purpose, combining “the primitive and the popular” in a “revolt against the glorification of Czech history and legend” (xix). Like Švejk’s stories, the pictures constantly insist on the merits of a simple, bold, and unpretentious style illustrating everyday incidents. They also, of course, are masterpieces of satiric caricature (particularly of bureaucratic officials and dissolute priests, among others).
So there’s a great deal in this novel subverting the idea not just of any “official” or “lofty” language or symbolism in Czech literature and art, but of any authoritative images of national identity anywhere. The specifically Czech references, like those mentioned above, may well escape the non-Czech reader, but Hašek’s comic inventiveness is by no means confined to those, so that this part of his purpose quickly and continuously transcends the specific Czech environment in which and for which it was written.
[It may be worth noting here that Hašek’s attitude to the lofty official prose of the modern bureaucracy is part of a widespread and significant phenomenon, the way in which after brutal modern wars many people are very suspicious of language itself, the vehicle by which they were deceived into thinking the brutality they now have to come to grips with was a “worthy” chapter in a “noble” enterprise. In the context of central Europe, this point may help to explain some of the appeal of Communism between the wars. That belief system offered a vocabulary which had not been corrupted by World War I, since the Russian Revolution had led to the quick withdrawal of Russia from the war.]
THE BODY POLITIC
One of Hašek’s most characteristic ways of highlighting the satiric follies of bureaucratic officialdom is to constantly confront us with its most obvious counter-force, the physical demands of life itself, as these are manifested by food, drink, and the body’s response to its basic needs— particularly vomiting and shitting. There are few (if any) great novels where the latter two activities are featured so prominently.
The most basic bodily functions have always been the stuff of effective hard-hitting satire (at least since Aristophanes) for there are few more graphic (and shockingly amusing)
