Hasek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel   257

any picaresque novel, it does not follow that the effect can be achieved only through a first-person narrative. The vision that Švejk expresses in his speeches is confirmed by the work as a whole; if at the beginning Švejk describes the causes of the war in terms of a barroom brawl, the course of the novel teaches us that this perspec­tive is far closer to the truth than the inflated rhetoric of official military pronouncements or the perspective of enthusiastic supporters of the Austrian cause such as Lieutenant Dub.

Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a novel consisting only of Svejk's narrative from beginning to end. Considering his inimitable style, such a work would resemble Tristram Shandy more than the straightforward chronological narrative we find in Svejk; indeed J. P. Stern has compared the digressive principle of the character Švejk with that of Sterne in his novel.¹⁸ But if the impossibility of a first-person narrative is related to the character of Svejk, then we must examine how Švejk does differ from other picaros.

Though the heroes of picaresque novels are not known for their psychological depth, Švejk seems to be even shallower than most. J. P. Stern says that "Hasek does not probe into the hidden recesses of Svejk's consciousness,"¹⁹ and this is surely an understatement. Indeed, Svejk, as is suggested in the illustrations by Hasek's friend Josef Lada, is more a caricature than a character.²⁰ And yet, paradoxically, he is probably the most memorable figure of all picaros. Even those, like Rene Weliek,²¹ who refuse to regard Hasek's novel as a work of art, do admit that Švejk himself is quite unforgettable. Many critics have com­pared Švejk to other "mythic" figures of Western literature, such as Don Quixote, Faust, or (more appropriately) Sancho Panza. But neither his lack of psychological depth nor his "mythic" dimension disqualify Švejk as a picaro, since he does not lose our sympathy on either count, nor, on the other hand, is he any less subject to the vicissitudes of fortune during the course of the novel.

It could also be pointed out that the novel is not equally picaresque in its style throughout. The latter part of the novel expands into a kind of epic breadth; the cast of characters stabilizes somewhat, subplots de­velop which do not involve Švejk directly, individual episodes are less discrete and more interconnected than those at the beginning. Yet the picaresque tone remains; the only "causality" connecting these episodes lies in such factors as Lieutenant Dub's enduring hatred of Svejk, and thus the picaresque sense of an essentially irrational universe is not undermined. Another feature not strictly picaresque is Hasek's brilliant use of interpolated documents, such as official military com­munications, for ironic purposes, a practice so frequent and so telling in its effects that it has led Frynta to describe the novel as a "collage."²²

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full range of the military hierarchy. This panorama of society, as Guillen points out, affords ample opportunity for satire, and Hasek takes full advantage of this.

We must also consider, however, the ways in which Svejk departs from the general model of the picaresque. The most obvious, and the most far-reaching of these discrepancies is that Svejk, rather than being a recollection of past events in the first person, is narrated in the third person. During most of the events narrated, Švejk is physically present, and there is no clearly delineated split between his perspective and that of the narrator. Furthermore, Svejk's speeches dominate the novel to such an extent that one sometimes loses sight of the third-person narra­tive perspective. However, there are occasional scenes where Švejk is not present, and although most of these are discussions among officers in which his fate is being dealt with, there are some sections, especially later in the novel, where Švejk is not even present as a subject of conversation, as in the extended encounter between Lieutenant Dub and Cadet Biegler in the closing pages of the book.

Thus we must ask how essential the first-person narrative is for the picaresque form. Miller, though noting the first-person narrative as a feature common to most picaresque novels, does not insist upon it:

"[The picaresque novel] may or may not be autobiographical; the essen­tial thing is that the reader identifies himself with the protagonist and vicariously undergoes the shocks of his chaotic experience."¹⁵ Though the identification of a reader with the character in a novel is a subjective criterion and not easily measured, I suspect that readers identify with Švejk at least as much as with other picaros. Indeed, while we may be put off by Lazarillo's brutality to the blind man or by Moll Flander's thievery, nothing that Švejk does alienates us from him in any serious way. In another passage Miller suggests that the first-person narrative was necessary to enable the educated readers-of picaresque novels to identify with the low-life characters depicted¹⁶ (certainly this is true for Moll Flanders), but no such problem arises with Svejk. Many of Svejk's exploits were based on Hasek's own, and his general predica­ment was certainly not unfamiliar to Hasek's Czech audience or even to a non-Czech reader today.

Guillen, on the other hand, regards the first-person narration as one of the essential criteria of a picaresque novel. He says: "This use of the first person tense is more than a formal frame. It means that not only are the hero and his actions picaresque, but everything else in the story is colored with the sensibility, or filtered through the mind, of the picaro -narrator."¹⁷ For Guillen, then, the first-person narrative is important in that it incorporates a picaresque vision, the perspective of the picaro, into the narration. While there is no question that this special perspec­tive, and not merely the subject matter or the central character, is absolutely crucial to any picaresque novel,

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In fact, it is hard to imagine any conclusive ending to Svejk's story. We know (from Hasek's "Preface") that Švejk will survive the war, but one cannot see the plot being directed in any way towards a final outcome. In this open-endedness, Svejk displays another characteristic of the picaresque; at least. Miller suggests that those novels which have a happy or at least conclusive ending (such as Gil Bias or Moll Flanders) have by that token taken one step away from the picaresque and towards the romance.

