The Good Soldier Švejk by
Jaroslav
Hašek (1921)
Recommended by Barry
It was my first week at university. I was overcome with finally getting out of Norwich and getting in ached-for
London. (I say ‘finally’ – I was only
eighteen – but, through that teenage telescope, it had felt like I’d been
waiting for a century). Yet I was also terrifically scared of what I was doing.
I had hoped everyone would magically crowd around, desperate to befriend me due
to my knowledge of Elastica’s Peel Sessions or something. They didn’t.
Well, one did. And I was
desperate to befriend him as well.
Barry.
We started going out, and
remained a couple throughout university. The transition to the real world
didn’t work out for us – we fell apart after graduation – but, and I think this
is a credit to us both, we rebuilt our relationship into something else. Our
very strong friendship has now lasted four times as long as our stint as
partners.
He told his story with all possible detail, not even
forgetting to mention that forget-me-nots were blooming on the dam of the lake
where his misfortune had happened.
Is Hašek talking about the good soldier Švejk? Or am I still
describing Barry? For Barry has a way with discussion – I think it was Jude who
coined the phrase ‘Barry time’ – that explores, and unpicks, and muses. I don’t
know anyone else who I could converse with on one narrow topic for well over
two hours and never be bored (on the contrary, I become ever more engaged with
every philosophical capillary we investigate).
Švejk, on the other hand, often exasperates the
people he regales with his wandering anecdotes. His myopic military superiors
consider him a gibbering dunderhead.
But, of course, even
though he often pretends to be, he’s nothing of the sort.
The Good Soldier Švejk is a comment on the colossal preposterousness of the Great War.
I’ve studied this period in some detail, and as well as all the usual
Schlieffen Plan and Battle of Verdun material, I learned about cultural
reactions to the conflict. There were many, of course (including sorrow, pride,
humour) but a less immediately obvious one was calling it out on its phenomenal
absurdity.
Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech author and, at
the time of the Great War, Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
(which was Germany’s main ally). Yet while Germany had relatively recently
become a nation-state – and was confident, sleek, cohesive and industrially
buoyant – the Austro-Hungarian Empire was its complete opposite. Rent with nationalist
squabble (it also contained some of the modern Balkan nation-states),
ethnicities fought over their own issues in their own languages, hardly
presenting a clear fighting front. This crumbling empire was a feeble
anachronism in 1914.
In comparison to the more
famous literature on the Great War, such as Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front (German), Barbusse’s Under Fire (French) or the poetry of
Wilfred Owen (British), The Good Solider Švejk already starts
within a stranger locale. And it sets out its savage comedy stall right from
the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
‘Which
Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?’ he asked, going
on with the massaging. ‘I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša’s, the chemist, and once by
mistake he drank a bottle of hair oil. And the other is Ferdinand Kokoška who collects dog manure. Neither of them is
any loss.’
From here on in, Švejk navigates,
as best he can, the ramble of petty bureaucracy, nonsense orders and pointless
actions all generated by the war. Significantly, the enemy is barely mentioned.
Švejk’s war is in and of itself: an exasperating maze within the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
The Good Soldier Švejk doesn’t have much of an over-arching narrative (the introduction
asserts that the alcoholic Hašek was often
blotto when he wrote it and, as the book was originally a magazine serial, he
span it out to maximise his income). Instead, it’s a vignette-heavy read. Some
of the most charming of these are between Švejk and Lieutenant Lukáš. Lukáš is the one senior
officer characterized as something more than a sadist or an idiot, and Švejk is
loyal to this irascible, yet somehow entirely adorable, man. Often, Lukáš will think he’s
rid of Švejk, who seems to cause him naught but headaches. He should be so
lucky.
Švejk and the Lieutenant were silent. Both observed each other
closely for a long time. Lukáš stared at Švejk as
though he was preparing to hypnotise him like a cock standing in front of a
chicken and waiting to spring on it. Švejk as usual looked at
Lieutenant Lukáš with moist tender eyes as though wanting to say: ‘United again,
heart of mine!’
The illustrations, plenty
of them, are by Josef Lada. Although Hašek never got to approve them as they were commissioned after the
author’s death, Lada’s work can’t be faulted. He plucks out the tiniest moments
from the text, and conveys character perfectly through guileless half-smiles,
backwards head tilts and the angle of eyebrows.
There’s also room in The Good Soldier Švejk for some traumatic
moments, made even more so because they are in the same satirical
style. The references to wartime disease and injury, including the lack of
respect for how people may be mentally affected by their experience, are
particularly cutting. And then there’s the droll way that Švejk talks
of dying in battle.
‘I think that it’s splendid to get oneself run through
with a bayonet,’ said Švejk, ‘and also that it’s not bad to get a
bullet in the stomach. It’s even grander when you’re torn to pieces by a shell
and you see that your legs and belly are somehow remote from you. It’s very
funny and you die before anyone can explain it to you.’
Although I don’t think
it’s as well-written, this is a book in the same vein as Gogol’s Dead Souls. It is often bawdy and
foul-mouthed, which must have caused quite a stir at the time. (I learned a
cracking Serbian insult from it – jebem
ti dušu – fuck your soul!)
What The Good Soldier Švejk gets across is that, yes, the Great War was a tragedy on a grand
scale. But it was stupid on a grand
scale, too. It allowed stupid people stupid amounts of power, and it encouraged
them to exercise it stupidly. Moreover, if you weren’t stupid, you damn well
better pretend to be stupid: else (rather stupidly) you’ll be the first to end
up dead.
