Journalist Haşek – desperate that no more murders or robberies have been committed

What is Dead Season? In the famous prose The horrible stagnationfrom Romanian fashionJuly 1, 1901, IL Caragiale launches the formula Dead season, meant to designate the most disastrous period for the press:

The one where nothing sensational happens.

As a journalist of today’s Romania, I don’t necessarily have to read Caragiale to understand what the dead season means. The season of no murders, no earthquakes, no hurricanes, no coups. The uneventful season. The journal pages look pitiful. They must be filled with mediocrity, and those inflated to give them the appearance of events. Desperation haunts the editorial office. The reporters search the reality with an intensified thoroughness. This true misfortune for the press is surprised not only by Caragiale, but also by our friend Jaroslav Haşek. I say friend, because the author of Svejk was also a good journalist. Here are his notations from the sketch “From the Troubles of a Local News Reporter”:

“In one week it happened that neither murder nor robbery was committed. In the editorial office, I expressed my regret for this situation, declaring on this occasion that for me life has no fun if people don’t kill each other. At least one deformed mother, who terrorized her child! But not even that! Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Furious at such laziness of the real, the author declares, at the cafe, to a gentleman who came to Prague, according to his testimony, to have fun:

“- Did you come to Prague to have fun?! I asked with an air of skepticism. I am sorry to disappoint you, dear sir, but there is absolutely nothing going on in Prague! All week there was not a single murder that was motivated by robbery, no one was shot, no one committed any rape, and you come to enjoy yourself in Prague, where not even a single theft was committed. There were times when, indeed, it was a pleasure to live in this world. One sprayed himself with gas and set himself on fire, another cursed himself and the whole family, killing them all with an axe, and another tortured his mother or father to death. That’s how I say pleasure. But now nothing happens in Prague. Nothing at all. Gone are the days when a drowned person was discovered. Or – I continued passionately – I remember a young man who cut his veins and, after that, struggled for an hour on Ferdinand Street until he died. That’s what I say too, beauty. Today not even a rabid dog bites you, and unfortunately you don’t get crushed by a boiler in a car factory. Yes, sir, nothing like this happens, you can’t even imagine how terrible it is to live in such conditions. We know, for example, what a delight it was when that deformed mother stuck that stake in her own child’s ass, that is, in the rectum. That’s what I call an event! Bigger dear!”.