Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page    

264   Germano-Slavica

26 Laszlo Dobossy, "Satirische Darstellung der Wirklichkeit in Jaroslav Haseks Schweick," Littérature et realite, ed. Bela Köpeczi (Budapoest, 1966), 179-90)

27 "Satirische Darstellung," p. 180.

28 To be sure, Dobossy is not the only critic who views Svejk's stupidity as a mask; see, for instance, Streller, p. 423, and Iuri Mal'tsev, cited in Peter Petro, p. 116.

29 Robert Alter, Rogue's Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), Chapter 1.

30 Hasek, The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War, trans. Cecil Parrott (New York, 1974), p. 300. "' ... A nakonec se jim to vsechno vzbouří, a to bude pěkná mela. At' žije armáda! Dobrou noc!'"

31 "Satirische Darstellung," p. 183.

32 By way of comparison, in the standard German translation this passage reads: "Aber zum Schluß wird alles meutem, und das wird eine hübsche Schweinerei werden. Es lebe die Annee! Gute Nacht!" Die Abenteuer des braven Soldaten Schwejk, trans. Grete Reiner (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1960), I, 277.

33 Alter, p. 6.

34 Leslie Piedler, "The Antiwar Novel and the Good Soldier Schweik," published as "Foreword" to the Selver translation (New York, 1963), p. ix.

35 George Skvor, "The First World War and Czech Literature," Etudes slaves et est-europeennes, 5 (1961), 153-69.

   page    

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

Hasek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel   263

4 Wilfried van der Will, Pikaro heute (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 41-43.

5 J. P. Stem, "On the Integrity of the Good Solder Schweik," Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2, No. 1 (St. Andrews, Scotland, 1966), 14.

6 Cecil Parrott, Jaroslav Hasek: A Study of "Svejk" and the Short Stories (Cambridge,

1982), pp. 147-48.

7 My approach to the notion of picaresque largely parallels that of Ulrich Wicks in his article "The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach," PMLA, 89, No. 2

(1974), 240-49.

8 Indeed, several critics have mentioned Grimmelshausen's novel as a prototype for Svejk; in addition to the works by Pytlík and Streller already cited, see also Peter Petro, "Hasek, Voinovich, and the Tradition of Anti-Militarist Satire," Canadian Slavonic Papers, 22, No. 1 (1980), 117.

9 Stuart Miller, The Picaresque Novel (Cleveland, 1967).

10 Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Schweik, trans. Paul Selver (New York, 1963), p. 25. Wherever possible, I have quoted from Selver's 1930 translation rather than the recent translation by Cecil Parrott. Parrott's translation commendably includes the unfinished fourth book of Hasek's manuscript and restores the passages left out by Selver due to obscenities, but in spite of this Selver's version seems to me livelier and more readable. " 'Tak už tam je na pravdě boží, dej mu pánbůh věčnou slávu. Ani se nedočkal, až bude císařem. Když já jsem sloužil na vojně, tak jeden generál spadl s koně a zabil se docela klidně. Chtěli mu pomoct zas na koně", vysadit ho a divilis se, že je úplně mrtvej. A měl taky avancírovat na feldmarsálka.'"

11 Schweik, p. 28. " 'Vy myslíte, že to císař pán takhle nechá bejt? To ho málo znáte. Vojna s Turky musí být. Zabili jste mně strejčka, tak tady máte přes držku.'"

12 Ulrich Wicks refers to the "Sisyphus Rhythm" characteristic of picaresque narrative (P. 243).

13 Schweik, pp. 44-45. "Když později Švejk líčil život v blázinci, činil tak způsobem neobyčejného chvalořečení: 'Vopravdu nevím, proč se ti blázni zloběji, když je tam drží. Člověk tarn může lézt nahej po podlaze, vejt jako sakal, zuřit a kousat. Jestli by to človek udělal někde na promenádě, tak by se lidi divili, ale tam to patří k něčemu prachvobyčejnýmu. Je tam taková svoboda, vo kerej se ani socialistům nikdy nezdálo... Jak řikám, moc pěkný to tarn bylo a těch několik dní, který jsem strávil v blázinci, patří k nejkrásnějsím chvílím mýho života.'"

14 Claudio Guillén, "Toward a Definition of the Picaresque," Literature as System:

Essays Toward the Theory of Literary History (Princeton, 1971), pp. 71-106.

