Czech 22

By A.T. Baker

THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK

by JAROSLAV HASEK 752 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell. $10.

The eternal innocent. The implacable innocent. The innocent who confounds authority, the sophistry of law and the mindless brutalities of bureaucracy with sheer simplicity and obdurate truth. In the endless flux of empires, ideologies and wars, he is the irreducible survivor. Such a one was Voltaire's Candide, Cervantes' Sancho Panza, Joseph Heller's Yossarian--and Jaroslav HaSek's Good Soldier Svejk.

Fat, untidy and crapulous, Svejk is a natural disaster as a soldier. He drinks anything that is not nailed down, eats anything that is not moving, and flummoxes disciplinarians and exhorters by admitting everything instantly--always at great length and with illustrations. Hasek's Svejk was a Czech and like most Czechs was a reluctant subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially after World War I broke out. When Svejk is drafted despite his rheumatic legs, he borrows a wheelchair, crutches and an old army cap, gets himself wheeled through the streets of Prague on his way to the induction station, crying "On to Belgrade!", and is apotheosized by the official press as the most gallant of volunteers for the great glory of the Austro-Hungarian cause. Thereafter he contrives to misplace both his papers and his battalion--which keeps him from having to fight the Serbs or the Russians for weeks and weeks.

Svejk was first introduced to European readers in the early '20s. Along with Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, the book became a popular symbol of the antimilitarism and distrust of glorious causes that flourished between the wars. Published in the U.S. in 1930--with Svejk spelled Schweik--the book, illustrated by Josef Lada, became a bestseller. The editors of that day discreetly excised more than one-third of the text, because of Svejk-Schweik's scatological expressions. This new version by Sir Cecil Parrott of the University of Lancaster translates every excremention that Svejk is prone to.

Svejk revisited seems a timely project, especially since it introduces the book's creator, who uncannily resembles his own hero. Jaroslav Hasek's father died of drink in 1896 when the boy was 13. Hasek became a dropout, vagabond, drunk and professed anarchist. He was constantly in trouble and often in jail. Like Svejk, too, he was less political than impudent.

Some time in 1915, for instance, Hasek checked into a hotel-brothel in Prague, registering under a Russian-sounding name. On the accompanying police questionnaire, he gave as his reason for being in Prague, "to investigate the activities of the Austrian general staff." The police at once surrounded the hotel. They discovered that the Russian name spelled backward came out in Czech as "Kiss my arse." Blandly Hasek explained that he just wanted to see if the Austrian police were on their toes--and got off with five days in jail.

"Eyes Right." After that Hasek was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. He deserted to the Russians, converted to Bolshevism and became a commissar. Later, he gave up the Party and drifted back to Prague. There, as he slowly died of drink and TB, Hasek wrote the saga of the good soldier Svejk.

The mode is heavy irony, a technique that is not familiar to Anglo-Saxon literature but is a staple of Middle Europe. A general, getting to heaven, demands to know why the soldiers he passes do not do "Eyes right." His driver explains that they cannot because their heads have been blown off. When the battalion goes to get rations, they get instead a postcard with the message:

"His Eminence the Archbishop of Budapest used in his prayers such beautiful expressions as, for instance: 'God bless our bayonets that they may pierce deeply into your enemies' bellies.' "

Despite the repetitions, the discursiveness, the sometimes labored irony, Svejk/Hasek speaks vividly to a new generation that is disillusioned with power, glory and war. The reader gets the feeling that he can begin anywhere in the book, stop anywhere, and still get the essence of it. For the essence is Svejk, and Svejk travels well.

A.T. Baker

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