The Good Soldier Švejk

For most readers of The Good Soldier Švejk, Hašek's use of the term anabasis as a chapter heading in [II.2] does not seem particularly significant. It is, after all, only one of the novel's numerous references to ancient Greek and Roman history. Nevertheless, some literary scholars consider it worthy of attention because Hašek allegedly used the term to ridicule the post-war enthusiasm surrounding the Legions and their so-called Siberian anabasis. This article traces the origins of this hypothesis and argues that Hašek's use of the word anabasis has a much simpler explanation.

Břetislav Hůla was probably the first to suggest in writing that Hašek used anabasis as a subtle dig at the Czechoslovak Legions (1951). His conclusion was published in 1953 in a collection of explanations that formed part of a new edition of Švejk.

© LA-PNP

In his notes to the 1953 edition of The Good Soldier Švejk, Zdena Ančík considered the connection obvious, and others have echoed this view over the years. Literary scholars Antonín Měšťan (1983)[a], Antoni Kroh (Polish translator of The Good Soldier Švejk, 2002), and Abigail Weil (2019)[b] are among those who argue that Hašek's use of "anabasis" was a dig at the Legions, and that the author had the Legions' so-called Siberian anabasis from Kiev to Vladivostok in mind when writing the chapter Švejk's Budějovice Anabasis in 1921. Until 2020, a summary of Kroh's interpretation could even be found in the endnotes to Zenny Sadlon's translation of The Good Soldier Švejk.

The hypothesis cannot be dismissed outright because we have no record of what was on Hašek's mind as he wrote. That said, one would expect it to be supported by quotations from the author or from people close to him at the time (from 1921 onwards). No such source has ever been identified, and there is scant evidence that contemporary readers perceived Švejk's anabasis as a dig at the Legions. The following discussion aims to shed light on the origin and development of the claim, focusing on the only serious attempt to support it, by Antoni Kroh.

Fiala

This otherwise excellent book contains far-fetched claims about Hašek and his use of the term anabasis.

In 2004, Professor Jiří Fiala (Olomouc) published a thorough analysis of "anabasis" and other motifs from The Good Soldier Švejk [e]. He notes that Zdena Ančík, in the explanatory notes to the 1953 edition of the book, concludes that anabasis "obviously is an ironic reference to the Legions and their fight against the Red Army, by nationalistic novel writers who coined the term Siberian anabasis"[1]. Fiala compares this with later explanations from Radko Pytlík [2] and Milan Hodík [3] and observes that these scholars do not draw such conclusions. Fiala ultimately leaves the question open. He then reproduces an excerpt from the book O Szwejku i o nas by Kroh[4], from a chapter entitled "Two Generals".

Kroh

O Szwejku i o nas, s.45

© Antoni Kroh

As translated by Fiala, Kroh's text is the starting point for the following analysis. Kroh juxtaposes Rudolf Medek and Jaroslav Hašek in the context of the anabasis, but even the title Two Generals gives cause for scepticism. Medek eventually rose to the rank of general (1931), but associating Hašek with this rank is absurd.

Even more questionable is Kroh's conclusion. The reader is left with the impression that the hostility directed at Hašek in Czechoslovakia after his return from Russia in 1920 was caused by his publication of the "anabasis" chapter in The Good Soldier Švejk, and that this triggered an avalanche of criticism, insults and harassment.

Rudolf Medek lashing out at Hašek, two years before the anabasis chapter appeared in Švejk.

Československý deník,6.4.1918

There is no denying that Hašek was subjected to nasty attacks and insults, but the worst came while he was still in Russia, more than a year before he wrote Švejk's anabasis. In an article published shortly after Jaroslav Hašek left the Legions, Medek delivered a cruel character assassination[c], and worse was to follow. In early 1919, Jaroslav Colman-Cassius wrote an obituary titled Zrádce (Traitor)[d], apparently believing Hašek to be dead. Cassius was as unforgiving as Medek, describing him as having "small chubby hands", and calling him a clown and a drunkard, a man without a spine or any character.

Extracts from Cassius' nasty obituary. Hašek read it in Irkutsk in 1920 and was deeply hurt.

Venkov,19.1.1919

When Kroh attempts to link Czech society's hostility towards Hašek to the anabasis chapter, he uses the phrase drunkard with chubby hands as an example. The term was indeed used, but it predated The Good Soldier Švejk by a year. It was coined in 1920 in Irkutsk by Hašek himself in response to the aforementioned obituary, which he obtained while still in Russia [5]. His response was the story Dušička Jaroslava Haška vypravuje (The Little Soul of Jaroslav Hašek Tells), in which the insulting phrase appears. The story was printed immediately after Hašek returned to Prague[f], many months before he wrote the "anabasis" chapter (autumn 1921).

The links that Kroh draws to Rudolf Medek and his "Anabase" novels (five in total) are, chronologically speaking, equally irrelevant because, with the exception of the first, they were published after Hašek's death [6]. As we have seen, Medek attacked Hašek sharply in 1918, so these attacks cannot be linked to the publication of the "anabasis" chapter three years later. According to Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj, the two met in Prague in 1921 and were reconciled after a heated encounter. Thus, Kroh's attempt to prove a connection between the spiteful attacks on Jaroslav Hašek and the publication of Švejk's 'budějovická anabasis' collapses when viewed against the timeline.

