 1. What inspired you to write this
book? The book was actually written one hundred
years ago, by Jaroslav Hašek. (His satirical masterpiece has been on the New York
Public Library's list of one hundred most important literary works of the
20th century.) Born and
raised in Czechoslovakia, I couldn’t escape the knowledge of who Švejk was
and is. But I managed to escape the envy of the decadent West, the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, in which the Communist Party had a “leading
role” that was embedded in the country’s Constitution. Eventually I ended up
in the United States. Having left the factory floor and studying at a
university, I had to read the then just published first unabridged
translation of the work. Having found it odd, a thought flashed through my
mind: “Maybe I should translate it one day.” Nearly a quarter of a century later, as an
International Radio Broadcaster of Voice of America, I was goaded by a
colleague to do it, after he read the Cecil Parrott’s translation I had lent
him. I told him I needed such project like a hole in my head. In the end, I
gave in, provided he would collaborate on it with me. In three months Book
One was completed. A couple of years later I started translating the
remaining volumes alone, with proofreading help from a volunteer. I managed
to publish them twelve years after the first volume was being sold initially
as a digital file. This time around I’m working alone on The
Centennial Edition of the newest English translation. Book One has been
published August 6, 2024 and received a very good review in PW’s
BookLife magazine and
the distinction of Editor’s Pick. 2. What exactly is it about — and
who is it written for? Josef Švejk [sh-vake] is a fictitious Czech
veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army. After the outbreak of World War One,
he's drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he
despises. In Book One, Jaroslav Hašek paints a picture
of a society transitioning from the "normal" state on the way to
catastrophe. He does it by weaving stories and fragments of tales of familiar
archetypes of people and their institutions without any apparent rhyme or
reason. Hašek is at his best when he describes the absurd situations in the
lives of ordinary people, entangled in systems designed to keep them down or
destroy them. Švejk survives, and uncovers the stupidity with his cunning and
wit. He is a master in the art of survival "non plus ultra". "In a world where the greedy and
ambitious slam the public from crisis to crisis," wrote on Christmas Eve
of 2000 Bob Hicks in the Portland Oregonian
review of the first edition of Book One, "gratuitously wrecking daily life as
they destroy states and pull down civilizations, Švejk represents the
underground -- a passive-aggressive resister who beats the rules of the game
by applying his own crazy logic to them. ...Unlike K., fellow Czech Franz
Kafka's stunted stand-in for modern intellectual man, the rascal Švejk
belongs to the men and women of the workaday world - the bartenders, cleaning
women, gamekeepers, petty larcenists, lathe operators, janitors, drunkards,
office workers, shopkeepers, undertakers, adulterers, nightclub bouncers,
butchers, farmers, cab drivers and others who populate Hašek's imagination as
they stumble through the lunacies of the first World War." All those
people and many like them still populate our world today. They've been
labeled "deplorables" and have proudly taken that insult as
their nom de guerre. The increasing number and burden of
absurdities they deal with is putting them in a position to relate to and
viscerally understand Švejk. 3. What do you hope readers will get
out of reading this book? The Good Soldier Švejk lurks on the far
periphery of the literary consciousness of the English-reading public. You
might ask, why talk about this book at all? It has been judged by many to be one of the
100 Best Books of the 20th Century. It has been vastly popular in Central
Europe, especially in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Švejk has
been translated into more than 50 languages and
published in more than five-hundred editions. However, those facts beg, rather than
answer the question. Yet, they indicate that Švejk strikes a chord with a
huge number of people. “Over the past few decades Americans have
been subjected to some of the same social, political, economic, and moral
phenomena that Europeans have endured for ages and which are the backdrop to
