140th Birthday of Jaroslav Hasek - Part II

                            This post is a summary of the dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University, written by Abigail Weil, published in 2019 at https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42013078/WEIL-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

                              The goal of my project is to offer a critical reading of Hasek's oeuvre that takes seriously the legend as a cultural product, one that he sometimes enacted and sometimes inscribed into his fiction. My reading of Hasek also reconsiders the concepts of authorship and authority and examines the interplay of these two forces. Both become potent only through a dialogic exchange that establishes legitimacy; they have meaning only when perceived as meaningful. Hasek came of age in the late imperial Austro-Hungary, served in the World War I and then in the Russian Civil War, and returned home to the newly-founded democratic Czechoslovak Republic. In each of these regimes, he encountered forms of authority that differed radically, or at least attempted to justify themselves by radically different means. The title of my dissertation, "Man is Indestructible," is taken from Max Brod's review of an early stage adaptation of Osudy. Even in Hasek's lifetime of political pivots and other improvisations, we see the belief that unified his life story and his oeuvre, the individual alone is sacrosanct. Political and religious institutions have the power to shape our lives, they can conscript us, imprison us, beem us enemies and degenerates. But the human spirit is resilient, and in the few, those we call heroes or geniuses, it is unbreakable. There is, however, another dark way to understand the indestructible man: as the pernicious individual whose status within powerful institutions shields him from consequences. This dynamic is at play in both abuses of power, and those expressions of power that oppress, exploit and victimize disenfranchised people and communities, including war, environmental damage, and unfair labor practices. Hasek's embedding of autobiographical stories into his fiction always relies on his reader recognizing them as the stuff of legend. Hasek and his characters treat storytelling as a world apart in which offensive or upsetting ideas can be encoded into a form that defies censorship or punishment. By presenting his ideas in the form of fiction rather than journalism, he evades the responsibilities, but at the same time, he activates his own legend, creating a version of himself as the protagonist, thus reminding the reader of his authority to speak on the topics of Soviet Russia, their civil war, and himself. In The Good Soldier Svejk, Hasek presents the tension between authorship and authority as a problem of self-expression. In terms of actual power, writers can do little to upset the systems of authority put in place by the monarchy and military. But the force of these characters' activities is in their refusal to adhere to those systems. Authorship becomes a defiant act of taking authority on oneself. Two critics who advance theories about Hasek's representation of authority are Lubomir Dolezel and Premysl Blazicek. Dolezel's work from 2008 touches on the line between Hasek's biography and his creative output, and representations of auhtority in his work. According to Dolezel, the characters of The Good Soldier Svejk, are defined by their permissions and obligations, a system Svejk undermines through ludic play. This strategy, Dolezel shows, is not intended to challenge authority, but to expose the characters who represent it. In my own analysis of the novel, I argue that the novel champions characters whose creative activities simultaneously conform to and reveal the oppressive system, thereby defying the authorities that seek to order their lives. Hasek's depiction of the oppressive imperial regime in Prague is an portrait of the imperial administration, a situation where Czech subjects of the crown are denied free and authentic self-expression. The result of this is a stifled society. A world where atypically heroic characters such as Sveijk find non-normative methods for self-expression that do not rely on traditional or conventional journalistic or literary forms. We may refer to Hasek's biography for some explanation, as the narrator once more uses first-person, and the author also spent time in a Ukrainian prison camp. The inclusion of this story gives the narrator's discourse an oral quality, making it at once concrete, relatable, and dynamic. The tone once again becomes conversational. The narrator transgresses his literary boundaries and by doing so, makes the reader an active participant in the discourse. As Hasek infuses his novel with elements of historical discourse in order to reveal the fictive components that underlie it. History's unspoken artifice, Hasek argues, distracts us from questions about the investment in state power. In the world of the novel, storytelling is the narrative from of choice for the powerless. Throughout the novel Hasek experiments with various means of fictionalizing historiography and propose this subversive activity as an empowering creative method of reclaiming critical reasoning for writer and reader alike. Whereas history tends to disempower the reader, the relationship between Hasek and the reader of The Good Soldier Svejk, is mutually constitutive and empowering. Svejk is not a historian, yet his commentary reveals a wealth of historical knowledge. Like Part II of Don Quixote, the epilogue insists on the veracity of the book's contents, claiming that its characters have lives outsides these pages. The preface, quoted here, does the same thing: 'Great times call for great men. There are unknown heroes who are modest, with none of the glory and history of Napoleon. Today you can meet in the streets of Prague a shabbily dressed man who is not even himself aware of his significance in the history of the new era. He goes modestly on his way, without bothering anyone. If you asked him his name, he would answer you simply: I am Svejk. And this quiet, modest, shabbily dressed man is indeed that good old soldier Svejk. He didn't burn down the temple of the goddess in Ephesus, like that dummy Herostratus did, just to get himself into newspaper and historian books. And that's enough.' Hasek makes a claim for Svejk's worthiness for historical record, the author elevates the status of ordinary folk conventionally deemed unworthy of note in history books. Through his irreverent treatment of historical personagens and historiography, Hasek shows that, more often than not, historical discourse is essentially an expression of power. But his project is not to spur historians towards greater critical thinking or self-awareness. He proposes critical and self-aware fiction as a worthy and more honest alternative: a source of information and inspiration whose inventive elements are transparent, though not necessary easy to comprehend. Hasek's ideal reader: skeptical, perceptive and holding nothing so sacred that it can't withstand ridicule.

