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Product Description
Product Description
Hasek's most important work was centered around the deeply funny story of a hapless Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army -- dismissed for incompetence only to be pressed into service by the Russians in World War I (where he is captured by his own troops). A mischief-maker, bohemian and drunk, Hasek demonstrated his wit in this classic novel of the Czech character and preposterous nature of war.
About the Author
Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923) Besides this book, the writer wrote more than 2,000 short works, short stories, glosses, sketches, mostly under various pen-names.
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First Sentence
'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,'1 said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs - ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,'1 said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs - ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cecil Parrott, the translator of this edition, was the British Ambassador to Czechoslavakia for a time in the 60s and is also the author of The Bad Bohemian, a biography of Jaroslav Hasek. The previous reviewer complained of basic grammatical errors in the translation and about a slapdash approach which obscured plot details. These faults, if they are to be considered faults, are more true to the original serialised novel than previous translations of Svejk have allowed for.
The last translation of Svejk published by Penguin was translated by Paul Selver and had been abridged to such an extent that it was two-thirds the length of the Parrott version. Also, much of the coarse language of Hasek was removed altering the spirit of the novel. For instance, when the secret police agent arrests Palivec, in Selver's version he says,
'I've got you for saying that the flies left their trademark on the Emperor'.
Parrott's translation, truer to the original, reads;
' "But what am I going for?" moaned Palivec. Bretschneider smiled and said triumphantly: "Because you said the flies shitted on His Imperial Majesty." '
As Hasek says in his epilogue to part I; 'in these two volumes the soldiers and civilian population will go on talking and acting as they do in real life.'
Which, presumably, means including not only their swearing but their grammatical errors.
Concerning the problem with translation, the following is a paraphrase of Parrott's introduction. 'There is no authorised text to base a translation on. Hasek only saw the first and second editions of Svejk during his lifetime and their is no certainty that even these texts represent what he wrote or approved as only a part of the manuscript has been preserved. Hasek cared little about what he had written once he sent it off to the printer. There are two groups of texts, the texts published before the second world war and the texts published from the 50s onwards which were revised in orthography, grammar and syntax. (Parrott) drew on both groups of texts, chosing whichever version seemed clearer and more consistent. Svejk and many of the other characters in the book use what is called common Czech. This cannot adequately be rendered in English, since the only equivalent would be dialect or bad English. (Parrott) felt dialect would create the wrong atmosphere as any British dialect would be associated with people and conditions of a very different kind.
It is characteristic of Svejk's way of telling a story that he does not bother about syntax. This of course is an indication of his mentality and a part of his character, but it is also a reflection of the author's disregard of grammatical rules.'
As for lapses in the plot, the very nature of the novel is plotless, episodic, elliptical, meandering. Hasek was writing to make money and spun out the book to increase his earnings, digressing as he saw fit.
The Good Soldier Svejk is an anarchic masterpiece. And, if you're a literary train-spotter, compare it with Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse 5 to see where Heller and Vonnegut 'borrowed' from...
The last translation of Svejk published by Penguin was translated by Paul Selver and had been abridged to such an extent that it was two-thirds the length of the Parrott version. Also, much of the coarse language of Hasek was removed altering the spirit of the novel. For instance, when the secret police agent arrests Palivec, in Selver's version he says,
'I've got you for saying that the flies left their trademark on the Emperor'.
Parrott's translation, truer to the original, reads;
' "But what am I going for?" moaned Palivec. Bretschneider smiled and said triumphantly: "Because you said the flies shitted on His Imperial Majesty." '
As Hasek says in his epilogue to part I; 'in these two volumes the soldiers and civilian population will go on talking and acting as they do in real life.'
Which, presumably, means including not only their swearing but their grammatical errors.
