The Modern Novel

Biography

Jaroslav Hašek was born in 1883 in Prague. His father was a school teacher who died from drink when Hašek was thirteen. He was educated at a commercial school before becoming a bank clerk but was soon fired from that job, not least because of his drinking. At about his time, his first story was published in a Prague newspaper. He soon became involved in Prague anarchist circles, eventually editing their magazine, and getting himself arrested on a regular basis. He got married but that was an equally unsuccessful venture. He tried to commit suicide by throwing himself off a bridge but was prevented from doing so, but did spend some time in a mental hospital. In 1915 he was called up to the Austrian Army. He won promotion and a medal but was made a prisoner of war. After joining the Czech Legion he gave up drink and became a Bolshevik and became a political commissar in the Russian Fifth Army. He returned to Prague in 1920 with a new wife, without having bothered to divorce the first one.

Back in Prague, he soon resumed his drinking habits. However, he put his military experiences to good use, producing the four volume Osudy Dobrého Vojáka švejka Za Svetové Války (The Good Soldier Schweik), a comic and satirical masterpiece and one of the best novels to come out of World War 1. Hašek planned to write further volumes but he died in 1923 before doing so. Schweik/Svejk had already appeared in two previous works but in this work Hašek makes him a cunning idiot, a bully and amoral and, in doing so, shows the inhumanity of war in a manner rarely equalled.

Books about Jaroslav Hašek

Cecil Parrott: The Bad Bohemian: the Life of Jaroslav Hasek, Creator of The Good Soldier Svejk

Other links

Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek and his novel “The Good Soldier Svejk”
The world renowned writer and ‘folk hero’ Jaroslav Hašek
The Good Writer Hašek
The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds Of the Law (about the imaginary political party created by Hašek and a few friends in 1911)