this iconoclastic and soul probing epic. Now more than ever before, Americans
will be able to relate to the story and its main character. And they will
enjoy doing it.” That statement appeared on the website devoted to
the “Chicago version” in 2012, and migrated from the bottom of the landing
page to become the website’s virtual masthead in 2018. Since then, the
quintessentially un-American experiences, that my fellow Americans have been
living through, have only increased in scope and intensity, reaching
unprecedented and destructive levels. My hope is, that first time readers
will agree with the late Don DeGrazia, author of American Skin: "Švejk is no dainty classic meant to
fade quietly into obscurity on the dusty shelves of academia, but a bellowing
barroom brawl of a book that will forever have everyday people doubled-up
with the painful laughter of recognition. Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five and
countless other cherished works owe a great deal to Švejk..." As for the readers of the previous
translation, the BookLife review of the just published Centennial Edition of
Book One predicts and declares: Readers familiar with Hašek’s satirical
Czech novel of war and survival only from earlier English translations will
likely be jolted by Sadlon’s version... ... Hašek’s masterpiece is revealed, in
Sadlon’s handling, as a book of greater bite, heft, and complexity. The result is challenging and provocative, a
century on. Takeaway: Illuminating translation of the
human complexity of a Czech classic. 4. How did you decide on your book's title
and cover design? The original title is Osudy dobrého
vojáka Švejka za světové války, was rendered by the previous translator
as The Good Soldier Švejk and his fortunes in the
World War. Although the book 's title in the original Czech hasn't
changed in 100 years, as a translator I updated the English version of it to
read The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier
Švejk During the World War. The reason for the change of the title was its very first word. (And the
next, some would say sacrilegious literary change was the altered translation
of the iconic first sentence of the text. That sentence is as famous, as
evocative, and repeated as often by Czechs, as "I have a dream" is
among Americans.) The readers familiar with the phenomenon of
Švejk ask, why our editions of the book do not contain
the famous illustrations by Josef Lada, not even, or especially not, on the
cover. At the time of the first edition paperback, Print On Demand was in its
infancy and we had no control of the cover design, which was adorned in the
end by a random stock photo. When the galley arrived, I opened the package
and felt as if the blood instantly drained from my body. I was mortified:
"Where did they get a picture of my face to morph into the illustration
for the cover of my book!?" My brother, my wife, and everybody who knows
me, was convinced I put myself on the cover. The nerve. For The Centennial Edition we designed a
cover that expresses a fundamental fact: Despite the often-mentioned literary
influences, The Good Soldier Švejk is a novel that is far more inspired by
Jaroslav Hašek's real life than any Cervantes or Rabelais. His detailed
narratives of events ranging from mealtime preparations and drinking binges
to religious rituals, the Catechism, and confinement in a lunatic asylum are
mostly based on his personal experiences. Švejk's route to the war front
largely corresponds to the author's journey to the battlefield in Galicia
during the early days of July 1915. Hašek 's diverse background and immense
knowledge is obvious throughout the novel, bringing such a strong flavor of
validity to a work o fiction that it can, to some degree, be read as a
historical document. Therefore, the cover is simply the text of the title of
the book and the author's name, on the background image of Jaroslav Hašek's
letter of resignation from the Czechoslovak Corps
in Russia. The signature on
the letter is juxtaposed to his name as the author of the book, to express
the close and complex relationship between the author and his text. The cover
is perhaps not as snazzy and compulsive at first sight, as proper
marketing would require. The BookLife reviewer rated it "B".
Nevertheless, fans have already expressed their appreciation of its looks and
functionality. The visual emphasis within the title is on the protagonist
"Švejk", standing out in a much larger, almost 3-d red bold font.
