Born: Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), 30 April 1883. Education: Educated at St. Stephen’s School, 1891-93; Imperial and Royal Junior Gymnasium, 1893-97, expelled; Czechoslavonic Commercial Academy, 1899-1902. Family: Married Jarmila Mayerova in 1910 (separated 1912), one son; bigamous marriage with Shura Lvova in 1920. Career: Worked for a chemist in late 1890s; wrote stories and sketches for several humorous and political magazines from 1901; also wrote and performed cabaret sketches; clerk, Insurance Bank of Slavie, 1902-03; jailed for anarchist rioting, 1907; editor, Svet zvirat [Animal World], 1909-10; assistant editor, Czech Word, 1911; conscripted into the Austrian army, 1915; captured by the Russians: allowed to work for Czech forces in Russia, and staff member, Cechoslovan, Kiev, 1916-18; after a propaganda battle, 1917-18, left Czech group and entered political department of the Siberian Army: editor, Our Path (later Red Arrow), 1919, Red Europe, 1919, and other propaganda journals in Russia and Siberia; sent to Czechoslovakia to do propaganda work, 1920; lived in Lipnice from 1921. Died: 3 January 1923.
Publications
Collection
Spisy [Works]. 16 vols., 1955-68.
Fiction
Dobry vojak Svejk a jine podivne historky [The Good Soldier Svejk and Other Strange Stories]. 1912.
Trampotypana Tenkrata [The Tribulations of Mr. That-Time]. 1912.
Pruvodci cizincu a jine satiry [The Tourists' Guide and Other Satires from Home]. 1913.
Muj obchod se psy a jine humoresky [My Trade with Dogs and Other Humoresques]. 1915.
Dobry vojak Svejk v zajeti [The Good Soldier Svejk in Captivity]. 1917.
[Two Dozen Stories]. 1920.
PepicekNovy a jinepovidky [Pepfcek Novy and Other Stories]. 1921.
Osudy dobreho vojaka Svejka za svetove valky. 4 vols., 1921-23; as The Good Soldier Schweik, translated by Paul Selver, 1930; complete version, as The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, translated by Cecil Parrott, 1973; as The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, translated by Zenny K. Sadlon, 2000.
Tri muzi se zralokem a jine poucne historky [Three Men and a Shark and Other Instructive Stories]. 1921.
Mirova Konference ajine humoresky [The Peace Conference and Other Humoresques]. 1922.
Idylky z pekla (stories), edited by Evzen Paloncy. 1974.
The Red Commissar, Including Further Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk and Other Stories, translated by Cecil Parrott, 1981. Povidky (stories). 2 vols., 1988.
The Bachura Scandal and Other Stories and Sketches, translated by Alan Menhennet. 1991.
Other
Lidsky profil Jaroslava Haska: korespondence a dokumenty (selected letters 1920-22), edited by Radko Pytlik. 1979. Tajemstvi meho pobytu v Rusku (selected essays), edited by Zdenek Horenf. 1985.
Critical Studies:
Hasek, the Creator of Schweik by Emanuel Frynta, 1965; The Bad Bohemian: The Life of Jaroslav Hasek, 1978, and Jaroslav Hasek: A Study of Svejk and the Short Stories, 1982, both by Cecil Parrott; Jaroslav Hasek and the Good Soldier Schweik by Radko Pytlik, translated by David Short, 1983.
Jaroslav Hasek wrote his one and only novel, Osudy dobreho vojaka Svejka za svetove valky (The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War), in 1921 and 1922, at the very end of his adventurous and chequered life, and left it unfinished at his death. It has been translated into countless languages and is now far better known in the world than any other Czech book—a development which he could never have foreseen. At first the Czech literary ”establishment” dismissed the book as unliterary, and it was only when it was translated into German in 1926 and presented by Erwin Piscator in dramatized form at the famous Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin in 1928 that it achieved European fame.
