Adventures: Modern Literature’s Satire Fiction Masterpiece

So, why haven't YOU

         heard about vejk?

It's not 

A host of literary critics acknowledge that Jaroslav Hasek 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. Hasek 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 Hasek is one of the few writers of all time to combine political with misanthropic satire. In fact, The Good Soldier Svejk, he says, is the only example of this genre in the 20th century.




 your fault!
 
What if you suddenly became aware that, because of some
What if you suddenly became aware that, because of some problem with translation or some other oversight, Mark Twain's work had been virtually hidden from Europeans for 75 years? Most Americans would consider that a lamentable travesty. Well, that is what has happened to the Czech people in the case of Jaroslav Hasek. He and his work are practically non-existent in the English-reading world, an influential audience of at least 500 million people. or some other oversight, Mark Twain’s work had been virtually hidden from Europeans for 75 years? Most Americans would consider that a lamentable travesty.
 

Well, that is what has happened to the Czech people in the case of Jaroslav Has s hackem v cernem 12.gif (832 bytes)ek. He and his work are practically non-existent in the English-reading world, an influential audience of at least 500 million people.

Hasek knew that a momentous, fundamental change in human history was occurring. For Central and Eastern Europe, it was the end of the old order. It was the demise of a social structure that had evolved from prehistoric times and affected every human life. Tribal and clan chieftains had evolved into Dukes, Counts and Lords, and then into Monarchs and Emperors. These despots caused and lost World War One and suddenly vanished. The decrepit empires were replaced by democratic republics, except in Russia where the bolsheviks instituted their own fatally flawed dictatorship and empire. However, as most historians agree, enough perverse elements and limbic memory of the old order remained in Central Europe to foment and fuel the biggest meatgrinder of them all, World War Two.

By the turn of the century Prague had become a boomtown. Large numbers of people had come to the city from the countryside to participate in the industrial revolution. The rise of a large working class spawned a cultural revolution. The empires of Central Europe ignored these intrinsic changes and became more and more decrepit and anachronistic. As the system decayed, it became absurd and irrelevant to ordinary people. When forced to respond to dissent, the imperial powers did so, more often than not, with hollow propaganda and repression.


 

Preview Chapter One here!

 

 

 

 


Literary critic 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. in his unsurpassed
analysis of Jaroslav Has s hackem v cernem 12.gif (832 bytes)ek and his masterpiece
the Good Soldier Švejk wrote: "The structure of Has s hackem v cernem 12.gif (832 bytes)ek's novel ... has much to say in particular concerning the conditions and process of development of dadaism and surrealism from the soil of wartime Europe. ... Prague, at the turn of the century, was a collage city. Phenomena torn from different, mutually antagonistic contexts met there and clashed. Stage sets were grotesquely displayed there, set in motion, on the one hand by the natural demands of the advancing modern age, on the other by inert or artificially preserved myths. We can clearly consider this fact to have been exceptionally worthy of attention both in regards to the works of Franz Kafka and the works of Hasek....Myths and pseudomyths quite undoubtedly influenced these two Prague authors. (These were) myths that substituted in so many ways for objective law and order. (They were) out-of-date, incomprehensible and unacceptable myths..... and well-deserved — it is merely for the time being well In the concentrated atmosphere of collage-style Prague, right from the very start of this century, political, social, moral and philosophical problems made themselves felt (in Prague) which were only made explicit in the rest of Europe by the (time of the) First World War. This was natural and highly understandable: in societies which were entering the modern age more smoothly, and in a more organic manner, these problems were kept hidden better. They came to the surface less blatantly. Prague (however) was 'Dadaist' and ‘surrealist' (and) avant la letter. : on the one hand by the difficulties of transferring a Czech novel into a foreign language, on the other by the fact that the Good Soldier S s hackem v cerne.gif (857 bytes)vejk is a humorous novel and its main character usurps most of the attention to himself."

Frynta himself had others translate his own words into English. Had he known the language and it's nature so different from the other Continental languages, he'd probably have written "and it shall be masked by English translations forever."

 

The two English translations published so far were dismal, unreadable, and unfaithful to the original. Therefore, only rightfully, they were not heavily promoted. As a result of both, virtually nobody reads them. Most English language readers don’t know this masterpiece exists.

There is now a superb new English language translation and faithful literary rendition of the masterwork :
Now the Good Soldier
S s hackem v cernem 36.gif (962 bytes)vejk is unmasked, and its title character himself steps from behind the English reader's veil of ignorance to convince him of his own flesh and blood reality.

 

Over the past few decades Americans have been subjected to some of the same social, political, economic, and moral phenomena that Europeans have endured for ages and which are the backdrop to this icono-clastic and soul probing epic. Now more than ever before, Americans will be able to relate to the story and its main character. And they will enjoy doing it.

 

 


Now that you have heard of, or might have even served in Sarajevo and Bosnia Herzegovina
why not
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