SOURCE: Pynsent, Robert. “The Last Days of Austria: Hašek and Kraus.” In The First World War in Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Hoger Klein, pp. 136-48. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1976.

In the following essay, Pynsent finds parallels between the satirical military stories of Jaroslav Hašek and the drama of Karl Kraus.

Most Czech First World War literature concerns the establishment of a Czechoslovak state. For all its horrors the war was in the end positive. Sassoon's bird suddenly burst out singing rather more meaningfully for Czechs and Slovaks than for the hung-over British, French, or Germans. Few Czech writers of war fiction had no political axe to grind and not many of them could squeeze any humour out of the war. Few tried to create characters, to give any sort of psychological interpretation of their warring heroes' actions; usually their heroes are...