The Good Soldier Švejk – Epilogue to Part One (1922)

Hašek included a three-page Epilogue to Volume One of The Good Soldier Švejk, which is interesting for a number of reasons (pp.214-216 of the Penguin edition).

First and foremost it shows that even when he was not being ‘literary’, he wrote in the same blunt factual way as in the novel, for example using the kind of sententious truisms which could have come straight from the mouth of Švejk:

Life is no finishing school for young ladies

The epilogue is predominantly concerned to defend Hašek’s use of coarse language including swearwords. He bluntly tells us he disdains the use of circumlocutions or asterisks as ‘the stupidest form of sham’.

The argument from realism He, Hašek, has simply reported how real people actually talk.

Life is no finishing school for young ladies. Everyone speaks the way he is made… This book is neither a handbook of drawing-room refinement nor a teaching manual of expressions to be used in polite society. It is a historical picture of a certain period of time.

He doesn’t develop any reason why but just takes it for granted that a realistic depiction of the world, and of how people actually behave and actually speak, coarse language and all, is a good in itself and doesn’t need justification. What he is describing is ‘perfectly natural’ and therefore, by implication, writing about it is the same terms is ‘perfectly natural’, too.

The argument from hypocrisy Hašek proposes that the only people who are ashamed of ripe or bawdy language in a novel are hypocrites, the ones with the most to hide, ‘the worst swine and the experts in filth’.

It is the people who most loudly proclaim their moral indignation in public who take pleasure in frequenting public toilets in order to read the graffiti. It is those who would like to turn the whole country into a refined drawing room who in fact, in secret, practice the worst vices.

To the pure in heart everything is pure. Or, as he puts it, the well-brought-up man may read anything.

The argument from strength Then he tries another tack – that the easily offended are weak.

Those who boggle at strong language are cowards, because it is real life which is shocking them.

He, Hašek, has simply reported how actually people actually talk. Not his problem if some readers and critics – if ‘weaklings like that’ – are too sensitive to face the truth about the world.

The argument from cultural health But, says Hašek, the net impact of these ‘cowards’ and ‘weaklings’ is not neutral: it causes actual harm. They are the people who:

cause most harm to character and culture. They would like to see the nation to grow up into a group of over-sensitive people – masturbators of false culture…

Again the idea is only glancingly referred to and not explored, but clearly implies that

a nation should be strong
that literary realism or culture which faces up to how real people actually speak and behave requires a kind of moral and aesthetic strength
and that this facing up to reality builds that kind of moral and aesthetic strength in a ‘nation’

The argument from character building It’s only referred to in one word, but Hašek slips in the idea that the kind of censorship and repression his critics promote is damaging not only to (national) culture, but to character. Implicit in that phrase is the idea that reading strong language spoken by ‘real’ people toughens the reader up and is character building.

The argument from political dissent He then goes on to say that the person the landlord Palivec is based on got in touch with Hašek when he learned he was in the book, and bought twenty copies, and frankly admitted to being well known for his foul language.

But, Hašek asserts, it is not just bad language. Palivec is a representative social and political figure. His crude language expresses ‘the detestation the ordinary Czech feels for Byzantine behaviour’ and their ‘lack of respect for the Emperor and for fine phrases’.

So in this sentence fine and polite and refined language is associated with the Imperial Court and its oppression of the Czech people, and crude language is associated with opposition to Austrian rule.

Hašek’s characters’ effing and blinding are acts of linguistic rebellion against the Austro-Hungarian ascendency and its effete and hypocritical manners.

To summarise, literary realism of the type Hašek practices:

describes the real world
avoids hypocrisy
is strong and healthy
makes the reader strong and healthy
helps create a strong and healthy national culture

The kind of disapproval and censorship his critics call for:

would result in works painting a deceptive picture of the real world
is the cry of hypocrites who promote beauty but are themselves leading experts in ‘filth’
is the cry of weaklings and cowards
whose censorship, if put in place, would weaken and undermine both individuals and the national culture

Hašek’s aim

Very briefly, he says he’s not sure his book will achieve its aim. Well, what is its aim? Hašek explains it in this way:

The fact that I have already heard one man swear at another and say ‘You’re about as big an idiot as Švejk’ does not prove that I have. But if the word ‘Švejk’ becomes a new choice specimen in the already florid garland of abuse I must be content with this enrichment of the Czech language. (p.215)

Thoughts

1. It is interesting that Hašek chooses to defend his book entirely from the accusation of bad language. As I make clear in my review of Volume One, I barely noticed that the characters saying shit or bollocks – the kind of language I’ve read in thousands of novels since, especially from the 1960s onwards.

What I did notice was the casual violence they show to each other, the frothing anger of all the officials which underpins the incidents of kicking, hitting and flogging we witness along with much worse tortures and even executions (which, it is true, we don’t tend to see, but have amply reported to us).

About this no-one seems to have complained, and Hašek doesn’t feel compelled to justify. In a way, this is the most shocking thing about this little epilogue.

2. I don’t accept the idea that Hašek went to all this trouble just to add the word ‘Švejk’ as a term of abuse to the Czech language. There’s a lot, lot more going on in his big novel, most notably his fierce satire on everything Austro-Hungarian, namely its stupid bureaucracy and its incompetent army but by extension, with everything bourgeois and fake.

Then there are the fierce statements about the horror of war, all the more bitter for their often throwaway character.

And then there’s the motivation all comedians share, to make people laugh – to make them laugh and maybe do other things too, like reflect on war and society – but first and foremost, to amuse and entertain them.