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"The clean, cozy cubicles of the regional criminal court made the most favourable impression on Švejk -- the white washed walls, the black-painted bars and the fat Mr Demartini, the chief warder for the prisoners on remand, with his purple facings and purple braid on his government-supplied cap. Purple is the colour prescribed not only here, but also at religious services on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
The glorious times of Roman rule over Jerusalem were coming back. The prisoners were led out and brought before the Pontius Pilates of 1914 down on the ground floor. And the examining magistrates, the Pilates of modern times, instead of honourably washing their hands, sent to Teissig's for goulash and Pilsen beer and passed more and more indictments to the Director of Prosecutions.
Here all logic mostly disappeared and the § triumphed. The § strangled, went mad, fumed, laughed, theatened, murdered and gave no quarter. The magistrates were jugglers with the law, high priests of its letter, devourers of the accused, tigers of the Austrian jungle, who measured their spring on the accused by the number of clauses." ... [p.24]Oh! you don't know Švejk? You're in for a treat then! Written in Czech in the years during and following World War I - for those who lived it, it was The Great War, and for those who did not survive, the only World War - its author Jaroslav Hašek was an anarchist. A traveller thru East Europe, a soldier, a drunkard, accustomed to sleep off nights or months in a cell, he had practice as a rabble-rouser. Both intense and silly, hilarious and at times violent, he took to writing stories in serial fashion during the war and the years after, sending manuscripts off without correction, often after deadline. Later twentieth century luminaries like Bertolt Brecht were to find inspiration in these stories of a common, simple man caught up in the absurd affectations of Empire about to fall. Joseph Heller has said his Catch-22 would not have been written without the precedent of Hašek's Švejk. Turns out to be both warning and balm in today's times. Go find it!
Jaroslav Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk : translated by Cecil Parrott, published by William Heinemann in association with Penguin Books, 1973
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After a long discussion about Christian virtue and championing various aspects of that as found under the traditional umbrella of what they remembered, and its people in its long history, the narrator turns to what it is not. Palla Strozzi, instructing his son Onofrio reminds that despite what others may say or think, there are still those who justify their own acts based on erroneous assumptions. Relative to such things, this parent counsels that exile should not be considered the worst of his son's worries. The real topic of merit he insists is what a chaste man with high standards might think and act upon. Nearing the end of that night's discussion, he then has to return to and remind of basic elements.
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"But what is the point of my discourse? That we understand that there is something disgraceful and evil by nature, which in the eyes of some is neither disgraceful nor evil; that some things are held to be disgraceful and evil that are not such by nature; and the same thing is disgraceful and evil in the eyes of some that others regard as honorable and good. Therefore we must take pains that it not escape us which things are honorable and good by nature and which are otherwise. For if we err in these matters, even if no disgrace attaches to us, we are dishonorable." [i,230]These notions are couched in fifteenth-century Italo-Christian notions of evil and honor and disgrace and good actions. That there is evil that some think is not evil. That there are things held as evil that are not by nature. And, that these same things, that may not be evil by nature, are still proclaimed as evil by some, and honorable and good by others. He is making pains to show that all these judging notions are actually separate and distinct. The son Onofrio thinks exile is evil as it is a dishonor. The father Palla disavows this notion, saying the distinction between evil and good is more basic. First one must be able to distinguish between what is evil and good on one's own, and before other men's opinions affect our judgment.
"But we should not altogether despise the things that are merely judged to be such [evil or good by nature] by men's opinion. For to do so shows an overfastidious and immoderate character. But we must earnestly consider by whose opinion the judgment is made. For we ought to be influenced by what good and wise men think of us, not fools and scoundrels."Onofrio: "But, father, the public magistrates are inflicting this disgrace upon us." [i, 231]
Palla: ""The magistracy," as Bias remarked, "shows the man.""
Here Palla agrees, on principle, with Onofrio. This, he counters, is why their opinion should not matter to him, regardless of their pronouncements of exile or, power in office. Palla (and Filelfo, the author of this fictional dialogue) is quoting from Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (1130a1-2) in his discussion of justice, showing a clear understanding of the difference between one's own kept virtue (or not), and how one practices that virtue (or not) toward others.
