Karel Čapek

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Karel Čapek
Krakatit
Notable awards Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (in memoriam)
SpouseOlga Scheinpflugová
ParentsAntonín Čapek (father)
Božena Čapková (mother)
RelativesJosef Čapek (brother)
Helena Čapková (sister)
Signature

Karel Čapek (Czech: [ˈkarɛl ˈtʃapɛk] ⓘ; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, playwright, critic and journalist. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel War with the Newts (1936) and play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1920), which introduced the word robot.[1][2] He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism,[3] he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.[4][5]

Though nominated for the

International PEN.[10]

Čapek died on the brink of World War II as the result of a lifelong medical condition.[11] His legacy as a literary figure became well established after the war.[4]

Life

House of Čapek brothers in Prague 10, Vinohrady

Early life and education

Karel Čapek was born in 1890 in the village of Malé Svatoňovice in the Bohemian mountains. However, six months after his birth, the Čapek family moved to their own house in Úpice.[12] Karel Čapek's father, Antonín Čapek, worked as a doctor at the local textile factory.[13] Antonín was a very active person; apart from his work as a doctor, he also co-funded the local museum and was a member of the town council.[14]

Despite opposing his father's

national awakeners”.[15] Karel's mother, Božena Čapková, was a homemaker.[13] Unlike her husband, she did not like life in the country, and she suffered from long-term depression.[14] Despite that, she assiduously collected and recorded local folklore, such as legends, songs and stories.[16] Karel was the youngest of three siblings. He would maintain an especially close relationship with his brother Josef, a highly successful painter, living and working with him throughout his adult life.[17] His sister, Helena, was a talented pianist who later become a writer and published several memoirs about Karel and Josef.[18]

After finishing elementary school in Úpice, Karel moved with his grandmother to Hradec Králové, where he started attending high school. Two years later the school expelled him for taking part in an illegal students' club.[13] Čapek later described the club as a "very non-murderous anarchist society".[19]

After this incident he moved to Brno with his sister and attempted to finish high school there, but two years later he moved again, to Prague, where he finished high school at the Academic Grammar School in 1909.[13][20] During his teenage years Čapek became enamored with the visual arts, especially Cubism, which influenced his later writing.[21]

After graduating from high school, he studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague at Charles University, but he also spent some time at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and at the Sorbonne University in Paris.[13][22] While still a university student he wrote some works on contemporary art and literature.[23] He graduated with a doctorate of philosophy in 1915.[24]

World War I and Interwar period

Exempted from military service due to the spinal problems that would haunt him his whole life, Čapek observed World War I from Prague. His political views were strongly affected by the war, and as a budding journalist he began to write on topics like

garden parties for leading Czech intellectuals. Čapek was also a member of Masaryk's Hrad political network.[28] Their frequent conversations on various topics later served as the basis for Čapek's book Talks with T. G. Masaryk.[29]

Tomb of Karel Čapek and Olga Scheinpflugová at Vyšehrad cemetery

Čapek began his writing career as a journalist. With his brother Josef, he worked as an editor for the Czech paper Národní listy (The National Newspaper) from October 1917 to April 1921.[30] Upon leaving, he and Josef joined the staff of Lidové noviny (The People's Paper) in April 1921.[31]

Čapek's early attempts at fiction were short stories and plays for the most part written with his brother Josef.[32][33] His first international success was R.U.R., a dystopian work about a bad day at a factory populated with sentient androids. The play was translated into English in 1922, and was being performed in the UK and America by 1923. Throughout the 1920s, Čapek worked in many writing genres, producing both fiction and non-fiction, but worked primarily as a journalist.

