entitled 'Rhtythm" in the first part of his book, Miller describes a characteristic pattern of picaresque novels from Guzman de Alfarache onward: "... digressive, descriptive rambling about what­ever comes to mind, usually directed at exposing a corrupt world in all its facets, is punctuated by a rush of events."⁹ No picaresque hero is such a master of "digressive, descriptive rambling" as Švejk; for every event or statement which confronts him, he is sure to have several detailed anecdotes of questionable relevance. It would probably be an over­statement to say that Švejk's tales aim at "exposing a corrupt world," but on the other hand they are not as purely humorous as is commonly supposed. In the opening chapter, Švejk's meditations on the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand lead to the following digression:

Well, he's in a better land now. God rest his soul. He didn't live to be Emperor. When I was in the army, there was a general who fell off his horse and got killed as quiet as could be. They wanted to help him back onto his horse and when they went to lift him up they saw he was stone dead. And he was just going to be promoted to be field marshall.¹⁰

This is a device which occurs throughout the novel: an event of world significance is compared with a trivial episode is Švejk's past experi­ence, and suddenly the event seems equally trivial. Correctly forecast­ing the outbreak of war as a result of the assaination, Švejk predicts the Emperor's reaction in these terms: "Do you think the Emperor's going to put up with that sort of thing? Little do you know him. You mark my words, there's got to be war with the Turks [he has the combatants somewhat confused]. Kill my uncle, would you? Then take this smack in the jaw for a start... ."¹¹ The actions and motives of great powers are described in terms of a barroom brawl. If this is not' 'exposing a corrupt world," it is at least exposing the pretense which makes war seem more dignified and rational than a barroom brawl.

But Švejk's anecdotes, which one would expect to find in a leisurely setting (Frynta calls them "pub stories"), are introduced in the middle of the most chaotic situations, even where he is on trial for treason or faced with a threatening superior officer. Thus we see very much the kind of counterpoint described by Miller, with leisurely digression alternating with a chaotic rush of events. One rhythmic pattern which Miller de­scribes, though, is absent in Švejk: a gradual acceleration leading to a sudden rush of events at the end. One reason for this is obvious; Hašek died at the age of forty with his manuscript still incomplete and no end in sight to Švejk's adventures. But even so, there is no consistent increase in tempo in the novel as we know it; in fact the earlier sections of the book probably contain a greater frequency of discrete episodes than later sections.