Talk:The Good Soldier Švejk

message: The Good Soldier Svejk
(Redirected from The Good Soldier Schweik) 
REDIRECT The Good Soldier Schweik
--> Could we avoid this please?  --KF 09:48, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: earlier comments

message: Doesn't the original title mean "The adventures of the brave soldier Svejk"? 72.80.202.119 (talk) 00:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're mistaking the finger for the moon. The original Czech title is "Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války". So first you'd have to address the translation of the title. RealSvejk (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

text: Well, Schweik is actually both good and brave, so it doesn't matter. 140.109.169.66 (talk) 07:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  So whether a meaning of something is correct or not doesn't matter? By the way, Josef's last name is Švejk, i.e. Svejk, not Schweik. Sheesh... RealSvejk (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

text: Thank you. RealSvejk (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

text: That's simple - dobrý is literally good. It has nothing to do with brave. --Adam Zivner (talk) 17:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. RealSvejk (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

text: Thank you. RealSvejk (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Good or Brave?

message: I'd say an ancestor. :-)
:I'd say granddaddy, because it was the attribute the Introduction to the new English translation ascribed to Svejk, not Simplicissimus. Perhaps it should had been in quotation marks an attributed to the said Introduction. ;-)
::I'd say that Švejk is not an anti-war novel. It's an anti-stupidity novel. 140.109.169.83 15:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: a major theme in the book is the stupidity of war. there are a lot of other stupid things that are criticized, but the one that keeps the book running is the stupidity of war.   — Chris Capoccia  T⁄C 16:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, what you say is absolutely right. What I meant was that (it seems to me that) Hasek is saying that "This all enterprise was so stupid that it shouldn't even be called war, but confusion and slaughter. Let's imagine there would be a single good soldier...". In my imagination, Hasek perheps might have been a bit of a war fan with an unfulfilled wish for a proper war with honor and such, take a look e.g. at his description of the military encryption codes in the book. 140.109.169.42 07:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: hašek was an anarchist. i really doubt he favored a stronger state through war or any other means. read the  wikipedia entry on hašek.    — Chris Capoccia  T⁄C 16:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hašek, as all people are, was and is many things to many people. To label him an anarchist is self-serving. Whether he was an anarchist, when, why, etc., is really not that important. Don't forget that after his collaboration with the Anarchist movement in his youth, after serving in the Austro-Hungarian military in WWI, he was later decorated as a member of the Czechoslovak Legionsfighting Austria-Hungary at the  Russian front, then he was a Commissar of the Red Army the Legions ended up fighting on their way out of Russia. Most importantly, whatever he was - and he was more things than most ordinary people - he wrote a famous book. I presume he would like to prefer to be discovered through and defined by this latest accomplishment which is informed by and reflects all of his life's experiences. -- 67.72.98.45 14:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Granddaddy born in 1668? 

message: Here is why: "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." 
Here is the source. -- Zenny K. Sadlon
:it says More familiar to today’s readers, perhaps, is Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, set in World War II. Although predating it by almost 50 years, Hašek’s biting satire and humor is its direct ancestor also, as well as that of many others. 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 [1]
First of all, why mention this another book at all? 
:: ... because there are important literary reasons, as for example the following: "J.P. Stern's recent comparison of Hasek's novel with Heller's Catch-22 asks the following: why did 'the Prague Circle linguistique, famous for its concerns with all sorts of out-of-the-way literary matters, totally ignore Svejk?'"
Secondly, there are quite some other Shveik rip-offs, like Arkady Gaidar's stories about bumbarash for example, thirdly, the text sounds terrible.  That the book Catch-22 is perhaps maybe more known to modern people is certainly not very useful information, especially since where come from, in eastern europe, nobody seems ever have heared about this catch-22, the adventures of Shveik however, are still well known. So either it had to be added, that it is more familiar to today's northamerican readers or, rather, removed completely.
:In fairness, I'd never heard of Švejk and am very familiar with Catch-22. A 32-year-old Canadian here. I think it's a good comparison to get Western Europeans and North Americans to understand the tone of the novel. --MattShepherd 20:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And speaking as a continental European, I've never heard of Catch-22, but Svejk is a well-known classical picaresque novel. The Austrian TV series from the 1970s, starring Fritz Muliar, is still being broadcast regularly on ORF and 3sat in 2018, and further broadcast dates for 2019 are already scheduled. I'm not saying that Catch-22 shouldn't be mentioned in the article, I'm just saying that the statement that Catch-22 would be "better known" nowadays is very US-centric. --46.93.158.170 (talk) 09:55, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why mention catch-22? 