In the 1930s, Čapek's work focused on the threat of brutal

International PEN Club. He established, and was the first president of the Czechoslovak PEN Club.[10]

Late life and death

In 1935, he married actress

spondyloarthritis and was also a heavy smoker, Karel Čapek died of pneumonia, on 25 December 1938.[33]

Surprisingly, the Gestapo was not aware of his death. Several months later, just after the

Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. The inscription on the tombstone reads: "Here Josef Čapek, painter and poet, would have been buried. Grave far away."[35]

Writing

Karel Čapek's handwriting

Karel Čapek wrote on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their precise description of reality.[38] Čapek is renowned for his work with the Czech language.[39][40]

He is known as a

science-fiction author who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. Many of his works also discuss ethical aspects of industrial inventions and processes already anticipated in the first half of the 20th century. These include mass production, nuclear weapons and intelligent artificial beings such as robots or androids. His most productive years were during the First Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938).[citation needed
]

Čapek also expressed fear of social disasters, dictatorship, violence, human stupidity, the unlimited power of corporations, and greed. He tried to find hope, and a way out. From the 1930s onward his work became increasingly

anti-militarist, and critical of what he saw as "irrationalism".[41]

Ivan Klíma, in his biography of Čapek, notes his influence on modern Czech literature, as well as on the development of Czech as a written language. Čapek, along with contemporaries like Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923), spawned part of the early 20th-century revival in written Czech thanks to their decision to use the vernacular. Klíma writes, "It is thanks to Čapek that the written Czech language grew closer to the language people actually spoke".[17] Čapek was also a translator, and his translations from French poetry inspired a new generation of Czech poets.[17]

His books and plays include detective-stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays, and even a book on gardening.[42]

His most important works attempt to resolve problems of epistemology, to answer the question: "What is knowledge?" Examples include Tales from Two Pockets, and the first book of the trilogy of novels Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life. He also co-wrote (with his brother Josef) the libretto for Zdeněk Folprecht's opera Lásky hra osudná in 1922.[43]

After World War II, Čapek's work was only reluctantly accepted by the communist government of Czechoslovakia (in office 1948–1989), because during his life he had refused to accept communism as a viable alternative. He was the first in a series of influential non-Marxist intellectuals who wrote a newspaper essay in a series called "Why I am not a Communist".[44]

In 2009 (70 years after his death), a book was published containing extensive correspondence by Karel Čapek, in which the writer discusses

conscientious objection to military service with lawyer Jindřich Groag from Brno. Until then, only a portion of these letters were known.[45]

Arthur Miller wrote in 1990:

I read Karel Čapek for the first time when I was a college student long ago in the Thirties. There was no writer like him ... prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination...he is a joy to read.[46]

Etymology of robot

R.U.R. theatrical poster, 1939

Karel Čapek introduced and made popular the frequently used international word

R.U.R. in 1920. While it is frequently thought that he was the originator of the word, he wrote a short letter in reference to an article in the Oxford English Dictionary etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual inventor.[47][48]

In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he also explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři (from Latin labor, work). However, he did not like the word, seeing it as too artificial, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested roboti (robots in English).[49]

The word robot comes from the word robota. The word robota means literally "

Ukrainian, etc.). It derives from the reconstructed Proto-Slavic word *orbota
, meaning "work, hard work, obligatory work for the king, or a short form used for plowing".

Awards and honours

The asteroid 1931 Čapek, discovered by Luboš Kohoutek was named after him.[50]

Čapek received the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, in memoriam, in 1991.

Richard E. Pattis named the Karel (Programming Language) for Čapek.[51]

Selected works

Plays

  • 1920 – The Outlaw (Loupežník)
  • 1920 – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), (Rossumovi univerzální roboti) – play with one of the first examples of artificial intelligence human-like beings in art and literature.
  • 1921 – Pictures from the Insects' Life (Ze života hmyzu), also known as The Insect Play or The Life of the Insects, with Josef Čapek, a satire in which insects stand in for various human characteristics: the flighty, vain butterfly, the obsequious, self-serving dung beetle.
  • 1922 – The Makropulos Affair (Věc Makropulos) – play about human immortality, not really from a science-fiction point of view. Leoš Janáček's opera is based on that.
  • 1927 – Adam the Creator (Adam stvořitel) – The titular hero tries to destroy the world and replace it with a better one.[41] It was adapted into an animated short by Japanese director Mahiro Maeda in 2015.
  • 1937 – The White Disease (Bílá nemoc) – earlier translated as (Power and Glory). About the conflict between a pacifist doctor and the fascistic Marshal. This was the answer to coming Nazi era in the air, just before the start of WWII.[41]
  • 1938 –
    The Mother (Matka)