15 Miller, p. 131.

16 Ibid., pp. 98-99.

17 Guillén, p. 81.

18 Stem, p. 20.

19 Ibid., p. 18.

20 See Gunther Schalich, "Zur eindimensionalen Charakterisierung bei Jaroslav Hasek," Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 215, No. 1 (1978),

122-28.

21 Rene Weliek, Essays on Czech Literature (The Hague, 1963), p. 41.

22 Frynta, pp. 87ff.

23 For further information on Hasek's life, see Cecil Parrott's recent biography The Bad Bohemian: The Life of Jaroslav Hasek Creator of the Good Soldier Svejk (London, 1978).

24 Jaroslav Dresler, "Die Abenteuer des braven Soldaten Hasek," Osteuropa, 12 (1962), 303, 306.

25 Laszlo Dobossy, "Beitrag zur Geschichte der tschechisch-ungarisehen literarischen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert," Studio Slavica, 9 (1963), 272-82.

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

262   Germano-Slavica

a  Sancho Panza without the transcendental perspective of his master. As soon as the vision of Sancho Panza—that of an essentially debased world where one must struggle for mere subsistence—becomes the only one pre­sented, it loses much of the comedy it has in Cervantes, and we are forced to take it far more seriously. This is not to say that individual picaresque novels are not very funny; Svejk is certainly funnier than most. But we are never allowed to dismiss the picaresque vision as merely that of a rogue or a buffoon; once we view the world from the picaro's eyes, we are not likely to forget his frightening perspective.

Historically, the picaresque novel arose as a reaction against a literary form which was the embodiment and glorification of heroism and codes of honor: the heroic romance. In response to the charmed world por­trayed in these romances, with individuals larger and better than real men, the picaresque novel presented a world stripped of all illusions, as a degraded, senseless and chaotic realm. All the formal and thematic features of the picaresque which were discussed earlier—e.g., its episodic, a-causal plot and its unresolved ending—contribute to this sense of a world where nothing is permanent and there is no particular meaning to existence. It is difficult to pinpoint any one literary form against which Hasek and other twentieth-century picaresque writers reacted in the same way as their predecessors; but perhaps they saw that the novel of nineteenth-century realism, though purged of the most overt elements of earlier romances, still preserved the possibility of heroic stature and individual codes of honor, which Hasek saw as preserving the myths which helped lead to a world war. It is interesting to note that George Skvor, in an article on Czech literature from World War One, has pointed out that Hasek's novel is the antithesis of the kind of fiction which emerged from the Czech national legions; the latter showed the war as giving opportunities for individual heroism, and as being ulti­mately justified as it led to Czech independence.35 Since these works began to appear at the same time as Svejk, it would not be strictly accurate to say that Svejk was a reaction against them. But it is obvious that Hasek was familiar enough with such attitudes, and in his novel he rejects them explicitly. There will always be those who see war as a glorious and noble endeavor, but one can hope that there will likewise always be a picaro to place it in its proper light: a barroom brawl magnified to grotesque proportions.

Notes

1 Emanuel Frynta, Hasek, the Creator of Svejk (Prague, 1965), p. 111.

2 Radko Pytlík, "Švejk jako literární typ," Česká Literatura,21, No. 1 (1973), 138.

3 Siegfried Streller, "Haseks 'Svejk' und Brechts 'Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg,'" Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 25, No. 3 (1980), 422.

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

Hasek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel   261

than a huge scuffle. However, Dobossy's translation, in which the "sie" clearly refers to the butchers of the general staff, speaks of an uprising (Aufruhr) and suggests a kind of triumph at the demise of the butchers, which is strangely contradicted by the cynicism of "es lebe die Armee!"32 If any doubt remains as to the lack of any desire on the part of Švejk and his fellow soldiers for any change in the status quo, one need only recall Svejk's anecdote at the end of the third volume about the officer who decides to treat his men like reasonable people instead of animals. Švejk relates with apparent approval how he was sent by his fellow soldiers to explain to him that his conduct was losing him the men's respect!

I have devoted so much space to Dobossy's views partly because they offer a perfect illustration of what Svejk and other picaresque novels are not. As Robert Alter points out, "the picaresque imagination is pecul­iarly an imagination that can make out nothing beyond the status quo."33 It is a profoundly anti-ideological vision, in the sense that it rejects any belief that the chaotic world represented is in any way subject to im­provement. The only alternative is a complete withdrawal from the world, as in Simplicissimus, for the sake of religious meditation. But even this alternative no longer holds; the satire of religious institutions, which has been a dominant motif of these novels from Lazarillo onward, has in Svejk become a complete scepticism about the possibility of any other-worldly justification.

