Švejk, Jan Dítě, Samko Tále and the First Thai Adaptation of the (Not So) Good Soldier Sha-Wake: Transnational Significance of the “Small” and “Childlike” Characters in Czech and Slovak Literature

Abstract

n Europe there are the large countries on one side and the small on the other; there are the nations seated in the negotiating chambers and those who wait all night in the antechambers,”1 wrote Milan Kundera (1929– ). In his discussion of Neville Chamberlain’s description of Czechoslovakia as “[a] faraway country of which we know little,”2 Kundera criticises the British Prime Minister’s justification of the Munich Pact and describes the signing away of Czechoslovakia as a shameless sacrifice of the small and insignificant [Czechoslovakia] for the greater [British] good. It can be said that Kundera’s negotiating chambers versus antechambers categorisation of world power complements his controversial notion of a particular “Czech destiny” [“Český úděl”]3, which led to his public row with Václav Havel (1936–2011), who believed one must be the master of one’s own political destiny. Kundera’s idea of how a small country can never escape its resigned and predestined fate of forever being small and powerless, has often been un-