140th Birthday of Jaroslav Hasek

                   Almost one month ago, precisely on April 30th, the Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek would complete 140 years old. This post is a tribute to him. He wrote about the stupidity and absurd of the war, about injustice and cowardice with ordinary people and the importance of fighting for a fairer and better world. A world where everyone fights against injustice, violence, bullying, war, corruption, slavery, hunger, human rights violations, hypocrisy, oppression, dictatorship, political exclusion, and ignorance. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at                                 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Ha%C5%A1ek. The second was published at   https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Good-Soldier-Schweik-by-Hasek. The third was published at     https://literariness.org/2022/10/12/analysis-of-jaroslav-haseks-the-good-soldier/. The fourth was published at   file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/RoutledgeHandbooks-9781003055495-chapter3-1.pdf                                                                                                                                                                                     

    Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923) was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist and anarchist. He is best known for his novel, The Fate of the Good Soldier Svejk 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 more than 50 languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature. His father, Josef Hasek, a mathematics teacher, died early of alcohol intoxication. Poverty then forced his mother Katerina with three children to move more than 15 times. He graduated from the Czech Business Academy and after graduation, he became an employee of Slavia Bank but soon began to earn his living exclusively in journalism and literature. In 1907, he became editor of the anarchist magazine Komuna,  and was briefly imprisoned for his work. In 1908, he edited the Women's Horizon. In 1909 he had sixty-four published short stories. In February 1915, Hasek was called up to the replacement battalion of the Austro-Hungarian army. He was in July transported to the Eastern front in Ukraine. He served on the front until September when he was captured by the Russians. In 1920, in Irkutsk, Russia, he married a printing worker named Alexandra Lvov and in December in the same year, he returned to independent Czechoslovakia. An disciplined author, Hasek was very productive. From his works it is apparent that he had an humanistic education. Initially Hasek wrote mainly travel stories, features and humoresques, which he published in magazines. His prose was based on his own real experiences. In his life, he wrote about 1,200 short stories. Over the years nearly all the stories have been collected and printed in book's form. His most famous text, the novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Svejk during the World War, at first had few followers. Ivan Olbracht was probably the first to mark it as a major work, "it is one of the best books ever written, and The Fate of Good Soldier Svejk is quite a new type in world literature, equivalent to Don Quixote, Hamlet, Faust, Karamazov," he wrote. Vitezslav Nezval connected Hasek work with Dadaism. The philosopher Karel Kosik saw the novel as "an expression of the absurdity of the alienated world", he described Svejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism." Jan Grossman associated Svejk with existentialism.                                                                                                                                                                                              The novel  The Fate of the Good Soldier Svejk during the World War, reflected the pacifist and antimilitary sentiments of post-World War I in Europe. The title character is classified as naive, instinctively honest and guileless, Schweik is forever colliding with the clumsy, dehumanized military bureaucracy. Schweik's naivete serves as a contrast to the self-importance and conniving natures of his superior officers and is the main vehicle for Hasek's mockery of authority.                                                                                          The book The Fate of the Good Soldier Svejk during the World War, is usually accompanied by Josef Lada's illustrations, which help the reader to see Schweik as an amiable and simpleminded hero. However, such an analysis ignores Schweik's clever attempts to avoid active war's duty and his keen insight into the army's operations. Hasek's novel can be read as a surrealist text through its conflation of life and art. Trivial anecdotes are given great prominence by Schweik, who has two or more such stories or explanations for every occassion and situation. Although Hasek was not part of the surrealist movement, he frustrates readers' expectations by not describing a single battle in his war novel. This, combined with his emphasis on everyday people, makes his work similar to such surrealist texts as Andre Breton's Nadja.                                                                                                                                  Jaroslav Hasek wrote only one novel, The Good Soldier Svejk  which itself remained unfinished as he intended to write six parts, but only completed three before he died. Although his genius occasionally glimmers in his other works, none of them matches the brilliance of this novel. In 1917, he published the novel in Kiev as part of a legionnaire series. The theme of the ordinary man in the turmoil of history had a strong tradition in literary history, especially in the picaresque novels of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Svejk's most direct ancestor is Simplicius, the hero of Hans Jakob Christoffel, who lived through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War in Germany. Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk is a war novel in which not a single gunshot is fired, and war is not actually portrayed. The basic source of humour for Svejk is that the world itself has become topsy-turvy, absurd and unnatural. The absurdity of the world becomes visible in statements like the following: 'Sentencing an innocent man to five years, that is something I've heard of, but ten, that's too much', 'There is a freedom in the psychiatric asylum (prison) which not even socialists have ever dreamed of ', and finally, 'There have to be crooks in this world too...If everyone were honest with each other, they'd soon start punching each other noses'.The novel deviates from traditional psychological-social novels by not offering character portrayals. Svejk, then, has an aversion to all ideologies: 'It's bad... when a chap suddenly starts to get caught up in philosophizing. That always stinks of delirium tremens.                                