Concerning the problem with translation, the following is a paraphrase of Parrott's introduction. 'There is no authorised text to base a translation on. Hasek only saw the first and second editions of Svejk during his lifetime and their is no certainty that even these texts represent what he wrote or approved as only a part of the manuscript has been preserved. Hasek cared little about what he had written once he sent it off to the printer. There are two groups of texts, the texts published before the second world war and the texts published from the 50s onwards which were revised in orthography, grammar and syntax. (Parrott) drew on both groups of texts, chosing whichever version seemed clearer and more consistent. Svejk and many of the other characters in the book use what is called common Czech. This cannot adequately be rendered in English, since the only equivalent would be dialect or bad English. (Parrott) felt dialect would create the wrong atmosphere as any British dialect would be associated with people and conditions of a very different kind.
It is characteristic of Svejk's way of telling a story that he does not bother about syntax. This of course is an indication of his mentality and a part of his character, but it is also a reflection of the author's disregard of grammatical rules.'
As for lapses in the plot, the very nature of the novel is plotless, episodic, elliptical, meandering. Hasek was writing to make money and spun out the book to increase his earnings, digressing as he saw fit.
The Good Soldier Svejk is an anarchic masterpiece. And, if you're a literary train-spotter, compare it with Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse 5 to see where Heller and Vonnegut 'borrowed' from...
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't know much about novels but I recognise when I read one like Svejk. I must also admit that style of book is unsteady, I believe that is because author didn't get the book quite ready before he died. Some parts of the book could need some editing but when author is dead it's better not to touch the text. So if you feel that there's a bit boring twenty pages go a head read on good stuff might burst you to laugh on a very next page.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have lost my copy of this book, and in searching for a possible replacement I found there is a newer translation in "print on demand" form. However whilst being praised as better and more accurate than Parrot's version (this one) it looses the sense of the original as a rendition of Czech in comprehensible English. Parrot however whilst perhaps toning down some of the swearing seems to capture the Czech idioms with that halting quality I experienced when traveling through Bohemia and Moravia with a good Czech to English translator during the 1980's. Indeed it is only when you come across a bad translator who managed to make Czech sound exactly like Shakespeare (for archaic expressions and flow) that you realize just how hard it is to translate Czech to English or for that matter any other language. The problem lies in the use of idioms rather than direct speech and in order to render the language comprehensibly in English the idioms have to be reinterpreted. Parrot does this brilliantly in my view. This is a must read book for anyone especially those interested in military activity during WW1, the remnants of Austro-Hungarian rule and the history of Bohemia & Moravia. Highly enjoyable by the way!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The absurdity of it all
There are loads of reviews already here, and most are pretty accurate. Yes, it's a bit long, some of it is rambling (Sir Cecil Parrott makes the point in the introduction that... Read more
Published 3 months ago by A reader
Brave soldier Svejk by Yaroslav Hased
Best novel about absurdity of the war ever written, also applies to the absurdity of subordination and bureaucracy.
Good translation by Cecil Parrott, not an easy task.
Good translation by Cecil Parrott, not an easy task.
Published 5 months ago by I. P. H.
Bitter sweet and wry in places but overly long
This reminded me very much of Don Quixote, being a book that started life as a couple of funny short stories and then grew into a 700 page monster (and would have been perhaps 1000... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Brownbear101
Beyond the looking glass of power
"There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of. A chap can pass himself off as God Almighty, the Virgin Mary, , The Pope, the King of England, His Imperial... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
Good Soldier Švejk
The story of the good soldier Švejk's First World War. Garrulous and apparently good-natured his attempts to get to the front just seem to take him further away. Read more
Published 21 months ago by SteveK
Fun, easy and eye-opening
I approached this novel knowing little about the period or the author, but the introduction is excellent. Read more
Published on 1 Jun 2009 by Proops
Very funny and perceptive
The storyline of "Svejk" is easily summarised-a Czech soldier survives the First World War by sheer stupidity. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2009 by PygmyTwylyte
My favourite book
The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War is my favourite book because it's central character is outwardly an imbecile but inwardly highly sophisticated. Read more
Published on 27 Sep 2008 by Martin Sepion
hilarious and poignant
Svejk's journey from dog breeder to orderly in a Czech regiment sent to fight on the Galician front against the Russians in WW1 gives us a fascinating and humanising glimpse into a... Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2007 by Jim smith
Slapdash translation
I should begin by saying that this is a very interesting and unique novel: hilarious, macabre, sardonic and subversive. Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2006 by Greg
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