Weil

A welcome addition to haškology was published by Harvard University in 2019: a generally insightful doctoral thesis by Abigail Weil[b]. Her thesis devotes ample space to the motif of anabasis and Hašek's alleged dig at the Legions.

Výbor ze spisů Xenofontových, Anabase, Kyrupaideie, Apomnemoneumat, Hellenik a Symposia,1910

Whereas Kroh at least seeks to explain (albeit unconvincingly) the connection to the Legions' anabasis, Weil takes it for granted. She mentions neither Antonín Měšťan nor Kroh's book, nor Fiala's discussion of it, so we must assume that she was unaware of these works at the time of writing.

Her belief in the hypothesis may have been inspired or reinforced by Zdena Ančík (in reality Břetislav Hůla) and his comment in the 1953 edition of The Good Soldier Švejk. Weil explicitly refers to this as "the standard edition".

Ančík

So what about Břetislav Hůla's explanation from 1951, published by Zdena Ančík in 1953 (17th edition, Státní nakladatelství)? It was written at a time when anything that could put the pre-war "bourgeois" republic and the Legions in a bad light was the order of the day. It is also striking that by 1955 (22nd edition, Práce), the same Ančík had removed the reference to the Legions and their anabasis. Nor does a completely different set of notes by Milan Jakovič (26th edition, Odeon, 1968) contain any allusions to "anabasis and the Legions".

Xenophon on the curriculum

The term "anabasis" was by no means unknown in Czech literature, even before the wave of legionnaire literature hit Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. One of the teachers at the gymnasium in Žitná ulice, where Hašek studied from 1893 to 1898, was the famous author Alois Jirásek. He taught geography and history at the school, and in 1886 he wrote a book on the theme of "anabasis". Xenophon's magnum opus had been translated into Czech some time earlier.

Xenophon was on the Greek language curriculum when Hašek was a student at the gymnasium in Žitná ulice.

Devátá výroční zpráva cís. král. vyššího gymnasia v Žitné ulici v Praze za školní rok 1896

Classical Greek was one of the subjects at the gymnasium, and Xenophon was on the curriculum. That said, the subject was introduced in the fifth form, which Hašek never reached, as he was forced to leave in the fourth. Jirásek did not teach the young Jaroslav's classes (Ia, IIa, IIIa, and IVa), despite Václav Menger and others claiming the opposite [7]. Still, the fact that Xenophon was on the curriculum shows that he must have been well known among educated Czechs. It should be added that Greek was taught in the third form, so Xenophon's name may have been introduced at that stage. The book Anabasis was also widely used around the world to teach classical Greek.

Hašek and Xenophon

Xenophon and his Anabasis were well known to Hašek five years before he wrote Švejk.

Čechoslovan,25.9.1916

Even though Hašek probably did not study Xenophon as a subject at school, there is no doubt that he had a sound general knowledge of, and interest in, the history of ancient Greece. This is already evident in the introduction to The Good Soldier Švejk.

More importantly, we have direct proof that Jaroslav Hašek's awareness of Xenophon was unrelated to the anabasis of the Legions. In Dopis z fronty (Letter from the Front)[h] from 1916, both Xenophon and his Anabasis are mentioned. At that time, he was surely not making fun of a Siberian anabasis that was still two years in the future...

The scholars mentioned do not seem to have noticed that Hašek used the theme of "anabasis" this early. Even before the war, Hašek mentioned Xenophon (but not the Anabasis) in one of his stories [g]. Moreover, the Greek author is referred to at least three times in Svět zvířat when Hašek edited the magazine (1909-1910), although anabasis is not the theme there.

Conclusion

Hašek's pre-war story in Svět, the entries in Svět zvířat and the aforementioned Letter from the Front do not, of course, constitute watertight proof that he did not later poke fun at the Legions. Still, they show that he could easily have written about Xenophon and his Anabasis without any ironic intent.

We have searched digitised newspapers from 1921 and 1922 for any sign that writers or critics connected Švejk's anabasis with the Legions. Extending the search to 1950 and including the extensive inter-war legionnaire literature has also proved fruitless. As mentioned earlier, the endnotes to The Good Soldier Švejk in 1953 claimed that Hašek wrote the anabasis chapter as a slur on the Legions. In the 1955 edition, this explanation was removed. The reason is surely that the communist publishers no longer believed in the hypothesis. Perhaps they had by then discovered Letter from the Front from 1916? If there had been any substance to the theory, the communist publishers would surely have exploited Švejk's 'budějovická anabasis' to the full.

Sergey Soloukh's notes

1. The term itself, "anabasis", for any long and arduous journey by armed men was quite standard at the time. For example, it was widely used in Russian literature about the Great War and the Civil War (generals Denikin and Krasnov, writer and literary critic Shklovsky), and all of them without any connection to Cz.Legion. So it was very common in war-torn Russia of the period and was not specifically used for any particular Legion affair. Quite the reverse, it was used by Cz.Legion as a standard term for "the journey of armed men", rather than as something born from, and particularly and uniquely attributed to, the Legion move.

