Part One: Behind the Lines

Preface

A great epoch calls for great men. There are modest, unrecognised heroes, without the glory of a Napoleon or the history of his deeds. An analysis of their characters would overshadow even the glory of Alexander the Great. Today you can meet in the streets of Prague a shabbily dressed man who is not even aware of his significance in the history of the great new epoch. He goes modestly on his way, troubling no one, nor is he troubled by journalists asking for an interview. If you asked him his name, he would answer simply and unassumingly: "I am Švejk." And this quiet, unassuming, shabbily dressed man is indeed that heroic and valiant good soldier Švejk, whose name in the days of Austria was on the lips of all the citizens of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and whose glory will not fade even in the republic. I am very fond of the good soldier Švejk, and in presenting an account of his adventures in the World War, I am convinced that all of you will sympathise with this modest, unrecognised hero.

1. The Good Soldier Švejk Intervenes in the Great War

"And so they've killed our Ferdinand," said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an idiot, and now lived by selling dogs — ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. Apart from this occupation he suffered from rheumatism, and was at that moment rubbing his knees with embrocation.

"Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?" asked Švejk, going on with his massage. "I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša's, the chemist's, who once drank a bottle of hair oil there by mistake; and the other is Ferdinand Kokoška, who collects dog dirt. Neither of them is any loss."

"Oh no, sir, it's His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiště, the fat, pious one. They shot him at Sarajevo, sir, with a revolver, you know. He was riding there in a car with his Archduchess."

"Well, there you are, Mrs Müller, in a car. Yes, a gentleman like him can afford it, and he never thinks that a ride in a car like that can end up badly. And at Sarajevo, too, that's in Bosnia, Mrs Müller. I expect the Turks did it. You know, we never ought to have taken Bosnia and Herzegovina from them."

Švejk put on his coat and went to his pub, The Chalice, where there sat, besides the landlord Palivec, a single customer: a plainclothes policeman, Bretschneider, of the state security service. Palivec was a vulgar man, every second word of whom was a rude one, but he was well read, and told everyone to read what Victor Hugo had written about Napoleon's old guard at Waterloo; and on this day he was determined to say nothing. "It's a lovely summer," said Bretschneider, opening the conversation. "Everything's worth nothing," said Palivec. "They've done a fine thing for us in Sarajevo," said Bretschneider, with a disappointed hope. "In which Sarajevo?" asked Palivec. "In the wine-cellar in Nusle? They're always fighting there."

Švejk was more forthcoming. He explained to the detective, at length, that it was a great loss to the Emperor, who would surely avenge it; that there would be a war with Serbia and with Russia; and that he had once known a man who had been shot in the same way. And when Bretschneider asked Palivec whether there had not once been a portrait of His Majesty the Emperor hanging on the wall, Palivec answered that it had hung there, but the flies used to make their mess on it, so he had put it away in the attic: "You know how it is, people make all kinds of remarks." Bretschneider arrested them both: Švejk for high treason, and Palivec for insulting His Majesty by comparing his likeness to the flies' mess.

"If I'd wanted to shoot an archduke," Švejk went on, "I'd have taken a Browning. It looks like a toy, but in two minutes you can shoot twenty archdukes with it, thin or fat — though between you and me, a fat one is easier to hit than a thin one. You remember that time in Portugal when they shot their king? He was fat too. Well, naturally, a king can't be thin." And he explained that the Emperor would never let it pass: "You'll see — war with the Turks. You've killed my uncle, so here's one on the jaw for you. War's certain. Serbia and Russia will help us. There'll be a fine old scrap." Bretschneider wrote it all down.

2–5. Švejk at Police Headquarters; Before the Medical Experts; Thrown Out of the Lunatic Asylum

At police headquarters Švejk sat in a cell with several frightened gentlemen, each arrested for some trifle in the general panic: one for having said that the Archduke had been a man of character, another for having broken a bench, a third for not being able to remember whether he had said something. Švejk comforted them all with stories, and when he was taken before the inspector, he signed at once a confession that he had insulted the Emperor, that he had committed high treason, and everything else they put in front of him. "Is there anything else you'd like me to admit?" he asked. "Humbly report, sir, I'll gladly confess to anything."

