One does not need to be well-versed in history to appreciate the dark humor of Jaroslav Hašek’s satirical story The Good Soldier Švejk, though a familiarity with the Eastern European socio-political landscape during the First World War would add to a reader’s appreciation of the book’s context.
Hašek’s original intent was to write a six-volume novel about the character of Švejk, a seemed imbecile who enlists to fight in The Great War but, through a series of many tragic-comic episodes, never actually reaches the front. But Hašek died with only four volumes written.
The question that hovers in the reader’s mind throughout the novel is whether or not Švejk truly is simply pretending to be an imbecile – as he tells a companion, “The best thing you can do … is to pretend to be an idiot” – or if he is not the clever genius he purports to be and actually is a misbegotten fool with delusions of grandeur.
Hašek’s epic is peopled with dozens of memorable characters, from the boozing Chaplain, to the paranoid Lieutenant Dub and the insatiable soldier Baloun. Most of the soldiers Hašek introduces are parodies of themselves, but also represent a political statement by Hašek, who fought in the First World War and spent several years in Russian prison camps.
I found myself engrossed in the introduction by Cecil Parrott, who sketches Hašek’s life – his anarchic tendencies, his political dalliances and bohemian escapades. Truly Hašek’s life would make for a rollicking good biography.
It is difficult to imagine that so many wicked and amusing things could happen to one man, but Hašek uses well his experiences – prison camps and mental institutions alike – to create one of the most famous stories ever written about the First World War.
752 pp.