Novels

  • 1922 –
    consumer society
    .
  • 1922 –
    Krakatit
     – novel, the plot of which includes a prediction of a nuclear-weapon-like explosive.
  • 1933 – Hordubal – First part of the "Noetic Trilogy".
  • 1934 – Meteor (Povětroň) – Second part of the "Noetic Trilogy".
  • 1934 – An Ordinary Life (Obyčejný život) – Third part of the "Noetic Trilogy".
  • 1936 – War with the Newts (Válka s mloky) – satirical dystopian novel.
  • 1937 – The First Rescue Party (První parta) – novel based on the experiences of members of a rescue squad at the site of a mining accident. Became the basis for a film in 1959.
  • 1939 –
    Life and Work of the Composer Foltýn
     (Život a dílo skladatele Foltýna) – unfinished, published posthumously

Travel books

  • Letters from Italy (Italské listy, 1923)[52]
  • Letters from England (Anglické listy, 1924)[53]
  • Letters from Spain (Výlet do Španěl, 1930)[54]
  • Letters from Holland (Obrázky z Holandska, 1932)[55]
  • Travels in the North (Cesta na Sever, 1936)[56]

Other works

  • Stories from a Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket, (Povídky z jedné a z druhé kapsy) – a common name for a cycle of short detective stories (5–10 pages long) that shared common attitude and characters, including The Last Judgement.
  • How it is Made (Jak se co dělá) – satiric novels on the life of theater, newspaper and movie studio.
  • The Gardener's Year (Zahradníkův rok, 1929) is exactly what it says it is: a year-round guide to gardening, charmingly written, with illustrations by his brother Josef Čapek.[57]
  • Apocryphal Tales (Kniha apokryfů, 1932, 2nd edition 1945)[58] – short stories about literary and historical characters, such as Hamlet, a struggling playwright, Pontius Pilate, Don Juan, Alexander arguing with his teacher Aristotle, and Sarah and Abraham attempting to name ten good people so Sodom can be saved.'
    • The Punishment of Prometheus (1932)
    • Times Aren't What They Were (1931)
    • As in the Good Old Days (1926)
    • Thersites (1931)
    • Agathon, or Concerning Wisdom (1920)
    • Alexander the Great (1937)
    • The Death of Archimedes (1938)
    • The Roman Legions
    • The Ten Righteous
    • Pseudo Lot, or Concerning Patriotism (1923)
    • Christmas Eve
    • Martha and Mary
    • Lazarus
    • The Fives Loaves (1937)
    • Benchanan (1934)
    • The Crucifixion (1927)
    • Pilate's Evening
    • Pilate's Creed (1920)
    • The Emperor Diocletian (1932)
    • Attila (1932)
    • The Idol Breakers (1936)
    • Brother Francis
    • Ophir (1932)
    • Goneril (1933)
    • Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1934)
    • Don Juan's Confession (1932)
    • Romeo and Juliet (1932)
    • Master Hynek Rab of Kufstejn (1933)
    • Napoleon (1933)
  • Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in for Good Measure (Devatero Pohádek a ještě jedna od Josefa Čapka jako přívažek, 1932) – a collection of fairy tales, aimed at children.
  • Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy (Dášeňka čili Život štěněte, 1933)[59]
  • The Shirts (short story)