"Everything has its bright side," Švejk told them. "In the old days, things were much worse. They used to make you walk on red-hot iron and drink molten lead to see if you were innocent. Today it's much more humane. They just lock you up, and if you're innocent, they let you go, and if you're guilty, they hang you. It's all very fair." The others did not find this comforting.

He was taken before a commission of three learned psychiatrists, who asked him questions such as "Is radium heavier than lead?" ("Humbly report, I haven't weighed it, sir") and "Do you believe in the end of the world?" ("I'd have to see it first, but it certainly won't be the day after tomorrow"), and asked him to calculate the depth of the Pacific Ocean; and they certified him as a complete idiot. He was sent to the lunatic asylum, where he found life so pleasant — everyone could say what he liked, and some were the Pope, and some the Sultan, and he was fed and bathed — that when they discovered he was only an ordinary idiot and threw him out for malingering, he refused to go, and had to be carried out, and sat in a café complaining that he had been thrown out of the lunatic asylum without lunch.

"I really don't know," Švejk said afterwards, "why those lunatics get so cross at being kept there. You can crawl about naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did that anywhere else, people would be surprised; but there it's quite normal. There's a freedom there that not even the socialists have ever dreamed of. You can call yourself God, or the Virgin Mary, or the Pope, or the King of England, or the Emperor, or Saint Wenceslas. I'd gladly have stayed there for ever."

He was arrested again, released, and went home; and Palivec, for the flies, got ten years.

Bretschneider, the detective, had not forgotten him. He came to Švejk's flat to buy a dog, hoping to draw him into some careless word about the war. Švejk sold him a mongrel with a forged pedigree, a vicious beast, and talked to him at length about dogs, and about nothing else. Bretschneider came back the next day and bought another, and then another, and talked, and Švejk talked about dogs; and soon the detective's flat was full of savage, starving mongrels that he could not control, and that in the end, as the story says, ate him. And the state security service lost one of its most zealous servants.

6–7. Švejk Goes to War

When the order for mobilisation came, and Švejk received his call-up papers, he was lying in bed with rheumatism. "Mrs Müller," he said, "I must go to Belgrade." He had her fetch a bath-chair from the confectioner's, and a pair of crutches; and so, with his military cap on his head, his crutches in his hand, pushed by Mrs Müller, he went through the streets of Prague to the recruiting office, waving his crutches and crying: "To Belgrade! To Belgrade!" A crowd gathered and followed him; and the newspapers wrote of the patriotism of a cripple. At the recruiting office, the doctors, who regarded everyone as a malingerer, declared him a malingerer too.

The next morning the newspapers wrote of the touching scene: a cripple who, despite his illness, insisted on being taken to the recruiting office to offer his life for his Emperor. "A Cripple's Patriotism," said one headline; and the readers were moved, and some ladies wanted to send the brave invalid presents.

8–9. Švejk as a Malingerer; In the Garrison Gaol

He was sent to the military hospital for malingerers, where Dr Grünstein treated all diseases, from tuberculosis to rheumatism, with strict diet, aspirin, stomach pumps, enemas and quinine, until the patients declared themselves fit for service. Švejk thanked the doctor for every enema; and one day a visiting baroness, a patriotic lady, came with a basket of delicacies for the "brave soldier" whom the papers had described, which the other patients ate while Švejk was being given another enema. He was sent to the garrison gaol.

In the hospital the malingerers compared their methods of making themselves ill — what to swallow, what to inject, what to rub in — each sure he would get his discharge; and each, after Dr Grünstein's treatment, was declared fit and sent to the front.

10–13. Švejk as Batman to the Chaplain

In the garrison gaol, the prisoners were made to attend the sermons of the chaplain, Otto Katz, the most perfect army chaplain in the world, born a Jew, who had studied at a commercial academy, been baptised for no particular reason, and became a priest by accident; he drank, gambled, and preached in a way that made the prisoners laugh. Švejk, at the sermon, burst into tears, so loudly and so movingly that the chaplain, delighted, asked for him as his batman.

