Svejk and The Glorious Licking

When Jaroslav Hasek published the first volume of his World War I novel, The Good Soldier Svejk, it was such a success that he planned a total of six volumes. He finished volumes two and three and was working on volume four when he died. The three, plus the fragment of four, are published together in the Penguin Classics edition, translated from the Czech by Cecil Parrott.

I have already posted on volumes one, Behind the Lines, and two, At the Front. Volumes three and four are devoted to The Glorious Licking. Svejk approaches the enemy, but has yet to fire a shot. His closeness is so great that he dons the uniform of an escaped Russian prisoner-of-war and is subsequently taken prisoner by his own side. A spy! A turncoat! He is in imminent of danger of hanging but, when Hasek died, Svejk was still very much alive and ready for his next adventure.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy grinds on. Difficulties are addressed, slowly and with due regard to precedent

Military greatcoats and caps were stored there and the mice bit through them with great confidence and in great security, because it was only a year later that the quartermaster’s office remembered to introduce into the military forces crown-property cats without pension rights, which were entered into the administration records under the heading: ‘Imperial and Royal military store cats.’ The rank of cat was in fact only a revival of an old institution which had been abolished after the war of 1866.

Cats who fail to adequately perform their duties are “hanged by the verdict of a court-martial.”

Hasek continues to deride the military and the polyglot Imperial army, but the last sections of the book are much darker than any that have gone before. The hunger is real, the dead and dying are real, and the war is to go one from three more years although Hasek did not live to tell about it.

What I Read in February 2012

Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum. Oskar refuses to grow after age three, when he begins to play his toy tin drum. It speaks for him during the rise of Nazism, the war years, and the postwar turmoil of a divided Germany.

Scott Turow, Innocent. I enjoy Turow’s legal thrillers because they hold you with puzzles, not violence. Innocent is one of the thrillers in the series devoted to Rusty Sabich and Sandy Stern, lawyers in Kindle County aka Chicago. It has more plot twists than a pretzel and I could not put it down.

Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk. I am posting on each part of this book as I complete it. Part I – Behind the Lines. Svejk is in the World War I Austro Hungarian army, but not yet in battle. His struggles are with the military itself. Part II – At the Front. Svejk is not actually at the front, just continuing his long bureaucratically-obstructed journey toward that destination.

Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady. Two people, a man and a woman, journey back to a place of their childhood. They meet there a third person from that time. A bit heavy on reminiscence and coincidence, but a good read for those of us who are looking back at our own reflections.

Angela Thirkell, The Brandons. Lavinia Brandon is rich widow, fond of her children and a bit silly. Everyone around her finds her absolutely charming, as do I. Just the person to spend a giggly afternoon with in 1939 Bartsetshire.

Sandford Salyer, Marmee: The Mother of Little Women. This rather informally written biography of Louisa May Alcott’s mother tells the story of the Alcott family as Abigail May Alcott (Abba) experienced it.

Edmund White, Fanny: A Fiction. Yes, a fiction. Loosely based on Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, this book is not quite a novel and not quite a biography either. Mostly true to the historical facts, it invents incidents in Frances Trollope’s life, to no particular point that I could see.

Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge. This collection of nine short stories, published after O’Connor’s death is my first experience with her work. The stories are skillfully wrought and intentionally disturbing.

Angela Thirkell, Before Lunch. Another cheerful muddle in the Bartsetshire series. Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner are all important. That’s where people meet, talk, misunderstand. Some lovers head down the wrong path, but most matters are resolved before lunch.

Katharine Weber, Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear. Two American women, Harriet and Anne, share an apartment in Geneva. The arrangement is temporary. They were roommates before, but now things have changed. Some objects in the mirror are indeed closer, too close.

Svejk at the Front

Funny thing about Part II of Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk — although entitled “At the Front”, Svejk never gets there. Instead, the simple and innocent (or wily, sly and apparently innocent) Svejk continues to wrestle with many levels of the military bureaucracy. By page 443 in my edition he may be getting ready to go where the fighting is. World War I went on for four years, so he has some time yet.

My edition has a selection of Joseph Lada’s cartoon illustrations for the book published in serial form. Here, the Good Soldier Svejk waits for telephone messages.

He transcribes a telegram.

‘As a result of more detailed it has been permitted or the same can on the other hand none the less be supplemented.’

‘This is all pointless,’ said Vanek, when Svejk was frightfully puzzled by what he had written and read it out aloud three times in succession: ‘Sheer stupidity, although God knows it could be in cipher, but in the company we’re  not equipped to receive cipher. You may throw it away as well.’

‘I think so too,’ said Svejk. ‘If I were to report to the lieutenant that he has as a result of more detailed it has been permitted or the same can on the other hand none the less be supplemented, I think he’d perhaps feel offended.’

Svejk is arrested on so many different charges that I lost count. Here he is brought before Judge Advocate Ruller.

Svejk is unshaven because he has been locked up. Note, please the crucifix.

A volume of legal code lay before him, and a half-consumed glass of tea stood on top of it. On the table on the right stood a crucifix made out of imitation ivory with a dusty Christ, who looked despairingly at the pedestal of his cross, on which there were ashes and cigarette stubs.

Here, Svejk (again, unshaven because  he has been locked up on a different matter) has missed his train and consults with the local citizens.

One of them gives some excellent advice: “Only keep your wits about you and see that you don’t stay long at the front.”