The World of Jaroslav Hašek: Day Two

Please join the East Central European Center, the Department of Slavic Languages, Czech Center New York, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Harriman Institute for The World of Jaroslav Hašek, a conference at Columbia University.
This conference will draw together leading scholars from various disciplines to reflect on the life, work, and ongoing relevance of the great Czech author, Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923). Best known for the unfinished long comic narrative, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk in the Great War (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války, 1921-1923), Hašek was many things at many moments: dilettante, humorist, satirist, journalist, hoaxer, bohemian, anarchist politician, Bolshevik commandant, and turncoat. His legacy remains unclear. While a household name in the Czech Republic, a key influence on later international fiction (especially on war novels such as Catch 22), and a crucial voice for articulating the role of stupidity in the modern world, for most scholars Hašek appears as a marginal figure on the world stage. He does not fit into familiar currents. Taking place on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the final part of Švejk, as well as of the author’s death, the conference will venture new answers to persistent questions about Hašek’s legacy: How has Hašek been received differently across the world? What was his relation to global modernism? What does Hašek have to offer to literary theory or philosophy? To what extent does the world we live in today resemble the one to which Hašek gave such a devastating representation?