D
URING THE FIRST World War, unenthusias-
tic enlistees would fake disability to avoid
dying in a muddy trench. That’s how the
“war hero” of Jaroslav Hašek’s classic novel
The Good Soldier Švejk winds up in an army
hospital a couple of chapters in. There,
Švejk (pronounced Sh-vake) is joined by other Czech conscripts
shamming illness or injury. The men are subjected to a sadistic
regime of medicalized torture aimed at forcing them to admit
their fakery and declare themselves fit for military service.
While recovering between “treatments,” the malingerers,
malcontents, and jailbirds of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
(“the K & K,” to borrow the era’s German shorthand) compare
notes on faking disability. One insists that insanity is the way to
go, referring to his own phony religious mania. Another men-
tions a midwife who dislocates legs for the modest price of 20
crowns. A third says that he had his leg dislocated for a mere 10
crowns and three glasses of beer.
The bravest endure all five steps of the hospital’s brutal treat-
ment program, dying in a sick bed rather than admitting defeat
and rejoining the regular army. Less stout-hearted soldiers, the
narrator laments, give up after being threatened by the prospect
of an enema with soapy water and glycerine.
In an alternate universe, The Good Soldier Švejk might have
become a libertarian classic. (The novel was a favorite of rebel
psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who wrote to wide acclaim about
how allegations of mental illness were used as an illegitimate
excuse for oppression.) As it stands, the famous Czech satire is
a hilarious and penetrating depiction of World War I’s forgotten
Eastern Front. It remains a touchstone today in Eastern Europe,
with real-life statues commemorating the exploits of the pro-
tagonist in Poland and Ukraine. A Budapest-to-Prague rail line
also bears Hašek’s name, a tribute to his fictional avatar’s long
wartime detour into Hungary.
That character’s long-lasting status as a folk hero says a lot
about how much Eastern Europeans have come to reject the
glamorization of war. The First World War inspired plenty of
anti-war literature, but few books depict the average soldier’s
experience quite like Švejk. To Hašek, a former conscript him-
self, the conflict’s real heroes were not the ones rushing off to
die in the trenches.
Švejk also offers an intriguing look at how anti-authoritarian
sentiments manifested themselves in the culture and politics
of interwar Eastern Europe, a region that has rarely been favor-
able terrain for classical liberal ideas.THE ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN ŠVEJK
ŠVEJK FOLLOWS THE titular character’s misadventures across
Eastern Europe during the opening months of the First World
War. Glimpses of later anti-war satires appear on almost every
page, from the comical incompetence of the creaking Austro-
Hungarian bureaucracy to the over-the-top patriotism of
Švejk’s chief antagonist, the moronic Lieutenant Dub, to Gen-
eral Fink von Finkenstein, whose favorite hobby is court-mar-
tialing and hanging hapless subordinates.
Hašek never makes it entirely clear if Švejk is a complete
boob or a canny everyman whose bumbling facade is a ploy to
confound the officers of the tottering empire. Even through that
ambiguity, the soldier’s repeated encounters with the police,
the mental health bureaucracy, and the army show a winning,
corrosive contempt for large, impersonal institutions and for
authority, be it clerical, bureaucratic, or military.
Švejk, which was first published in serialized form in the early
1920s, anticipates several other books in the past century’s anti-
authority canon. Joseph Heller says his Catch-22 was directly
inspired by Hašek’s work; the parallels between their protago-
nists’ wartime experiences, a comical and occasionally terrify-
ing mix of bureaucratic ineptitude and mass mobilization, are
indeed apparent. Švejk’s brief prewar detour in a mental asylum,
meanwhile, is reminiscent of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest. Hašek’s portrayal of the Austro-Hungarian legal
bureaucracy, which combines petty cruelty and total inscruta-
bility in almost equal measure, is a humorous echo of his grim-
mer and more famous Czech contemporary, Franz Kafka.
To American readers, the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire might seem unimaginably distant, a half-remembered
figment from A.P. European History. But Švejk’s plight and the
timeless idiocy of his antagonists resonate across the ages. TheThe book anticipates
several other titles in
the past century’s anti-
authority canon. Joseph
Heller says Catch-22
was inspired by it, while
Švejk’s detour in a mental
asylum is reminiscent
of One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest.
Illustrations by Josef Lada in The Good Soldier Švejk; Paul K/Creative Commons REASON 59