It is a bit disrespectful to talk about my first contact with this world famous satirical literature, and it also shows how ignorant I am about the history of European literature. In the early 1940s, I lived in a flat in the north-west suburbs of London.When I have a cold, I always look for something light to read, usually the Penguin Books, because at that time each book was only sixpence, and the covers were marked with different colors.For example, the cover of a novel is orange, while the cover of a memoir is blue.are classified as humorous. Once I picked up the book, I couldn't put it down again.At that time, I was completely attracted by the wonderful character of Schweik.I've come to hate this book and blame it for being too flippant in its humor category.I learned later that this wonderful book is one of the Czech masterpieces in history and has been translated into nearly thirty languages.The author Hasek has been compared by European critics to the sixteenth-century La Bree (author) and Cervantes (author of Don Quixote).This is an abridged translation, and the original is three times as long.The reason why I chose this excerpt to translate is because it is very clever. It omits some incomprehensible jokes borrowed from the original Catholic cumbersome canon or Czech puns, and retains the essence of the original.

In order to compete for hegemony in Europe, an extremely cruel and corrupt empire (Austro-Hungarian Empire) enslaved another weak but stubborn nation (the Czech people) by force, and drove its members to participate in a big war caused by uneven distribution of spoils. The massacre (World War I); while the Czech nation, represented by the incomparable figure Schweik, was at a disadvantage, on the surface, submissive, succumbed to allegiance, and even said "Long live", but was full of contempt and hatred in his heart. Therefore, the reactionary rulers are forced to resist in various ways that make them laugh and cry; through the experience of the hero Schweik, an ordinary soldier, from enlistment to the front line during the First World War, the author uses the writing style of laughing and cursing to describe the internal affairs of this cruel and internal empire. Brutality, incompetence, relentless exposure and indictment—this is the basics of this brilliant satire.The author of the Czech Republic, the national hero of the Czech Republic, and the outstanding anti-fascist fighter Fucik once made such a high evaluation of the influence of Schweik, saying that he "seems like a worm, eating away at the reactionary system (Austro-Hungarian Empire)." Active at times, though not always consciously; he was instrumental in tearing down this edifice of oppression and tyranny."

In a sense, it can also be said to be a historical novel, because it describes the process of the collapse of one of the oldest dynasties in modern European history-the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the inside.The works are written almost strictly in accordance with the chronological order of the First World War. From the second volume (Shuaik set out from Prague after enlisting in the army), the battle situation, events, and routes are basically consistent with the combat history of the Austro-Hungarian army that year. Even Schweik's team number and some characters in the work (Lukasch, Wannick, Dub, etc.) are not fictional.However, the value of this book does not lie in how faithful it is to historical facts, but in the fact that the author Hašek accurately and profoundly analyzes the reactionary events in the government, army, courts, police agencies, hospitals, and churches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in an outstanding cartoon style. and weak nature.Through the special agent Brichenade, who is looking for the target of arrest with a "traitor" hat in his hand, and the military doctor who carelessly ignores human life, we can see what a dark and cruel prison the Austro-Hungarian Empire was.

In order to expose the parasites of the so-called "clergy", the author puts a lot of ink on the images of two priests, Katz and Racine.All the cruelty, filth, absurdity and ugliness of the empire could not escape the sharp and pungent pen of Hasek. This ordinary and extremely witty immortal image. Of course, what is exposed most thoroughly and criticized most powerfully in this novel is the army that the Austro-Hungarian Empire flaunts.In order to drive the people to serve as cannon fodder for their decadent regime, the reactionary rulers have to create some hypocritical "sense of honor for the military", advocate the militaristic thinking of "loyalty to the monarch and patriotism", and use religious anesthesia, political deception, secret agents, concentration camps and other coercive means, Forcibly push people, including the old, weak, sick and disabled, into the line of fire.The author vividly describes the sovereign-style officer-soldier relationship in that army and the military-civilian relationship between the predators and the plundered, revealing that the "friendly" armies put together in front of the battle are fighting each other, and even professional officers are fighting against reserve officers and voluntary officers. contempt.Such an army has neither efficiency, discipline nor "morale" at all.The officers revenged themselves by delaying each other's work, and the soldiers competed to sabotage; the train drove away, and the officers hid behind the station and negotiated prices with the prostitutes.This kind of army is so cruel to "our own people", and it is even worse to treat captives and enemy common people.

