These are the illustrations for Hašek's
Good Soldier Švejk made by his friend Josef Lada after the writer passed away. 

Unfortunately, Lada's pictures shift the character of Josef Švejk onto a plane of a clown or even a buffoon.


Such characterization is not supported by Hašek's text or the original image of Švejk,
created according to his instructions, which was the only one he saw and thereby authorized.

Hašek’s Švejk is not a clown but a reader and speaker of the system’s language.

Behind the laughter and familiar images lies a deeper language of structure and survival — a grammar this edition brings into view.





 


Good soldier Svejk at police headquarters. Adventures & Anabasis of Good Soldier Svejk Unmasked! Good soldier Svejk at police headquarters. Adventures: Hasek, Slavic Twain, not Kafka, Beats Repression.




Svejk is going into military service. Adventures: Humorous Central European WWI Forrest Gump Book. Svejk is going into military service. Adventures of Austrian Empire Anti-War Working Class Hero.




Svejk in the garrison prison. Adventures: pre-Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Faulkner AvantGarde Hit. Svejk in the garrison prison. Adventures: Modern Literature's Satire Fiction Masterpiece.




Svejk at the police headquarters in Salmova street. Adventures: Politically Incorrect Anti- Establishment Fun. Svejk at the police headquarters in Salmova street. Adventures: Czech/German/Hungarian/Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian.




Svejk home again, having broken through the vicious circle. Adventures: 20th Century People's Best Funny Book, Good-Read Svejk home again, having broken through the vicious circle. Adventures: Cultural Military Resistance Dadaism Surrealism.




Svejk in front of court physicians. Adventures: Revolutionary Modern Times Censorship Authority. Svejk in front of court physicians. Adventures:Imperial Police-State Social Prague Moral Culture.




Svejk as malingerer. Adventures:Change Ordinary Humans Propaganda Dissent History. Svejk as malingerer. Adventures: English- Language Translation BestBook Oppression.




Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. Some writers so capture the soul and spirit of a people that they are identified with them forever after. In England, it was Charles Dickens, in the United States, it was Mark Twain. For the Slavic nations, and to some extent for all Central Europeans, it is the Czech writer, Jaroslav Hasek. Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. Hašek’s most important work was centered around a Czech soldier’s experiences in World War One. It’s actual title is The Fateful Adventures of The Good Soldier Švejk during the World War, but it is known by tens of millions of Central Europeans as simply, The Good Soldier Švejk. This monumental, humorous work is acknowledged as "...one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing" by no less a standard and exalted reference than the Encyclopedia Britannica.




Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. This new translation and rendition of The Good Soldier Švejk is our attempt to make this Central European masterwork accessible to the modern reader of English. There have been two other attempts and both are, in our opinion, failures in both practice and spirit. The only attempt at a complete English translation has often been criticized, by those who have read the novel in another language, as a clumsy rendition that left The Good Soldier Švejk reading like a hackneyed novel about the British army in the 19th century. We consider this both an injustice to Jaroslav Hašek and a tragedy for those denied the insight and enjoyment of a hilarious and rollicking modern classic. Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. The book’s central character is a quintessential, working-class citizen-soldier, often abused by the fates and the forces of the Austrian empire. In both civilian and military life, Švejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certified to be an imbecile by an official military medical commission. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his sometimes questionable actions because he’s a certified nitwit!




Svejk as a military servant of Field Chaplain Katz. Yet, Švejk is not a coward, nor is he indolent. He is drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he despises. His method of subverting the Austrian Empire is to carry out his orders to an absurd conclusion. His is an inspired resistance. He holds the foreign authorities, and their Czech fellow travelers, accountable for their ridiculous platitudes and pseudo-patriotic blather. Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. The Good Soldier Švejk is as entertaining as any book of the 20th century. And, though it is set in World War One and written shortly thereafter, most readers will find it thoroughly modern. There is good reason for that. Jaroslav Hašek was more than avant garde. He was an iconoclastic revolutionary, both in his life and as an artist. The First World War liberated the Czech Lands and Jaroslav Hašek simultaneously. For the first time, he was free to write and create without censorship or fear of imperial reprisal.




Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. Like many great artists, Jaroslav Hašek was a happy confluence of genius, talent, time and place. His talent and genius are widely acknowledged by scholars worldwide. They point to his ground-breaking contribution in transforming and modernizing the novel and making it relevant for our time. And, in the non-English-speaking world, his work has long been loved by legions of regular folks. At any rate, you will soon be able to judge his talent and genius for yourself. Svejk as a military servant of the Field Chaplain. "He was one of that generation which fully fought with the problems of the modern world. He was one of the artists at the start of the century who so splendidly cast light on the question of a live, valid, meaningful art worthy of the time. He was a curious, not easily understood person, too mobile and opaque for portrayal. As a creator, (he was) seemingly careless, natural, (and) spontaneous, ... but, in reality (he was) sharply discerning and refined in his specific type of non-literariness ... (he) was working farsightedly in the field of language and style, with something that was to become the shape of (the) speech of the century."




They threw Svek out of the madhouse. And just what is it we have been denied? A host of literary critics acknowledge that Jaroslav Hašek was one of the earliest writers of what we have come to know as modern literature. He experimented with verbal collage, Dadaism and the surreal. Hašek was writing modern fiction before exalted post-World-War-One writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, to name just a few. A literary analyst has pointed out that Hašek is one of the few writers of all time to combine political with misanthropic satire. In fact, The Good Soldier Švejk, he says, is the only example of this genre in the 20th century. They threw Svek out of the madhouse. Finally, literary critics agree that Jaroslav Hašek wrote the grandaddy of anti-war novels. According to one critic, only the first two-thirds of The Red Badge of Courage precedes it. The Good Soldier Švejk even predated that quintessential First World War novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. More familiar to today’s readers, perhaps, is Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, set in World War Two. Hašek’s biting satire and humor is its direct ancestor also, as well as that of many others. It might be hard to imagine, but "anti-war" was not "in" before The Good Soldier Švejk. And, it should be noted that Hašek’s Švejk preceded Joseph Heller’s Yosarrian by almost 50 years.

Site Map
Home
It's a Masterpiece
  Why you don't know it  
e-mail
    Švejk Central   
Buy Švejk!
Before you leave...