2. If it had been interpreted as an insult to Cz.Legion or as an attempted joke at its expense at the time this chapter appeared, it would definitely have been noted as such and discussed in the Cz.press of the period. But we know it was not. That supports my point 1: the term "anabasis" at that time was not considered specific and unique only to the depiction of the Cz.Legion adventure; it was a freely used standard term for any "journey of armed men". Only 30 years later was it interpreted as unique and specific to the Legion adventure for the purposes of communist propaganda.

Dva generálové (extr.). Antoni Kroh, transl. Jiří Fiala

Slovo „anabáze" mělo tehdy v češtině jediný, a to samozřejmý význam: znamenalo prodírání se česko- slovenských legií z Ukrajiny přes Sibiř do Vladivostoku. Kapesní slovník cizích slov (vydaný v Praze roku 1971) již objasňuje toto slovo subtilním a diskrétním způsobem: „Anabáze — probíjení se velkých vojenských oddílů do vlasti." Legenda „anabáze", zvláště živá ve dvacátých letech, byla živena a pěstována po celé období meziválečného Československa. Rudolf Medek je současně jeden z jejích tvůrců i její i hrdina. A nyní si připomeňme kapitolu Švejkova budějovická anabáze (II, 2). Švejk jel spolu s nadporučíkem Lukášem vlakem z Prahy do Budějovic. Po incidentu se záchrannou brzdou byl vysazen v Táboře a uvězněn. Když se ukázalo, že nemá peníze ani dokumenty, podporučík sloužící na nádraží mu přikázal, aby šel do Budějovic pěšky. „A čert ví, jak se to stalo, že dobrý voják Švejk místo na jih k Budějovicím šel pořád" rovně na západ. Není známo, jak se to stalo, ale je známo, že se to stalo nevědomky, poněvadž Švejk byl přece na západ." Není známo, jak se to stalo, ale je známo, že se to stalo nevědomky, poněvadž Švejk byl přece dobrý voják, žádný dezertér; on vskutku chtěl dorazit do Budějovic! Proč tam tedy nešel přímo, jen pořád kroužil a kroužil dokola? Protože byl idiot? Mnoho polských milovníků Švejka, jichž jsem se dotazoval, to právě tak vysvětluje. Ale kapitole Švejkova budějovická anabáze je možné porozumět teprve tehdy, když si uvědomíme, kdy a za jakých okolností byla napsána. Je to jedna z nejskvostnějších pasáží románu. Jako každé velké umělecké dílo se vymyká jednoznačným výkladům. Můžeme ji označit za panorama českého venkova, zvěčněním lidových typů a tehdejších nálad. Je to rovněž radostný hymnus ke cti životu, nespoutaný smích jakoby z Rabelaise. Rovněž groteska. Lze tam najít reminiscence na autorova dobrodružství. Ale to vše je málo. Švejkova budějovická anabáze je současně politický pamflet, bravurní publicistika na aktuální téma. Hašek jako první propíchl balon, který Medek se svými věrnými tak zdatně nafukoval. Přirovnání k balonu není trefné, problém vězel mnohem hlouběji; ve dvacátých letech nebyla legenda „anabáze" nafukovaným balonem, ale velikou radostí znovuzrozeného státu, důvodem hrdosti, léčbou několikasetletého komplexu zotročence, reakcí na nedávná pokořování. A tu do samého středu národní slavnosti vchází Švejk, který velice touží dorazit do Budějovic, ale dostává se kamsi úpině jinam a čert ví, proč se tak děje... Vybuchl skandál — zvlášť když autora obklopovala aura bolševického komisaře, a co horšího, kapitola byla znamenitě napsána... Na Haška se sesypaly přívlastky jako nihilista, dekadent, pijan s opuchlýma rukama; velké obžaloby ze zrady národa i drobné šikany. A současně — první entuziastické recenze.

Literature

• O dobrodružných výpravách, SvětJaroslav Hašek,23.6.1913 [g]
• Dopis z fronty, ČechoslovanJaroslav Hašek,25.9.1916 [h]
• Průkopníci, Československý deníkRudolf Medek,6.4.1918 [c]
• Zrádce, Venkov,19.1.1919 [d]
• Realien und Pseudorealien in Hašeks "Švejk", Antonín Měšťan,1983 [a]
• Několik editologických poznámek k románu Jaroslava Haška Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války, Jiří Fiala,2004 [e]
• Man Is Indestructible: Legend and Legitimacy in the Worlds of Jaroslav Hašek, Abigail Weil,2019 [b]
• Dušička Jaroslava Haška vypravuje, Večerník Práva liduJaroslav Hašek,31.12.1920 [f]
• Výbor ze spisů Xenofontových, Anabase, Kyrupaideie, Apomnemoneumat, Hellenik a Symposia, XenofonFerdinand Hoffmeister,1910