message: According to Internet dictionary of army language szwej is a drafted soldier, as opposed to a cadet.
Xx236 12:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The extreme popularity of the novel in Poland led to creation of a common noun szwej denoting a kind of street-wise soldier, as opposed to newly-drafted cats. 

message: Does anyone know by accident what the name "Svejk" origionally meant? I ask this question out of personal interest, since I'd like to know the meaning of my surname. I know that Wikipedia is not the right place to do such research. But I would really appreciate it, if someone came up with an idea. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 132.231.54.1 (talk) 13:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Švejk is just a Czech surname, perhaps derived from "šít" (to sow, pronounce "sheet") - "ševec" (shoemaker, pronounce "schehvetz"), "šev" (seam, "schehv") of which diminutive could be "švík" (little seam, "schveek") which could be pronounced as "schweik" in Prague dialect. The name conveys the feeling of (1) relatedness to dressmaking or shoemaking, (2) relatedness to seams as in "praskat ve švech" (bursting at seams), (3) phonetic impression of slyness given by largely voiceless letters as in "zašívat se" ("to stitch in" = to hide oneself) and (4) phonetic similarity to German Schwein (swine). His given name Joseph, or "Pepa", is perhaps the most frequent Czech name. 140.109.169.83 15:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The meaning of the name  "Svejk" 

message: I feel ashamed by my ignorance, the article in czech was written by real Haskologiststs, i'll try to translate it if I have time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.109.169.42 (talk) 08:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Czech language article much better 

message: The article writes: Švejk is so enthusiastic about faithfully serving his country that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the Austro-Hungarian Army's war effort. This idiocy/subversion has come to be known as "švejking". Wasn't it an obvious trick? Švejk tries to dodge military service by presenting himself as an undesirable element - a fact he tries to hide by playing a volunteer? His reaction when he is found fit to serve is telling. -- Zz 14:04, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interpretation or not? 

message: :Image:JaroslavHasek.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:JaroslavHasek.jpg

message: :Image:Muliar Schwejk.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Muliar Schwejk.jpg

message: The following claim is incorrect for a number of reasons, which I will enumerate after the quotation:
Jaroslav Hašek was one of the earliest writers of what we have come to know as modernist literature. He experimented with verbal collage, Dadaism and the surreal. Hašek was writing modern fiction before exalted post-World-War-I writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.
I have added a fact template to this whole paragraph.  First, the boundaries between modernism and earlier literary periods is blurry, to say the least.  We can identify elements of modernist writing as far back as the 1880s, if we want to, in the writings of George Meredith and Thomas Hardy.  Second, "verbal collage, Dadaism and the surreal" are not the only attributes of literary modernism.  Third, this novel is published in 1923, a year after Joyce published Ulysses and T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land.  So, Hasek is not an early modernist, he's writing during the high point of literary modernism.  And fourth, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner are indeed "exalted" writers, but what point does it prove to say that Hasek wrote before them?  He didn't invent modernism as this paragraph implies, he was a product of it, as were the others.  He didn't beat them to the punch, because they were all there at the same time.  And finally, what is so significant about Hasek that elevates him over a group of Americans?  Modernism existed before Hasek and after, and in many other countries.
My addition of the fact tag is just to give the people working on that paragraph a chance to restate their claim.  If he was one of the earliest Eastern European modernist writers (an area of which I know nothing at all), then we need a citation to verify it.  Otherwise, is there any special reason not to simply lump him in with all of the other modernist writers writing at the same time? Victorianist (talk) 18:28, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "this novel is published in 1923" - Jaroslav Hasek died January 3, 1923, in the cottage he bought with the money generated by the sales of the first volume, published in 1921. All four books were published 1921-1923.
Dainfomaster (talk) 03:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Modernism