Though Svejk has seldom been considered as a picaresque novel, it has often been included in another category, which many consider it to have founded: the modem anti-war novel. Leslie Fiedler considers Svejk in this context, and some of his comments are interesting:

The antiwar novel did not end war, but it memorializes the end of something almost as deeply rooted in the culture of the West: the concept of Honor. It comes into existence at the moment when in the West men, still nominally Christian, come to believe that the worst thing of all is to die... ."34

Fiedler is certainly correct in suggesting that Svejk and its successors negate the concept of Honor, but he is not right in saying that they were the first to do so. He claims that the only previous characters to do so were figures of low comedy, such as Sancho Panza, Falstaff, and Leporello. But this vision has always characterized the picaresque novel; in Lazarillo we remember the man who is on the verge of starva­tion, yet whose code of honor forces him to maintain the external show of a noble lord. The picaresque vision has always ridiculed codes of honor whether they lead only to the ridiculous but essentially harmless behavior of Lazarillo's master, or to the slaughter of a world war. Yet it would be wholly incorrect to suggest that the picaresque novel is essen­tially a form  of  low  comedy.  The  picaresque  hero  is  more  than  a  Sancho

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

260   Germano-Slavica

Though Dobossy stops short of claiming that Švejk has attained full revolutionary consciousness, he does ascribe to him a deliberate strategy of deceiving his officers, calling his super-patriotic utterances a mask which is removed whenever there are no officers or secret police present. But it is not that simple. His most extravagant chauvinistic displays are usually put on for the benefit of his superiors, but his public displays of enthusiasm for the Austrian cause while Mrs. Müller pushes him to his army physical in a wheelchair cannot really be explained by any deliberate attempt to deceive the Austrian bureaucracy. Dobossy insists on making of Švejk more of a flesh-and-blood human being than Hasek actually presents us with, and so he can only explain Svejk's behavior in terms of a mask deliberately assumed.28 But in doing so Dobossy misses the irony that on one level Švejk really is a fool; he is perfectly capable of expressing to his fellow soldiers an almost aesthetic appreciation of a sermon urging them to go out and die for the Kaiser, and countless other examples belie Dobossy's claim that Švejk demon­strates a consistent insight into and opposition to the Austrian war effort. Instead, as Emanuel Frynta has suggested, he belongs to the category of the wise fool who in his very simplicity reveals the truth for the benefit of his audience. A similar case would be that of Lazarillo de Tonnes, who, as Robert Alter points out,29 manifests an apparently sincere belief in Providence in spite of experiences which demonstrate that there is no such Providence.

When on considered that Svejk comes from the pen of a man who had lived through the Russian Revolution and had spent the previous two years as a Communist propagandist, what is most astonishing is how little revolutionary sentiment we find expressed in the novel. Indeed, Hasek's own adventures, irregular as they may be, would have made him a more useful prototype for a revolutionary hero than Svejk, who is perfectly content with the status quo as long as it leaves him in peace. About the only statement in the novel which even predicts a revolution to come is that of the volunteer-officer Marek (usually assumed to be Hasek's self-portrait) in a cell at Budejovice. After announcing that there are no more heroes, only oxen to be slaughtered by the butchers on the general staffs, he concludes: "... But in the end everybody will mutiny and there will be a fine shambles. Long live the army! Good­night!"30 Dobossy translates the passage this way: ". . . Am Ende kommt der allgemeine Aufruhr, dann werden sie schön ausschauen. Es lebe die Armee! Gute Nacht!"31 The crucial words in the original are vzbouří, a form of the verb "to mutiny," and mela, meaning "scuffle" or "row." Clearly, then, Hasek portrays a cynic who sees the coming revolt as a mutiny (with its connotations of a rebellion against legitimate authority) resulting in nothing more constructive than a huge scuffle. However,

