So after I wrote the blog about Karel Čapek, I received some response from Czech readers. "I don't like Karel Čapek," one said, "his writing feeds the Small Czech Man mentality."
Yes, I am familiar with the notion, "malý Český člověk." Presently, this figure is known as a nobody-man from a small land, with little ambition, lots of conformity, sweet, soft, clumsy and indifferent. An embodiment of mediocrity and complacency, he is indeed a nightmare for people, myself included, who want to make a difference, to have an edge, to make an imprint and to exist in the world.
However, "small Czech man" is not a permanent concept, it has its own history. In different times, the small Czech man meant different things. Švejk, who, in Hašek's famous tales of the Good Soldier Švejk, fought for the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the WWI, was a supreme example of an intriguing small Czech man. Nothing in the novel could inform us whether Švejk was idiotic or craftily subversive. As a subject to the Empire and a soldier in the army, he took orders literally, followed them to the extreme, until the orders became so absurd that they broke down. An anti-hero of sorts, Švejk was opaque, had no apparent psychological depth of his own, yet his opacity turned out to be the best survival tactic and most effective way of sabotage: since he could not be seen through, therefore he could not be effectively ruled. He was, without doubt, a radical figure at the time of his creation in the 1920s, and continued to provide a model of passive resistance for the Czech lands during various occupations the country experienced in the 20th century.
In Czech literature, the figure of "small Czech man" appears again and again. He is used as a mirror to reflect the absurdities of the world around him (such as in Havel's absurdist plays); he can also go on different paths of adventures, where he gets knocked about until he gains self-awareness (in Bohumil Hrabal's novels such as "Closely Watched Trains", and "I served the King of England"). The small man is not so simple and disgusting—he has morals and rationality. He doesn’t master-mind but he feels, thinks and adapts. More importantly, because he is pushed around and adapts, he reflects the social system around him. He is the social median, the average voter, the indicator for the extent of social welfare.
I agree that Karel Čapek did have a particular weakness for this common-man. A firm believer in democracy, and writing after the devastating total war of WWI, he believed that the state should be ruled by and serve the ambitions of the common-men, instead of tailoring to the aspirations of the Great Men, as the latter would turn out much more dangerous than the former. Passing away in 1938, just when the German troops entered Prague, Čapek had no chance to experience and reflect on the WWII and on the mundane evils of totalitarianism (which would have no doubt shattered his belief in the innocence of the common-man, as it did to many other writers). His age was still that of high modernism, with a new optimism, and a lingering romanticism. And plus, Čapek stayed true to his temperament when he wrote: he savored life, and reveled in small things. He was not particularly political, but put his focus on the "irrelevant" knowledges, textures and joys of daily life in peace.
Of course, Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Hašek, Bohumil Hrabal--they are all in the past tense now. One cannot ask them to fulfill what the readers need today. Watching Czech politics today, I see that a “small man mentality” figures into anti-elitism, anti-intellectuality, and conservative politics. Whether reading Čapek (and for that matter, Hašek and Hrabal) might feed this mentality or not, however, depends entirely on how they are read. They might as well historicize and complicate the figure. I have a suspicion that political parties are mis-using this idea of "common-man", simplifying it, imposing on him ready-made political views that do not belong. Looking at how the common man figures in literature could help demystify the small Czech man in today's politics, to show that in fact, this small Czech man is not that stupid, and can take political power smartly in his own hands, when the option is there.
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