The strength of this novel lies in: it tells us convincingly with vivid, powerful and laughable plots: an unrighteous army, no matter how large in number it is, can only fail and perish in the end. The author Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923) was born in Prague.His father was a mathematics teacher in a private German middle school with a meager salary and a poor family.After the death of his father at the age of thirteen, Hasek worked as an apprentice in a pharmacy. In 1897, when Hašek was still a boy of fourteen, he took part in activities against foreign rulers, often tore down the martial law notices they posted, tore up the state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, smashed The window panes of reactionary government agencies, and was arrested by the police under the name of "Military Judgment Law" for participating in anti-German demonstrations, and was thrown into prison.Hasek went to a middling commercial school at the age of sixteen.The grade teacher is Alois Ilasek, a historical novelist. He often tells anecdotes about Czech national heroes in class, which greatly inspires Hašek.

After dropping out of business school, Hasek chose not to work as a bank clerk, but to write.During his studies, he often wrote for the "People's Daily", and in 1907 he became the editor-in-chief of "Commune".He often went to the interior to give lectures to miners and textile workers, and was constantly monitored by the secret agents of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He once spent a month in prison for resisting the police.In 1908 he was arraigned twice by the police, once for trying to tear down the Austro-Hungarian flag hanging on Wenceslas Square, and again for "disturbing the peace".In 1910, he was the editor-in-chief of "Animal World". In the following year, he was fired by the publisher Fox because he fabricated some fictional animal images.In 1903 he joined an anarchist organization for a while, and in 1907 he broke with them decisively.

Hasek is a hardworking writer.Between 1900 and 1908, he wrote 185 satires. In 1909, he began to write short stories, which were first published in the "Caricature News" edited by Joseph Rada (1887-1957, the artist who illustrated this book).He was fond of hiking in his life and liked to go deep into Prague's lower society.In his fifteen years of literary career, he wrote no less than a thousand short stories, which ruthlessly responded to the various ugly phenomena in society he observed.It also originally came out as a set of short stories.In addition, the plays he wrote have also been staged.

Just like the character Schweik he created, Hašek himself did many ingenious deeds in real life that made the authorities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire gnash their teeth.In 1911, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was engaged in parliamentary elections, Hašek organized a so-called "party that advocates moderation and peace within the legal limits" and delivered a "campaign" speech in a low-class tavern. The political and social institutions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were violently attacked.He told people afterwards that it was to attract customers for the tavern.The other happened at the beginning of World War I.He stayed in a hotel in Prague, and entered "Russia" in the "Nationality" column of the passenger register, which was hostile to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and "spyed on the activities of the Austrian General Staff" in the "Why are you here" column.Therefore, the pig-like police station immediately sent people to surround the hotel densely, thinking that an important spy had been caught.

When the truth came to light, the police severely asked him why he made such a joke during the war. Hasek replied with a sincere look that he was not at ease with the efficiency of the Austrian police and wanted to test their vigilance.The police couldn't laugh or cry, and fined him to sit in prison for five days. In 1915—the second year after the outbreak of the First World War—Hasek enlisted in the 91st Infantry Regiment, the same unit Schweik belonged to.At first they were stationed at Teske-Budjuvice.In September of that year, the Russian army broke through the defense line and cut off the connection between Hasek's troops and the main force of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.Hasek was finally captured by the Russian army.

After being captured, Khasek was first in Kyiv, and later moved to Tozky at the southern tip of the Ural Mountains.In the prison camp, he did not stop his literary activities.He became a reporter for Czechoslovakia, a Czech magazine published in Kyiv, and continued to write.In 1917, the magazine published a booklet of the book.He also imitated the British writer Dickens' "Pickwick Biography" and wrote "Pickwick Club", which was also a satire on the fatuous and corrupt rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At that time, the Russian army organized a Czech corps among the captives to fight against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since Hasek didn't know clearly for a while, he signed up to participate.But later when this regiment turned into an ally of the Russian counter-revolutionary White Guards, the notorious Czechoslovak division, and marched to the Mara River against the Bolsheviks, Hašek fled.He hid in Molvino in the Volkho River Valley, Samara County.In 1918, Hasek resolutely joined the Red Army in Kyiv, and a month later, he became a member of the Bolsheviks.The reactionary division declared him a "traitor" and ordered him wanted.It is said that once when he went to Samara to serve the Red Army, he was captured by the division.But he managed to escape again.He took an active part in propaganda work, mobilizing Czech soldiers in Russia to support the October Revolution.He participated in the famous Fifth Army of the Red Army in Simbirsk, and became a cadre of the army and the party. He later served as the deputy commander of the troops in Bugulma.In 1919 he was appointed Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Communists in Wufa City, and in the same year he was appointed Secretary of the Party Committee of the Red Arrow Printing Factory.In 1920, he served as the head of the International Group of the Political Department of the Fifth Army of the Red Army.When Khasek was in Irkutsk, he served as the head of the German magazine "Hurricane", the Hungarian magazine "Offensive" and the Buryat-Mongolian magazine "Dawn".In a letter, Hasek mentioned that he met a Chinese general who participated in the October Revolution when he was in Irkutsk.