World Press Freedom Day 2023 - Part II

              This week we have the second part on World Press Freedom Day. This very important human right is essential to the truth, democracy, justice, and development. We all have the duty to defend those who work to bring us the truth about what is happening around the world, mainly those who try to bring us about dangerous issues related to justice, democracy and human rights. This post is a summary of two articles. The first was published at   https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/03/media-freedom-in-dire-state-in-record-number-of-countries-report-finds. The second was published at https://rsf.org/en/classement/2023/americas

              Media freedom is in dire health in a record number of countries, according to the last annual snapshot, which warns that disinformation, propaganda and artificial intelligence pose mounting threats to journalism. The World Press Freedom Index -  https://rsf.org/en/index - revealed a shocking slide, with an unprecedented 31 countries deemed to be in a "very serious situation", the lowest ranking in the report, up from 21 just two years ago. Increased aggressiveness from autocratic governments, and some that are considered democratic, coupled with "massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns" has caused the situation to go from bad to worse, according to the list, released by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). "Authoritarian leaders become increasingly bold in their attempts to silence the press", the secretary of RSF told the Guardian. "The international community needs to wake up to reality, and act together, decisively and fast, to reverse this dangerous trend." The survey assesses the state of the media in 180 countries, looking at the ability of journalists to publish news in the public interest without interference and without threats to their own safety. It shows rapid technological advances are allowing governments and political actors to distort reality, and fake content is easier to publish than ever before. "The difference is being blurred between true and false, real and artificial, facts and artifices, jeopardising the right to information," the report said. Russia, which already plummeted in the ranking last year, dropped another nine places, as state media slavishly parrots the Kremlin line while opposition outlets are driven into exile. Meanwhile, three countries: Tajikistan, India and Turkey, dropped from being ina "problematic situation" into the lowest category. India has been in a particularly sharp decline, sinking 11 places to 161 after media takeovers by oligarchs close to Narendra Modi. The Indian press used to be seen as fairly progressive, but things changed after the Hindu nationalist prime minister took over. In Turkey, the administration of the hardline president, Erdogan, had stepped up its persecution of journalists in the run-up to elections scheduled for 14 May. Turkey jails more journalists than any other democracy. Some of the index's biggest falls were in Africa. Senegal fell 31 places. Tunisia fell 27 places as a result of President growing authoritarianism. The Middle East is the world's most dangerous region for journalists. "We are witnessing worrying trends, but the big question is if these trends are hipcup or a sign of world going backwards," said Guilherme Canela, from UNESCO. "Physical attacks, digital attacks, the economic situation, and regulatory tightening: we are facing a perfect storm," he adds. A Unesco report released on Wednesday said healthy freedom of expression helped many other fundamental rights to flourish.                                                                                                                                                                                 Political transitions have oainly benefitted journalists from two countries in the Americas. In the south, in Brazil (92nd), the departure of President Jair Bolsonaro, who systematically attacked journalists and the media, has revived hopes of a return to normalcy in relations between the government and the press. The country moved up 18 places in the Index, a record for the continent. In the north, in the U.S. (down3 at 45), the Biden administration has also shown a better disposition towards the media than the previous administration. Nonetheless, the country's slight decline in the 2023 Index was due to the continuing economic difficulties of the media, the murders of two journalists (Jeff German and Dylan Lyons), and the end of efforts to support freedom of the press at the legislative level(the Press Act). Elsewhere on the continent, the polarisation and institutional instability that characterise several countries in the region have fostered hostility and distrust of the media. In Peru (down 33 at 110th), the successive political transitions of the past six years have fuelled a general distrust towards both the country's institutions and the media. In Ecuador (down 12 at 80th), the destabilisation of the country, due to the growing influence of criminal organisations, has also caused a significant deterioration of journalists's working conditions. In Mexico (down 1 at 128th), the extreme violence of the cartels and their frequent collusion with local officials and politicians, has continued journalism's destruction. The use of disinformation and propaganda, often associated with online verbal violence against journalists and the media, is being normalised and becoming part of political leaders' strategy in seeking greater control over the public narrative. Although historically well placed in the Index, Costa Rica (down 15 at 23rd), Uruguay (down 8 at 52nd) and Guyana (down 26 at 60th) have also seen an increase in online harassment. Among the worst ranked countries, references to stability and national security continue to be used by authoritarian governments to justify all sorts of abuses against the media. In Nicaragua (up 2 at 158th) independent journalism has been forced underground or into exile. In Cuba (up 1 at 172nd) a new penal code has allowed the government to legally continue to intimidate and persecute journalists critical of the regime.