After all, for a century already, "Švejk" is all that needs to be
said among the millions of people around the world who have read the record
of his fateful adventures. Švejk was around long before Sting, Madonna, Pele,
Hillary or any other one-name celebrity. 5. What advice or words of wisdom do you
have for fellow writers – other than run!? Although as a translator I didn't create the
world of Švejk and struggle with the challenges an author of an original text
does, translating has its own demands, rewards and hardships. As in any
creative endeavor, to succeed, one has to believe in his inspired task, be
equipped to handle it, be tremendously resourceful, persistent, patient,
flexible, tireless, and refuse to leave the job unfinished. You never know,
whether the outcome will measure up to your vision, other people's
expectations, or whether anybody will actually care. To find out, first you
have to complete the task set for you at the beginning of the journey. 6. What trends in the book world do you see
-- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? I do not follow the book world, and
thus have no knowledge or authority to evaluate the course of the book
publishing industry. 7. Were there experiences in your
personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? All of them. What I brought to the project
in contrast with the other translators of Švejk is Czech as the translator's
mother tongue, and experiences in a wide variety of settings which have
resulted in my being genuinely bilingual and multicultural. An attempt to translate Švejk into English
brings one into specific, hard to navigate waters. English has been stripped
of most of the grammatical phenomena like declension of nouns and pronouns,
which are the staple of the Continental languages, be they Germanic or
Slavic, that are used by the narrator and mostly all the characters in
Hašek's novel. English, as an instrument of communication - and therefore a
tool for reproducing reality - represents a wholly different way of looking
at the world. As if that itself was not enough of a reason
not to delve into translating Švejk into English, there are yet two more
issues specific to the literary work. As František Daneš wrote in his The
Language and Style of Hašek's Novel The Good Soldier Švejk from the Viewpoint
of Translation, "Firstly, in 'The Good Soldier Švejk', more than in
a great majority of other literary works, the difference between particular
languages, their (social) stratifications, along with cultural, historical
and ethnic specificities are highly involved, so that to find or contrive
truthful translational equivalents is in many instances extremely difficult
and in part simply impossible." In addition to the specific language
phenomena the translator must struggle with differing cultural phenomena.
Hašek's novel is set on the divide of two centuries, two historic epochs of
societal evolution. Feudalism, its turns of language and its artifacts were
still functional and as alive during the author's life as the phenomena of
the Communist ideology and its resulting police state are for us. Although
the British English has expressions for the various class-dependent phenomena
of the feudal system and times, feudalism itself in Great Britain was not
identical to the feudalism in the Czech lands. In addition, most basic
realities of feudalism are alien to the Americans, not to speak of the
nuances between the feudalism of the Anglo-Saxons and the feudalism of the
Czechs in the Austrian Empire. The result? Certain words, as far as
dictionaries are concerned, do have their equivalents, but in reality it is
often better not to use them, because they are too closely imbedded in the
history of a given country and its culture. With the exception of especially
the Black population, Americans do not know the familiarity of the various
expressions of subjection and how it is operational in various calculations
of decision making processes among people in the most varied situations. Then there is the issue of the contextual
point of view of the writer and its convergence or lack thereof with that of
the translator. Jaroslav Hašek did not write to become a darling of the New
York Times Literary Supplement readers, to get an offer for a block-buster
movie version, having an agent ready to make the deal, a lawyer to make it
fool-proof, and an accountant who'd add it all up. (Not that he wouldn't
welcome success. After all, he was not sending back the dollars being sent
from Chicago for Švejk being published in serial
installments.) Švejk also is not a hermetically closed
literary text written to satisfy the needs of scientific research. For
Jaroslav Hašek Švejk was a result of unusually rich, varied
and uncommon life experiences. His book is about life and truth, especially
as they are experienced by working class people, rather than members of the
elites. Most people who never leave the geographical
and social circuit of their own national culture and its constituent elements
cannot even begin to imagine what Jaroslav Hašek underwent, as a real person,
a thinking and feeling being on his anabasis through Europe and Asia between
his joining the army and his return home. (Pavel Gan has laid it out best so
far in his book Osudy humoristy Jaroslava Haška v Říši carů a
komisařů i doma v Čechách , i.e. The Fateful Adventures of the
Humorist Jaroslav Hašek in the Empire of the Czars and Commissars And Even at
Home in the Czechlands.) And inasmuch as experiences are prerequisites for
certain insights, they cannot understand everything in Hašek's life, and if
it is reflected in his work, they cannot properly understand everything in
Hašek's work either. 8. How would you describe your writing
style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to? Jaroslav Hašek's Švejk has been described as