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

Hasek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel   259

presented in another article,26 in order to judge his thesis. Dobossy sees the novel as portraying a struggle to the death between the two social groups in the novel, which he labels simply as the ruling class and the common people. Svejk, as the representative of the Common Man, sees the world of the ruling classes from the outside: "... er hat mit jener Welt nichts zu schaffen, er anerkennt ihre Gesetze nicht, ernimmt ihre Regel nicht hin, und in ihren verschiedenen Vertretern sieht er nur den Feind, den man besiegen, betrügen, irreführen muss."27 In one sense it is true that Švejk has nothing to do with this upper-class world; the murder of Ferdinand concerns him no more than that of a neighbor. But ultimately he is uprooted and dragged off to war by this world, and he survives not by rejecting the laws and rules of his superiors, but by following them to the point where they become absurd. As to the latter claim, that Švejk sees all the representatives of the ruling bureaucracy as enemies, this is patent nonsense. Svejk's complete loyalty to Lieutenant Lukash is apparent throughout—Dobossy sidesteps this by admitting that Lukash does not belong entirely to "the other world"—and his loyalty even to Otto Katz extends to the point where he gives Katz his last hundred crowns so that he may remain his orderly, whereupon Katz promptly gambles the money away. Even when on trial for his life in the final volume, Švejk denies nothing of what he has done, and makes no attempt to deceive the officers in any way. Only towards one man, Lieutenant Dub, does he display any hostility, not because he is an officer, but because he has it in for Svejk

We may also question whether the "two worlds" of the novel are separated entirely along class lines to begin with. No one reading the novel can fail to see that it is of crucial importance that these are Czech common people confronting an Austrian imperial bureaucracy, and that the barrier is largely a linguistic and national one. That the arch-villain Lieutenant Dub is a Czech is no argument against the nationalism which Hasek displays. No one is more hateful to a nationalist than a country­man of his who remains loyal to a foreign power. If Švejk rises above national prejudice, as Dobossy claims, it is only to the extent that he is too good-humored to care much about anyone who isn't bothering him personally.

Dobossy claims further that as his company approaches closer to the front, Švejk takes on the role of defending his fellow soldiers against abuse from the officers. This claim is based on only one incident, in which Švejk drags Dub's orderly Kunert to Captain Sagner to protest Dub's mistreatment of Kunert. This incident, however, occurs im­mediately after one of Svejk's own unpleasant encounters with Dub, and from the context it becomes clear that Švejk is concerned mainly with getting back at Dub.

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

258   Germano-Slavica

And yet the addition of a new device to the picaresque repertory does not change the genre in any direct way; it merely enriches it.

Up to this point we have examined a number of aspects of the novel to see whether or not they conform to various "norms" of the picaresque. Before we try to synthesize all these aspects into what we have called the picaresque vision of The Good Soldier Svejk, it may be useful to con­sider the views of a critic whose analysis of Švejk is almost directly opposed to the one presented here. I refer to the Hungarian Marxist critic Laszlo Dobossy, who looks on Švejk as a kind of proletarian hero in the struggle to the death between the two social classes represented.

Before examining his arguments individually, some background will be necessary.23

Hasek, like Svejk, was drafted into a Czech division of the Austro-Hungarian army, but within a year he had deliberately allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Russians. In 1916 he joined one of the Czech legions fighting under the Czar against Austria-Hungary, but in 1918 he deserted from them in turn to join with the recently victorious Red Army, whom he had originally opposed. Hasek then spent most of his time until 1920 working in the propaganda division of the Red Army, under whose aegis he edited periodicals in a number of different languages. In 1920, after the newly-formed Czech Republic had declared a general amnesty, and after his Russian superiors suggested that his services would be more useful on the home front, he returned to Prague, where he returned to his pre-war bohemian life-style, did little or nothing for the Party, and wrote the final version of Svejk. Up to this point there is general agreement. However, most Western writers, considering Hasek's entire political history, which included a period of anarchism, some work on a right-wing journal, and the founding and leadership of the "Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of Law," a parody of the wishy-washy Czech parliamentarians, would agree with Jaroslav Dresler's evaluation: "Im Politischen zeigte er sich in allen seinen russischen Abenteuern als völlig verwirrt, als ein absoluter Anarchist und ein Dadaist vor dem Dadaismus... Seine vorübergehende kommunistische Gesinnung wurde von seinem alten absoluten Anarchismus abgelöst."24 Dobossy, however, sees things differently. He claims that during the course of his work with the Red Army, particularly in his collaboration with the Hungarian Communist writer Mate Zaika, his thinking changed definitively from anarchism to Communism, a fact Dobossy sees reflected in the final version of Svejk, where the common Czech figure of the earlier versions becomes (according to Dobossy) a transcendent figure of universal dimensions who is above all petty nationalistic prejudices.25

Since Hasek's political views concern us only insofar as they are incorporated   into  the  vision  of  The Good  Soldier  Svejk,  we  must examine Dobossy's analysis of the novel, presented in another

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

   page  

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

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

 page  

256   Germano-Slavica

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,

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms

Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk as a Picaresque Novel

   page  

254    Germano-Slavica

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

   page  

Tags

Taxonomy Terms