Hašek's first Švejk sketches

JAN 01 1911 · 12:00

Jaroslav Hašek, photographic portrait Place: Editorial offices of Karikatury magazine, Prague Figures: Jaroslav Hašek, satirist, anarchist, bohemian regular of U Kalicha · Josef Lada, illustrator (later) · the unnamed soldier Švejk, in his first appearance On May 22, 1911, the satirical magazine Karikatury publishes the first of a series of short pieces by Jaroslav Hašek featuring a guileless or guile-disguising Czech soldier named Švejk. There are five sketches in the cycle, more in subsequent magazines through 1912. The character is broadly drawn: he agrees with everything, salutes everyone, executes orders with such pedantic literalism that the chain of command breaks under him. Hašek at twenty-eight is a published satirist of some four hundred short pieces, a former anarchist, a former founder of the satirical Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law, and an alcoholic. He writes in cafés, often U Kalicha at the corner of Na Bojišti, where Švejk in the eventual novel also drinks.