rambling pointless stories, disrespects his superiors in the most underhand manner and is generally a despicable soldier.

Jaroslav Hasek seems like an interesting character, not dissimilar to Svejk himself.  He is often said to have been an anarchist, sympathetic to the anarchist Russian writers, which perhaps comes across in the anti-establishment tenor of the story.  He fought in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War but was captured by the Russians and later became a Bolshevik sympathiser before returning to what had become Czechslovakia and dying before he could finish the rather rambling four volume set of stories which is “Good Soldier Svejk” (“GSS”).  At the time in which GSS is set, the country that would later become the Czech Republic is part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The empire was a mish-mash of different regions, ethnicities and languages in which a Czech national identity was arising in opposition to imperial control. Secret police haunt the opening chapters of the novel and the loyalty of Czech soldiers to the Hapsburg empire is always in doubt.

Where my appreciation for GSS really lay, was in its constant pricking of the old authorities: the imperial Austrian government, the Church, the military.  To wit: Svejk being immediately under suspicion because he was pleased to be conscripted into the army, Chaplain Katz the whiskey priest (to whom he is a batman), the whole debacle of a battalion trying to move through Galicia to the front, waylaid by orders from insane regimental commanders and senile Austrian generals who insist the men defecate by platoons.  In this it is a novel of its time, an anarchist author poking fun at the noble and religious figures of the old European power which had been unmasked by the ineptitude of WW1.

This is not a book of soft feelings; plenty of women, Jewish characters and civilians get a hard time with little sympathy.  The attitudes to each are certainly of their time and place. But the tragedy of war is never far behind, and there is a degree of sympathy for its victims. Whether it is the pathos of the soldiers expected to die for an emperor in which they do not believe, or the plight of civilians forced off their land.  This was a nice antidote to “The World of Yesterday” (see post for Austria) which somewhat venerated the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The question always in the back of your mind is how these imperial numpties were ever allowed to lead an entire continent into war.  The answer of course is just because they were in charge and had been for some time. This for me is the key difference to Catch-22: that is a send up of the American idols (big business, democracy, the inherent goodness of the United States). GSS is a denigration of the old European certainties, the traditions we still cling to, the religions which even now are shaping the laws of our different states.  It undermines, not just the myth of a noble national purpose, but even the idea of collective endeavour: Svejk is not a Proletarian hero, he is an idiot and a chancer, living on his wits and not really being any use or help to anyone. He’s a sympathetic everyman but he’s hardly a shining light of grassroots collaboration. And that’s all to the good, because despite myself I like him and, like Catch-22, I like the cynical, nihilistic take on things otherwise venerated.

As Jaroslav Hasek says:

“If the word ‘Svejk’ becomes a new choice specimen in the already florid garland of abuse I must be content with this enrichment of the Czech language.”