a picaresque novel. As the translator, I had to solve many
issues pertaining to the characteristic of the original text. I address
several of them in Editorial Notes which are part of the prefatory
material. The most fundamental choice I’ve made
regarding the interplay of the language pair involved in the translation is,
that the source language has supremacy over the target language, in order to
retain the meaning, style and form of the original work. This is extremely
challenging because it involves understanding and transmitting all the
nuances and double meanings in the original text, while also making the
translation read naturally in the target language. The German writer, poet and philosopher
Rudolf Pannwitz, in Die Krisis der europaischen Kultur [The
Crisis of European Culture] stated: "Our translations, even the
best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi,
Greek, English, into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek,
English. Our translators have a far greater reverence for the usage of their
own language than for the spirit of the foreign works.... The basic error of
the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language
happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by
the foreign tongue. Particu-larly when translating from a language very
remote from his own he must go back to the primal elements of language itself
and penetrate to the point where work, image, and tone converge. He
must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. It is
not generally realized to what extent this is possible, to what extent any
language can be transformed, how language differs from language almost the
way dialect differs from dialect; however, this last is true only if one
takes language seriously enough, not if one takes it lightly." Concurring with that dictum, I decided to
keep the original syntax to the utmost degree. And that might be one of the
reasons why the BookLife reviewer wrote that "Readers familiar with
Hašek’s satirical Czech novel of war and survival only from earlier English
translations will likely be jolted by Sadlon’s version..." and "The
result is challenging and provocative..." But it is worth the trouble
and possible discomfort: "... Hašek’s masterpiece is revealed, in
Sadlon’s handling, as a book of greater bite, heft, and complexity.
... Takeaway: Illuminating translation of the human complexity of a
Czech classic." 9. What challenges did you overcome in the
writing of this book? A decision to translate the 207,009 words of
Hašek's unfinished novel in my judgment cannot be and in my case, indeed was
not a result of a rational consideration. A rational deliberation would have
to result in a decision to reject such a proposal due to the irretrievable
time alone which such a translation requires. If one were to overlook such a
minute obstacle as several years of sustained effort in an unpaid side-job
which the translation represents, there would remain at least two more
stumbling blocks. Firstly, there has been an unabridged English translation
already since 1973. In addition, publishers generally have only little
interest in translated works and practically none in new translations of the
same work. The digital information technology allowed me to actually publish
the book once the translation was completed. Currently I am working on
updating the two remaining volumes of The Centennial Edition. Once done, the
final challenge will be working on a marketing plant to achieve the goal of
making the book as well-known and as frequently read as its spiritual nephew,
Catch 22. (Joseph Heller said that if it weren’t for
his having read The Good Soldier Švejk he would never had written his
American novel Catch-22.) 10. If people can buy or read one book this
week or month, why should it be yours? Hašek knew that a momentous, fundamental
change in human history was occurring. For Central and Eastern Europe, it was
the end of the old order. It was the demise of a social structure that had
evolved from prehistoric times and affected every human life. Tribal and clan
chieftains had evolved into Dukes, Counts and Lords, and then into Monarchs
and Emperors. These despots caused and lost World War One and suddenly
vanished. The decrepit empires were replaced by democratic republics,
except in Russia where the bolsheviks instituted their own fatally
flawed dictatorship and empire. However, as most historians
agree, enough perverse elements and limbic memory of the old
order remained in Central Europe to foment and fuel the
biggest meatgrinder of them all, World War Two. So, as you can see, the setting of The Good
Soldier Švejk is right there on the cutting edge of historical change.
It is Jaroslav Hašek’s peek, a la Charlie Chaplin, at the dawn of truly
modern times. Isn’t this great? By reading The Good Soldier Švejk,
you will get a heavy dose of culture and a glimpse at modern
social history in the making. You will have read an important book.
And best of all you’ll laugh and have a really good time doing it.
How often does a situation like this come along? Rarely.
About The Author: Jaroslav Hašek (30 April 1883 - 3 January 1923) was
an author and satirist from Prague, who he lived a short and extremely
turbulent life. He is best known as the author of the famous satirical novel
The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, but
also wrote more than 1,200 short stories/feuilletons/articles, numerous
poems, and co-authored some cabaret plays. His literary output may have been
even greater than these numbers indicate because he flooded newspapers and
magazines with his stories and used at least 100 pseudonyms. Translated by Zdeněk "Zenny" K.
Sadloň. For more information, please see: SvejkCentral.com and zenny.com |
|
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