Hasek learned Chinese from the general and taught him Czech at the same time.He wrote with great regret that he could only recognize 80 of the 86,000 Chinese characters.It is said that the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Red Army had asked Hasek to edit a Chinese publication. In 1920, the Czech Social Democratic Party sent a delegation to visit the Soviet Union, and they invited Hasek to return to China to work.He agreed immediately.In December of the same year he returned to Prague and wrote for the Red Power, the organ of the left wing of the Social Democratic Party.The Czech Republic was a newly established republic at the time.Soon, Hasek was slandered as a "spies" by his political opponents. But he continued to write tirelessly.Since no publisher could be found, in 1921, with the support of friends, I published the first volume as a book at my own expense, and went to the streets with my friends to sell it, and the result was a great success.He planned to write a total of four volumes.When he began writing the fourth volume, he fell ill with malaria.On the sickbed, he continued to create by dictation.In 1923, just after finishing Chapter Three, he died suddenly of a heart attack and pneumonia.It was not yet forty.His premature death is a great loss to the Czech Republic, to Europe, and to the literary cause of human progress!Later, his friend Carl Vannik continued the whole book, but due to the significant difference in writing style, many versions in recent years have been omitted. The illustrations drawn by the famous Czech painter Josef Rada are immortal works with the same name as the original book.In fact, Hasek did not see the illustrations that complemented his work so well.He only asked Rada to draw a cover for this book in 1921.In 1924, the year after Hašek's death, Rada responded to the editor's request of the editor of the "Czech Daily" Sunday special, and made 540 illustrations for the magazine, which were serialized in the magazine. Each illustration Below, the artist selects a passage from the original work as an illustration.According to statistics, Rada has drawn 1,339 sketches for all of Hasek's works, of which he alone drew 909 sketches, each of which is so powerful, clear-cut, and sparse , can capture the souls of the characters in the book—especially the protagonist Schweik—unique in the history of book illustrations. Radha was born in a poor shoemaker's family and liked painting since childhood.In his early days, he was deeply influenced by the Czech realist painter Miklas Aleks (1852-1913).At the age of fourteen, he worked as an apprentice in a bookbinding workshop, so he came into contact with many famous books with illustrations.Since then, he has been painting in his spare time.In 1904, May Press published four of his paintings for the first time. Rada also likes to study folk costumes and collect nursery rhymes.The originality of his paintings is closely integrated with the rich Czech national tradition.His lines are simple and natural, his colors are bright and lively, and his works are full of poetry of folk life. Radha initially illustrated several fairy tales, and edited enlightenment books such as "My Alphabet" and "Happy Biology".From 1925 to 1935, he edited the children's publication "Little Flower", the comic magazine "Animal World", painted for "Red Power", and represented another satirist Havorichek Illustrated by Bruschi.But Rada is primarily known for the batch of illustrations he made. An ordinary person like Schweik has always been the main subject in Rada's paintings.He never painted landscapes without figures, and the active ones in his paintings were always handicraft workers, plasterers, farmers, mill workers, foresters, old women or children.He has a deep understanding of Hasek's work, and the illustration style achieves a high degree of harmony with the original work. This is because the two of them have formed a deep friendship since 1907. This friendship is based on their Common passion for the people and deep hatred for the reactionary rulers.During the years that Hasek wrote the novel, they remained in close contact and lived together for a time.Radha has the most thorough understanding of the thoughts and feelings expressed in Hasek's works.In 1947, the Czech government awarded him the glorious title of "People's Artist". Xiao Qian September 1990