"At Florence currently men exercise magistracies who do not understand either in practice or in theory, the meaning and extent of a magistrate's power. For what correct or sound principle would men understand whose god is their belly and their boundless lust? They think and care about nothing else than to act intemperately, greedily, disgracefully, insultingly, and dishonorably. Should you, then, fear disgrace inflicted by beasts of such a nature that it would be a dishonor to be honored by them? I think the good man should make no more of the judgment of such wastrels than if Galileo Bufonio, who, though an ignoramus in medicine, claims to be the most skilled physician, judges that a man of excellent constitution and health is feeble and sickly. [i, 232] Therefore such disgrace is not by its own nature an evil, nor can there be any evil in exile."Francesco Filelfo, On Exile, i, 230-3; edited by Jeroen de Keyser, translated by W. Scott Blanchard, published by The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013
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record skip
Taking a number of leaps to Old El Paso, and to Thomas Pynchon's fictional World Against The Day, Frank Traverse and Estrella Briggs stroll back from the river when two men approach quickly from behind. Estrella, aka "Stray", affirms this is "Hatch" and "his saddle pal of the day." Of course, Frank is there to help facilitate an arms deal pre-arranged with Ewball Oust, making quick profit on the misfortune of others and, who had just happened to run into his old pal. This takes place c. 1906-10 and before the armed uprisings and the Revolution of Mexico. People protecting their interests on multiple levels.
"She didn't turn around to look, but had reached casually beneath her duster and come out with a little over-and-under. Twirling the parasol for, he guessed, distraction. "Well," Frank checking his own outfit, "I was hoping for more caliber there, but happy to see you're heeled, and say -- let's figure on one apiece, how's that? They don't look too professional."
"Nice to see you out in public again, Miss Estrella. This here your beau?"
"This yours, Hatch?"
"Wasn't lookin for no round and round," advised the other one, "just being neighborly."
"Well, neighbors," her voice maintaining a smooth contralto, "you're a long way from the old neighborhood, hate to see you come all this distance for nothin."
"Be easy to fix that, I would guess."
"Sure, if it was anythin but simple damn thievery."
"Oh? Somebody around here's a damn thief?" inqured Hatch in what he must have been told was a menacing voice. Frank, who'd been watching the men's feet, took a short off-angle step so as to have speedier access to his Police Special. Coat buttons meantime were being undone, hatbrims realigned for the angle of the sun, amid a noticeable drop-off in pedestrian traffic around the little group.
Though having been obliged not long ago to gun Sloat Fresno into the Beyond... Frank still harbored too many doubts about triggerplay to be out looking to repeat it with just anybody -- still, there was no denying he'd lost a whole ensemble of hesitancies back down the trail, and Hatch here, though perhaps enjoying even less acquaintance with the homicidal, might have detected this edge, raising the interesting question of how eager he might be to back up his sidekick.
For really it was the sidekick who presented the problem. Restless type. Fair hair, hat back on his head so the big brim sort of haloed his face, shiny eyes and low-set, pointed ears like an elf's. Frank understood this was to be his playfellow -- Stray meantime having slowly drifted into a pose that only the more heedless of their safety would've read as demure. The daylight had somehow thickened, as before a tempest on the prairie. Nobody was saying much, so Frank figured the verbal part of this was done, and the practical matter nearly upon them. The elfin sidekick was whistling softly through his teeth the popular favorite "Daisy, Daisy," ...[a] sort of telegraphic code among gun-handlers for Boot Hill. Frank gazed brightly, all but sympathetically, into the eyes of his target, waiting for a fateful tell.
Out of nowhere, "Well, hi everybody," a cheerful voice broke in, "watch-y'all doin?" It was Ewball Oust, pretnding not to be a cold, bleak-eyed Anarchist who'd left all operational doubt miles back in the romantic mists of youth, whenever that was.
"Damn," breathed the pointy-eared gent, in a long, unrequited sigh. Everybody at their own pace went about relocating their everyday selves.
"So nice runnin into you again," Hatch as if preparing to kiss Stray's hand, "and don't you be a stranger, now."
"Next time," nodded the sidekick with a poignant smile at Ewball. "Maybe in church. What church y'all go to?" he seemed to want to know, in an oily voice.
"Me?" Ewball laughed, far exceeding the humor of the moment. "I'm Mexican Orthodox. How about you? Amigo?"
Whereupon the sidekick was observed to take a hesitant step or two backward. Stray and Hatch over his hat crown exchanging a look.
"Sorry I'm late," said Ewball.
"You're right on time," said Frank."
from Against The Day pp. 646-8, by Thomas Pynchon and published by Penguin Press, 2006.
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