isopatch, Heh-heh-I had a chuckle on your media bias story. It reminds me of how I used to suggest to new law students at Stanford Law school to answer law exams questions- Use the "good soldier Schweik" approach* (although the author Hasek had a pretty raucous lifestyle too) ....
As I mentioned here before, in Texas they say "Only yellow stripes and dead armadillos stay in the middle of the road"....
* Written by Jaroslav Hasek, Related to a pretty well known NHL Hockey player.....
Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923)
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Czech novelist, humorist, story writer, and journalist, creator of The Good Soldier Schweik. With Franz Kafka Hašek was one of the key figures of literary Prague, but enjoying publicity on the opposite of his silent contemporary. Once Hašek was prevented from throwing himself off the Cech's Bridge (Cechuv most), he founded a political party called The Party of Peaceful Progress Within the Limits of Law, and spent the cash collected from this activity in his local pub.
--And so on that memorable day there appeared on the Prague streets a moving example of loyalty. An old woman pushing before her a bathchair, in which there sat a man in an army cap with a finely polished Imperial badge and waving his crutches. And in his button-hole there shone the gay flowers of a recruit.
--And this man, waving his crutches again and again, shouted out to the streets of Prague: “To Belgrade, to Belgrade!”
(from The Good Soldier Švejk)
Jaroslav Hašek was born in Prague as the son of a failed schoolteacher. His father died from drink when Hašek was thirteen. When his widowed mother could do nothing with her son, a pharmacist, Mr. Kokoska, eventually took an interest in him. Hašek was educated at the Prague Commercial Academy, from which he graduated at the age of nineteen. He got a job at the Slava Bank, but was fired - he was already drinking heavily.
Early in his career Hašek was active as anarchist and published widely in Czech political journals. In 1907 he became an editor of the anarchist magazine Komuna. Trying to change his life style, Hašek married Jarmila Mayerová, without much success. He was engaged in dogstealing and taken for a short period to mental hospital after the suicidal incident at Cech's Bridge. With Jarmila Hašek had a son, Richard, but she left him soon and went back to live with her parents. Home broken, he took a room in a brothel, U Valsu.
In 1915 Hašek had gained reputation as a cabaret performer, and was called up into the Austrian Army. During World War I Hašek served at various times in Czech, Russian and Austrian armies. He was a volunteer in the Austrian 91st Regiment on the Galician front in 1915, and depict in The Good Soldier Schweik some of his superiors from those days in their real names. Schweik is totally undisciplined liar, drunkard, apparently stupid man but who actually outwits his superiors and the army.
In September 1915 his unit was cut off as the result of a sudden Russian breakthrough, and Hašek surrendered himself to the Russians. He was imprisoned in camps in the Ukraine and later in the Urals. Hašek joined the Czech Legion, becoming active as a propagandist for the Legion and other Czech organizations. In 1918 he went over to the Bolsheviks, who made him a political commissar in their Fifth Army. Two years later he returned to Prague and nationalist politics. From Russian Hašek brought back a wife without having divorced his first wife Jarmila.
All of this was carnivalistic material for Hašek's four-volume major work, The Good Soldier Schweik, that has been acclaimed as one of the greatest satires in world literature. Hašek continued heavy drinking while speedily writing OSUDY DOBRÉHO VOJÁKA SVEJKA ZA SVÉTOVE VÁLKY. Not like Kafka's novel, which were written in German, the black comedy spoke to readers in common Czech. Schweik had already appeared in the stories the author had been writing from the age of 29. Originally Hašek planned to continue the novel to six volumes, but he died on January 3, 1923 in Lipnice nad Sázavou, before the whole book was completed. Three volumes appeared, and then a posthumous fourth one, with his friend Vanek's continuation.
The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War (1921-22) The title character is classified as 'feeble-minded', but he is drafted into service of Austria with the advent of WW I. Honest, naive, incompetent, and perhaps more shrewd than he reveals, Svejk (written also Schweik and Švejk) collides with the military bureaucracy, causing especially troubles for Lieutenant Lucas. As illustrated in Josef Lada's series of cartoon's, Svejk is plump, balding, middle-aged ordinary looking man with deceptive qualities. He is arrested for making indiscreet remarks about the assassination of the Archeduke Ferdinand, interrogated by civil and military authorities, enforced to enlist, posted as an orderly to various officers, finally to Lucas. From the start to his wanderings across the Central European landscape, Svejk always understands the meaningless of the events that swirl about him, and the little man, wise fool, wins against the bullies who confront him. The novel was banned from the Czechoslovak army in 1925, the Polish translation was confiscated in 1928, the Bulgarian translation was suppressed in 1935, and the German translation burned on Nazi bonfires in 1933. - See also: Bertold Brecht: SCHWEYK - IM ZWEITEN WELTKRIEG, 1944 - Note: Schweyk's restaurant, U Kalicha, is a famous visiting place in Prague.
For further reading: "Švejk, the homo ludens" by Hana Arie-Haifman (1984, in Language and Literary Theory, ed. by Benjamin A. Stolz, I.R. Titunik, Lubomír Dolezel); "The Tragic Comedy of Jaroslav Hašek" by Jindrich Chalupecky (1983, in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture, number 23); Hašek and Kafka by Karel Kosík (1983, in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture, number 23); The Bad Bohemian by C.Parrott (1978); The First World War in Fiction, ed. by Holger Klein (1976); Hašek, the Creator of Sweik by B. Frinta (1965); Ejhle, clovek by J. Durych (1928, in Czech) - For further information: Links
First World War in literature: Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front; R.H. Mottram: The Spanish Farm Trilogy; Ford Madox Ford: Paradise's End; Arnold Zweig: The Case of Sergeant Grisha; Richard Aldington: Death of a Hero; Robert Graves: Good-bye to All That; Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms; Siegfried Sassoon: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer; Henry Williamson: The Patriot's Progress, Frederick Manning: The Middle Parts of Fortune; John Don Passos: Three Soldiers; e.e. cumming: The Enormous Room; Henri Barbusse: Le Feu - NOTE: Carel Lamac adapted Schweik into screen as a part of English wartime propaganda in 1943, but Schweik's New Adventures kids the Nazis gently. Michael John Nimchuc, a Canadian dramatist, based the play The Good Soldier Schweik on Hasek's novel - the work was probably inspired by the short-lived Prague Spring of 1968. Since 1930 have appeared several theatrical and cinematic adaptations of the story. - Suomeksi kirjailijalta on ilmestynyt myös kertomusvalikoima Huumorin koulu (1959). |