World Press Freedom Day 2023

                           Last Wednesday 3rd of May, all over the world was celebrated the importance of one of the most important human rights, the freedom of expression, besides the importance of a free, independent, and courageous news media. And like many other have done this week, this post is a tribute to all journalist, human rights defender, and anyone else that are helping us to know what is really happenning around the world. I have been doing summaries about this important day since 2013. This year the theme is about the importance of freedom of expression for all journalists, human rights defender, activists and anyone else who wants to defend the human rights anytime or anywhere. We can not tolerate the violation of any essential human rights, such as right to privacy or the right to monetization of social media, or political rights, they are the pillars of democracy and justice. And justice in these cases mean above all, compensation for the victims, since it is hard to identify the responsible for the violations that generally involve many persons from internet supplier  companies to governments officials.  This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at   https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/world-press-freedom-day-2023. The second was published at   https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/higher-levels-freedom-expression-have-strong-relationship-protection-other-human-rights-unesco. The third was published at   https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/03/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-occasion-of-world-press-freedom-day-2023/. The fourth was published at https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/world-press-freedom-day-1525264271-1

                   On World Press Freedom Day 2023, UNESCO will organize a special event at U.N. in New York, marking the 30 years since the U.N. General Assembly's decision proclaiming an international day for press freedom. Celebrated every 3rd of May, this year's theme for the Day will be "Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a driver for all other human rights", Signifying the enabling element of freedom of expression to enjoy and protect all other human rights. World Press Freedom Day 2023 will also be the occasion to award the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which recognizes and honours the contribution of journalists, particularly those who risk their lives to provide information to the public.                                                                                     The 10 countries with the highest levels of Freedom of Expression, according to V-Dem data, also enjoy a significantly higher level of rpotection of civil, political, economic and social rights, such as access to justice, a near absence of political killings and very low levels of exclusion across gender, socio-economic, political and social group indicators. At the same time, the 10 countries with the lowest level of freedom of expression are associated with higher levels of exclusion and higher levels of exclusion by political groups. The data also show that in countries where freedom of expression is higher, less exclusion from public goods and services is experienced. This analysis shows that higher levels of freedom of expression are good indicators that we will also find higher levels of protection for other human rights. So, when working towards more human rights, the fight for freedom of expression is key.                                        Journalism is fundamental to a free society, Today, as we mark the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, we honor all the jornalists, reporters and media workers who bravely pursue the truth. And we renew our pledge to hold to account all those that seek to silence these voices essential to transparent and trustworthy governance. A free press is a pillar of democracy. It educates, illuminates, exposes, and uncovers. It serves as a guardian of truth. No journalist should have to risk their lives and livehoods in pursuit of that truth. In many places around the world, autocrats and their enablers continue to repress a free and independent media, through censorship, retribution, threats, lawsuits, harassment, disinformation, detention and physical attacks. Courageous journalists around the world have shown that they will not be silenced or intimidated. Today and every day we must all stand with journalists around the world. We must all speak out against those who wish to silence them. And we must all continue to support a free press that is essential to democracies everywhere.                                                                                                                           World Press Freedom Day is observed on May 3rd to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, and defend the media from attacks on their independence. AT U.N. in New York a conference will focus on the digital era' impact on freedom of expression, access to information and privacy, safety of journalists, etc. To address these challenges, some concrete recommendations will also be developed. It is fundamental to spread awareness about the importance to awaken the government of its duty to uphold and respect the right to freedom of expression. The theme for 2023 is "Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a Driver for All other Human Rights."