Švejk served Katz faithfully. He fetched him home from the pubs, carried him up the stairs, put him to bed, and borrowed money for him. For the field mass, he went all over Prague to find a field altar and a chalice; he served at the mass, in civilian clothes, as acolyte, without knowing a word of it; and afterwards, when the chaplain was drunk again and had a long theological dispute with another priest, Švejk took him home in a cab, through the night, while the chaplain, lying in Švejk's arms, sang songs and gave his blessing to the cabman.

All the way, the chaplain, who had forgotten who Švejk was, kept asking him who he was and where they were going; he wanted to get out and take another cab; he wanted to go back to the pub; he declared that he did not know Švejk and would not pay; he tried to jump out of the cab. Švejk held him firmly by the collar, explained everything to him each time as if for the first time, and at last carried him up to his flat, and put him to bed with his boots off, while the chaplain told him, weeping, that he was a good man, and gave him absolution for all his sins.

The chaplain's flat was gradually emptied of its furniture, which he pawned or sold to pay his debts; at last he even pawned the piano. Švejk kept the accounts of the household, and found money where there was none, and found excuses for the creditors. And every morning the chaplain would ask him, with a terrible headache: "Švejk, what did I do yesterday?" — and Švejk would tell him, sparing nothing.

When the chaplain had to administer the last rites to a dying soldier, and had no holy oil, he sent Švejk to buy some. Švejk went from shop to shop, and at last, in a paint shop, the assistant sold him a bottle of the best hemp-seed oil, Number Three, assuring him it was just as good. "There's no difference," said Švejk to the chaplain; "it's all oil." And the chaplain, too drunk to care, accepted it.

But Otto Katz was always short of money; and one evening, playing cards with Lieutenant Lukáš, he lost Švejk.

14. Švejk as Batman to Lieutenant Lukáš

Lieutenant Lukáš was a typical regular officer of the ramshackle Austrian monarchy, a Czech who spoke German in public and Czech in private, kind to his men and fond of animals and women. Švejk served him with such zeal that he was soon in trouble. He let the lieutenant's cat eat the canary, "to get them used to each other." He received, while the lieutenant was out, a lady who had run away from her husband and came to stay; and when the lieutenant had left orders that Švejk was to satisfy all her wishes, Švejk did so — every wish — as he dutifully reported.

At their first meeting, the lieutenant said: "The chaplain tells me you're a remarkable idiot. I hope you're not." "Humbly report, sir," said Švejk, "I was certified by the army doctors as an idiot, officially. I was discharged from the army for idiocy. "I've been an idiot all my life, sir, officially." And he looked at his new master with such a kind and innocent gaze that the lieutenant did not know whether to laugh or to strike him.

The lieutenant wanted a dog, and Švejk, who had been a dog dealer, knew how to get one. With a friend, Blahník, he stole a fine pinscher from a colonel's maid as she walked it in the park, dyed it, forged its pedigree, and presented it to the lieutenant.

15. Catastrophe

Lieutenant Lukáš went out with his new dog, and in the street met Colonel Friedrich Kraus von Zillergut — a man of such stupidity that the officers avoided him, who explained everything at length: "A window, gentlemen, is a frame with glass in it." The dog ran joyfully to the colonel, for it was his own. The colonel was beside himself. And the next day Lieutenant Lukáš was transferred, with his batman, to the 91st Regiment at České Budějovice, which was about to leave for the front.

The colonel's speeches were famous throughout the garrison. He would stop an officer in the street and explain to him: "You see, Lieutenant, the pavement is that part of the street which is intended for pedestrians, and it is raised above the roadway. And the roadway, Lieutenant, is that part of the street which is intended for vehicles." He recognised his dog at once, in spite of the dye; he made the lieutenant tell him where he had got it; and Lukáš, who knew nothing, said it was a present from his batman.

When the lieutenant came home, he told Švejk what had happened. Švejk listened attentively, and said: "Humbly report, sir, that's very bad luck. It doesn't often happen that a dog runs back to its owner in the street."

Epilogue to Part One

Hašek adds a short note answering critics who complained of the soldiers' coarse language: life is not a school for polite manners, he says; everyone speaks as he is; and a book that tried to clean up the speech of the barracks would be a lie. He was not, he said, writing a manual of drawing-room manners. He promises the reader that Švejk will go on to the front.