Jaroslav Hasek

Youth

Hasek was born in Prague, Bohemia (then within Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic), the son of high-school math teacher Josef Hasek and his wife Katerina. Poverty forced the family, with three children – another son Bohuslav, three years Hasek's younger, and an orphan cousin Maria – to move often, more than fifteen times during his infancy. He never knew a real home, and this rootlessness clearly influenced his life of wanderlust. When he was thirteen, Hasek's father died from excessive alcohol intake, and his mother was unable to raise him firmly. The teenage boy dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to become a druggist, but eventually graduated from business school. He worked briefly as a bank clerk in 1903, before embarking on a career as a freelance writer and journalist. At the end of 1910/early 1911 he was also a dog salesman (a profession he was to attribute to his hero Svejk and from which some of the improbable anecdotes told by Svejk are drawn).

Political activism

In 1906 he joined the anarchist movement, having taken part in the 1897 anti-German riots in Prague as a schoolboy. He gave regular lectures to groups of proletarian workers and, in 1907, became the editor of the anarchist journal Komuna. As an anarchist in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his movements were closely monitored by the police and he was arrested and imprisoned on a regular basis; his offences include numerous cases of vandalism and at least one case of assaulting a police officer, for which he spent a month in prison. He satirised the lengths to which the Austro-Hungarian police would go to entrap suspected political subversives in the opening chapters of The Good Soldier Svejk.

Marriage

Hasek met Jarmila Mayerova in 1907, and fell in love with her. However, due to his bohemian lifestyle, her parents found him an unsuitable match for their daughter. In response to this, Hasek attempted to back away from his radical politics and get a settled job as a writer. When he was arrested for desecrating a flag in Prague, Mayerova's parents took her into the country, in hope that this would end their relationship. This move was unsuccessful in that it failed to end the affair, but it did result in Hasek renewing his focus on writing. In 1909 he had sixty-four short stories published, over twice as many as in any previous year, and he was also named as the editor of the journal Svet zvirat (The Animal World). This job did not last long, however, as he was soon dismissed for publishing articles about imaginary animals which he had dreamed up (though this furnished further material for Svejk).

On May 23, 1910, he married Jarmila. Despite the long courtship, the marriage proved an unhappy one and lasted little more than a year. Mayerova went back to live with her parents in 1911 after her husband was caught trying to fake his own death. At the outbreak of World War I, Hasek lived periodically with cartoonist Josef Lada, who later illustrated the Good Soldier Svejk.

In the Austro-Hungarian army

In December 1914 Hasek was drafted and he joined the Austro-Hungarian army's on February 17, 1915. His unit was the replacement battalion of the 91st Infantry Regiment, located in Ceske Budejovice (from June 1 in Kiralyhida). Hasek immediately enlisted at the school for reserve officers but already on March 6 he was hospitalised. His medical reports reveal that he suffered from heart problems and rheumatism. As the result he was dismissed from regular army service, but continued in the army, being assigned lighter duties. He took part in the battle of Sokal at the end of July, and was after the battle awarded a silver medal for bravery. Hasek did not spend long fighting in the front line, being captured by the Russians on September 24, 1915.

Countless details and fragments from Hasek's own experiences in the 91st regiment found their way into the novel. Several of the characters in Svejk are based on people he met there: Lukas, Vanek, Biegler, Sagner, Schroder, Wenzl, Adamicka, Ibl. Geographically large parts of the route described in the novel correspond to the 12th march battalion's own journey. Their train transport started from Kiralyhida on June 30 and ended in Sambir on July 4. The journey continued on foot, and on reaching the front on July 11 Hasek was assigned to the 11th field company, commanded by senior lieutenant Rudolf Lukas. His battalion commander was senior lieutenant Vinzenz Sagner. He also served as a company messenger (orderly), another parallel to Svejk.

In Russia

At the camp in Totskoye he contracted typhus but later on had a more comfortable existence. In June 1916 he was recruited as a volunteer to join the Czechoslovak Brigade, a unit of mainly Czech volunteers that were fighting the Austro-Hungarian empire.

This unit was later to become known as the Czechoslovak Legions. There he acted respectively as a clerk, journalist, soldier and recruitment agent until February 1918. In March 1918 the Czechoslovak Legions embarked on a journey to join the Western Front via Vladivostok, at times controlling most of the Trans-Siberian railway and several major cities in Siberia. Hasek disagreed with this move and opted to leave the legion in favour of Czech and Russian revolutionaries. From October 1918 he joined the Red Army, mainly working as a recruiter and propaganda writer. In 1920 he remarried (although still married to Jarmila).

Later years

He eventually returned to Prague in December 1920. However, in some circles he was not a popular figure, being branded a traitor and a bigamist, and struggled to find a publisher for his works.

Before the war, in 1912, he had published the book The Good Soldier Svejk and other strange stories (Dobry vojak Svejk a jine podivne historky) where the figure of Svejk appeared for the first time; but it was only after the war in his famous novel that Svejk became a sancta simplicitas, a cheerful idiot who joked about the war as if it were a tavern brawl. By this time, Hasek had become gravely ill and dangerously overweight. He no longer wrote, but dictated the chapters of Svejk from his bedroom in the village of Lipnice, where he died in on January 3, 1923 of heart failure. Hasek published in his life about 1,500 short stories.

Legacy

Namesakes