Another feature which Miller finds common to most picaresque novels is the pattern in which the hero's fortunes rise and fall continually due to events beyond his control, and Svejk is no exception in this regard.¹² Throughout the novel Švejk is in and out of prison, in and out of the good graces of his commanding officers. The most extreme example of this comes in the last chapter of Hasek's manuscript, where Svejk, having been saved from imminent hanging by the timely arrival of a telegram from his company, returns there only to be hauled in front of his division captain by his arch-foe, Lieutenant Dub. Dub argues that Švejk be dealt with severely, and at this point the captain suffers a severe attack of the gout, causing us to fear the worst. But the gout passes as quickly as it came, leaving the captain in better spirits than before, whereupon he orders that Švejk be released, assigned a new uniform, and given some pocket money. Svejk, though, never experiences the periods of extreme good fortune enjoyed by other picaros such as Simplicissimus and Moll Flanders; like Lazarillo, the most he enjoys (or expects) from life is a full belly and no immediate danger to life and limb.

Like his fellow picaros, then, Švejk seems to be at the mercy of a fate which is very fickle indeed. Like them also, he seems to possess a kind of invulnerability. In almost every picaresque novel we see the picaro absorb an incredible degree of physical and mental abuse and still emerge relatively unscathed. Švejk takes this even a step further; far from being wounded by his setbacks, he often manages to turn them into victories of a sort. He spends what seems like half the novel in confine­ment of one kind or another; but it never seems to affect his spirits in the slightest degree. Indeed, his confinement to a lunatic asylum is a source of most pleasant memories:

When Švejk later on described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in terms of exceptional eulogy. "I'm blowed if I can make out why lunatics kick up such a fuss about being kept there. They can crawl about stark naked on the floor, or caterwaul like jackals, or rave and bite. If you was to do anything like that in an open street, it'd make people stare, but in the asylum it's just taken as a matter of course. Why the amount of liberty there is something that even the socialists have never dreamed of... .I liked being in that asylum, I can tell you, and while I was there I had the time of my life."¹³

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Part of the irony is that Svejk, who seems at first glance a helpless pawn in the hands of fate, knows precisely what is good for him, and will always avoid the main danger which threatens him: exposure to live action at the front. Nevertheless, even though Švejk may achieve a larger degree of control over his destiny than other picaros, he remains essentially like them in this respect: subject to frequent and extreme vacillations in his private fortunes, he manages, through his wits and toughness, to emerge unscathed. While other picaros enjoy periods of prosperity and recognition, Švejk at least obtains the satisfaction of making fools out of his tormentors, most notably Lieutenant Dub.

Let us turn from Miller to Claudio Guillen, who offers some different criteria for identifying a picaresque novel.¹⁴ The picaro, according to Guillen, is in the situation of a "half-outsider" who is never completely at home in his society, but can never completely divorce himself from it. When we apply this to Svejk, we are faced with a dilemma, for instead of a homogeneous society through which the picaro makes his way, we are presented with two quite distinct groups: the military bureaucracy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with all its representatives, on the one hand, and the common soldiers and civilians, primarily Czech, who are seen as the victims of the first group. Though Švejk clearly "belongs," in some sense, to the second group, it would be a mistake to assume, as most Marxist critics have done, that Švejk represents the common man in a constant struggle with his exploiters. For one thing, he is capable of complete loyalty and even self-sacrifice in the service of his superiors, not only Lieutenant Lukash but the thoroughly corrupt Chaplain Otto Katz. Indeed, the bond that forms between him and Lieutenant Lukash seems closer than his relation with any of his comrades. He never shows any particular sympathy for the misfortunes of his fellows. Thus Švejk serves the first group without belonging to it, and belongs to the second group without ever compromising his self-reliance and self-enclosedness. It seem fair, therefore, to describe him as a "half-outsider."

Svejk conforms to other of Guillen's criteria. In the course of his adventures he observes a wide variety of social groups, including dif­ferent social strata, different professions, different character types, and different nationalities. Also, his movement is both horizontal in space and, to some extent, vertical along the social ladder. True, compared to the social fluctations of a Moll Flanders, Svejk's development in this area is limited; he is promoted from Lieutenant Lukash's private batman to company orderly, and this promotion seems to involve no real change in his relations with either his fellows or his superiors. But he is physi­cally present at arguments among officers as well as discussions among common soldiers, and thus is able to observe the full range of the military