message: The BBC broadcast referred to was very good, but was a repeat of a broadcast from many years ago.  I recall my father enjoying it and he has been dead 15 years. It would be good to reference the original date.  Brunnian (talk) 22:06, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interpretations 

message: I just wanted to say that in Russia this book is, without any exageration, one of the most popular and most loved books OF ALL TIME. --KpoT 11:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russia 

message: The correct name is Habsburg.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gyurikutya (talk • contribs) 18:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hapsburg 

message: The translations section seems very keen on the most recent (Sadlon) translation - it states that , links repeatedly to the publisher's (author's?) webpage, etc.
While it's probably true to say that Parrott is better than Selver, I'm not sure we've got much to go on by saying "Succeeding translations are generally perceived as evolving from good to better" - is Sadlon, the most recent, really that good? 
Some critical comments:
::However, given Sadlon and Joyce’s claims that this is by far the closest translation, and their lack of acknowledgement that it is simply a contemporary and deliberately Americanized view of the translation, some caveats have to be issued. Michelle Woods
::The intermittent errors and clumsy diction ... make this translation frequently frustrating to read ... The result is that, for this reader at least, the book is no longer very funny! James Partridge, "Slavic and East European Journal"
There's no doubt good aspects to it, but I think we're being overly generous by implying it's universally regarded as an improvement on Parrott. I've dropped the line, and cut out most of the duplicated references to Sadlon - we really don't need multiple separate links to the publisher or a line explaining how it can be bought as an ebook. Shimgray | talk | 23:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've deleted the critical characterizations of the translations. Unless we want to do a serious comparative review of the translations, which would require another wiki, we best stay away from picking one sentence random characterizations. Until then, readers have plenty references to sources which provide a lot of information. RealSvejk (talk) 19:19, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  translation 

message: There are dozens (maybe more) Svejk-themed restaurants in the Czech republic. Why is this not mentioned? (147.228.209.157 (talk) 21:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There's too much of everything having to do with the phenomenon of Švejk. But here's where you can see more on the subject: Švejk restaurants and pubs around the world. It's hard to keep up. New places open, old places close. RealSvejk (talk) 17:34, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural Influence: Svejk Restaurants 

message: How many copies of Švejk (Schweik) books were sold worldwide? I know that only in Russia it was 20 million copies. It was the most translated czech book, but was it also the most selling one? Thanks for the reply. Jirka.h23 (talk) 06:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: How would you go around trying to find that out? Unless somebody gets some government grant to research such a trivial subject matter, we'll never know. RealSvejk (talk) 22:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many copies? 

message: I didn't want to make changes as obviously someone must have mentioned this before, but this wasn't published as a novel. It was published as a serial in a newspaper. Was there any reason why this was left out or was it just an oversight? The Haz talk 00:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Novel? 

message: :Švejk has become a byword in the Czech Republic...
Sorry to be picky, but the Czech Republic is only about 20 years old, and he was a byword before that...--Jack Upland (talk) 06:50, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Byword in Czech Republic?

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I would like to commend the editor from IP 81.190.69.124 for adding the comment "(dubious)" after the sentence that "[...]the word 'dub' ('oak') itself is a common synonym for a dull, idiotic person". Calling a "dub" "dubious" takes the gene of genius.
As to "dub" being a common word for an idiot, I wouldn't say it's common but IMO it's perfectly clear that when you call someone a "dub", you're questioning both their intelligence and their social aptitude.
Nevertheless I can't find a reliable reference for this usage, so with great joy, I hereby confirm that dub remains dubious. Eltomito (talk) 23:32, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Parrott mentions this use of dub in the notes to his translation.Svejk74 (talk) 10:55, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Stroke of Genius in This Wiki Article 

message: External link "The Good Soldier Švejk (English/Norwegian)" gives 404 now. 176.52.33.82 (talk) 21:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  External link dead