Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek (Czech: [ˈjaroslaf ˈɦaʃɛk]; 30 April 1883 – 3 January 1923) was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist, bohemian and anarchist. He is best known for his novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures. The novel has been translated into about 60 languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature.
Jaroslav Hašek’s paternal ancestors were farmers rooted in Mydlovary in South Bohemia. Hašek’s grandfather from his father’s side, František Hašek, was a member of the Czech Landtag and later also the so-called Kromeriz convention. He was also involved in barricade fights in Prague in 1848. According to some rumors, he worked with Mikhail Bakunin during his stay in Bohemia in 1849.[1]
Monument to Jaroslav Hašek in Lipnice nad Sázavou
Statue of Jaroslav Hašek in Žižkov, near the pubs where he wrote some of his works
The family of his mother, Katherine, née Jarešová, was also from South Bohemia. His grandfather Antonín Jareš and his great-grandfather Matěj Jareš were pond-keepers of the Schwarzenberg princes in Krč village No. 32.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
His father, Josef Hašek,[8] a mathematics teacher and religious fanatic,[9] died early of alcohol intoxication.[10] He put an end to himself due to pain caused by cancer. Poverty then forced his mother Kateřina with three children to move more than fifteen times.
At the age of four, the doctor diagnosed a heart defect and “stunted thyroid gland” in little Jaroslav. Because of this, he spent a lot of time in the country, with his grandfather from his mother’s side, in the so-called Ražice dam-house, especially with his younger brother Bohuslav. In his childhood, Jaroslav was jealous of Bohuslav and even tried several times to hurt him as a baby.[11] Later they had an extremely strong relationship and traveled together a lot on foot. Bohuslav drank himself to death one year after Jaroslav’s death.
Hašek’s childhood was ordinary, boyish, imbued with adventures with peers and reading Karl May and Jules Verne. However, this changed when Hašek was eleven: the retired sailor Němeček moved to Lipová Street, where the Hašeks lived at that time. Němeček wrapped the teenage Hašek around his little finger, pilfered the money that Hašek had stolen at home, and began to lead him into bars, including the infamous Jedová chýše (Poison Hut) on Apolinářská Street, where he taught him to drink alcohol. In addition, he intentionally had sex with his girlfriend in front of the boy. It was a trauma for Hašek. He later remembered these experiences with disgust and remorse. It probably influenced Hašek’s relationship with women. In his discussions with his comrades in the Russian legions, it is said that he said: “Can there be anything worse in the world than such a human pig? I knew the devil, I didn’t know anything about these things, and yet I felt such disgust and revulsion that it was enough to poison my whole life. I have also been afraid of the devil of the cross since then.” [11] Some theories about Hašek’s homosexuality, spread mainly by the literary historian Jindřich Chalupecký (the essay “Podivný Hašek” in the book Expresionisté), have also originated here, as well as in the testimony of Hašek’s friend Rudolf Šimanovský.[12]