When it was published in final form in 1923, it anticipated by several years the wave of popular war books which appeared at the end of the decade, like All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) by Erich Maria Remarque and others. But whereas the authors of such books mostly dwelt on the horror and suffering of war and their disillusionment with it, Hasek, to quote the perceptive judgement of a contemporary Czech writer, Ivan Olbracht, ”stood above it” and ”just laughed at it.” Olbracht went on to say that he had read several war novels and even written one himself, but none of them showed up World War I ”in all its infamy, idiocy and inhumanity” so vividly as Hasek’s.
Hasek found the material for his novel during the one year he spent in the Austrian army on the way to the Eastern Front. Most of its leading characters are modelled on the officers, NCOs, and men of the regiment he served in. He had already invented the character of ”The Good Soldier” in 1911, when he wrote five short stories about him, but in his final novel Svejk had become a much rounder and more enigmatic figure. Was he an idiot or only pretending to be one? In consequence of this ambiguity Svejk was caught up in the political struggles between Left and Right in the young republic. The Left wanted to see him as a revolutionary, while the Right condemned him as a dodger and a threat to national morale. While most other readers of the book would laugh aloud at Svejk’s misadventures, Czechoslovakia’s leading critic, F.X. Salda, saw their tragic side. For all its comedy, he wrote, it was a desperately sad book, because in it the individual was fighting against a giant power, against the war.
Hasek himself would have been greatly surprised to know that his book had given rise to such discussions, because he just dictated it as it came into his head—sometimes in the middle of a pub bar—with nothing but a map to go on. He filled the pages of his book with a vast array of fascinating types, whom he involved more often than not in ludicrous situations. He had a Dickensian gift for describing character, although unlike Dickens he did not dwell on their appearance but rather on their actions and manner of speech. He was particularly successful in reproducing the conversations of ordinary men and the anecdotes they tell. And he described in a masterly fashion the scrapes they got into and the idiotic ideas they had, saying under his breath, ”Lord, what fools these mortals be.” The book is as much a condemnation of the Austrian Army as it is of the war. Its generals are shown either as inept fuddy-duddies or potential hangmen. (Hasek was of course free for the first time to say exactly what he thought of the monarchy, as it no longer existed.)
In writing his novel Hasek drew on his long experience in contributing short stories and feuilletons to the Czech press, which are said to have amounted to over 1,200. He wrote them for Prague dailies before the war, for the Czech Legion’s newspaper in Kiev during it, and Soviet journals in Siberia after it was over. He wrote easily, but carelessly. He once described a feuilleton as ”something which can be read in the morning at breakfast, when a man is still yawning, and in the afternoon, when after lunch he lies agreeably stretched out on a soft sofa, a kind of writing in which one can skip half a column without missing it.” His short stories prove his inexhaustible ingenuity in inventing comic situations, but as the newspapers he contributed to seldom allowed him more than a little over a thousand words they almost all suffer from compression and sometimes end with the point only half made. His best stories are the Bugulma tales, which he published in Prague on his return from Russia after the war, and which recount his experiences as deputy-commandant of a little town beyond the Volga. Although in these he ridicules Soviet petty officials, he is more indulgent to them than he is to Austrians or indeed to his own people.
In the years before the war Hasek acquired something of a reputation as a popular entertainer, when he helped to create a mock political party and posed as its candidate in the national elections. People flocked to hear his improvised speeches, in which he mercilessly pilloried the activities of the Czech political parties. When the elections were over he sat down and wrote up the ”annals” of his ”party” and ascribed to its members various imaginary exploits, but much of what he wrote was too personal and defamatory to be published at the time and only found its way into print as late as 1963.
None of Hasek’s flamboyant posturings as electioneering agent, speaker at Anarchist rallies, or cabaret entertainer earned him much respect, and his lampoons and tomfoolery alienated many who might otherwise have helped him. By the time war broke out Prague had become rather too hot for him, and he no doubt joined up with a certain feeling of relief. But it can be said of him that he added another dimension to conventional humorous writing by acting and actually living his stories. All his experiences, whether lived or written, bore fruit later, when he drew on them for his one great novel.