Selected bibliography]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1349295326
    .
  2. ^ Oxford English Dictionary: robot n2
  3. ISBN 978-0415341356. Archived
    from the original on 21 August 2023. Retrieved 28 July 2018. The philosopher Vaclav Belohradsky, one of the few Czech intellectuals supportive of the 'civic' right during the early 1990s, [...] viewed Klaus's thinking as a return to the American-influenced pragmatic liberalism of the Czech essayist and writer Karel Capek [...].
  4. ^ a b Misterova, Ivona (2010). "Letters from England: Views on London and Londoners by Karel Capek, the Czech "Gentleman Stroller of London Streets". Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London. 8 (2). Archived from the original on 21 January 2015. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  5. ^ Ort 2013, p. 3.
  6. ^ "Nomination Database". The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  7. ^ "Karel Čapek Medal for Translation from a Language of Limited Diffusion". International Federation of Translators. Archived from the original on 14 August 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  8. ^ "Cena Karla Čapka (cena fandomu – Mlok)". DatabazeKnih.cz. Archived from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  9. ^ "Czech PEN Club awards Karel Čapek Prize to Petr Šabach". Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. 19 January 2016. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2016. The prize is awarded every other year for prosaic, dramatic or essayistic work by a Czech author which comprehensibly contributes to reinforcing or maintaining democratic and humanist values in society.
  10. ^
    ISBN 069105052X
    , (pp. 22–23).
  11. ^ a b Strašíková, Lucie. "Čapek stihl zemřít dřív, než si pro něj přišlo gestapo". Česká televize (in Czech). Archived from the original on 25 October 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  12. ^ Ort 2013, p. 17.
  13. ^ a b c d e f "Life of Karel Čapek". Prism: UO Stories, University of Oregon. Archived from the original on 24 September 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  14. ^ a b Jana Ládyová (23 June 2016). "Božena Čapková, sběratelka, maminka slavných potomků" (in Czech). Žena-in.cz. Archived from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  15. ^ Ort 2013, p. 19.
  16. ^ Ort 2013, pp. 17–18.
  17. ^
    ISBN 978-0945774532
    .
  18. ^ "Helena Čapková" (in Czech). Město Hronov. Archived from the original on 25 October 2020. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  19. ^ Čapek, Karel; Čapek, Josef (1982). "Předmluva autobiografická". Ze společné tvorby: Krakonošova zahrada, Zářivé hlubiny a jiné prózy, Lásky hra osudná, Ze života hmyzu, Adam stvořitel (in Czech). Československý spisovatel. p. 13.
  20. ^ "Karel Čapek" (in Czech). Osobnosti.cz. Archived from the original on 27 October 2020. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  21. ISBN 978-0945774082
    .
  22. ISBN 978-0571231621
    .
  23. ^ Ort 2013, p. 21.
  24. ^ Tracy A. Burns. "The artistic genius of Karel and Josef Čapek". Custom Travel Services s.r.o. (Ltd). Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  25. ^ a b James Sallis, Review of Karel Capek: Life and Work by Ivan Klima. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (pp. 37–40).
  26. ISBN 978-1138658059
    . (p. 56)
  27. ISBN 0826484859
    . (p. 3)
  28. ^ Šedivý, Ivan. "T. G. Masaryk: zrozen k mýtu" (in Czech). Dějiny a současnost. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  29. ^ Talks with T. G. Masaryk at Google Books
  30. ^ a b "The Life of Karel Čapek". Památník Karla Čapka. 16 February 2015. Archived from the original on 18 February 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  31. ISBN 978-0571231621
    (pp. xxiv–xxv).
  32. ^ "Josef Čapek" (in Czech). aktualne.cz. 9 June 2014. Archived from the original on 29 October 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  33. ^ a b Nick Carey (12 January 2000). "Karel Čapek". Český rozhlas. Archived from the original on 6 April 2017. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  34. ^ Klíma 2001, pp. 200–206.
  35. ^ a b "Radio Prague – Mailbox". Český rozhlas. 3 March 2012. Archived from the original on 9 March 2017. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
  36. ^ "Olga Scheinpflugová" (in Czech). Osobnosti.cz. Archived from the original on 27 October 2020. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  37. ISBN 0575099453
    (p. vi).
  38. ^ "Karel Čapek – pragmatista a ironik" (in Czech). Slovo a smysl (Word & Sense). Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  39. ^ Jedlička, Alois (1991). "Jazykové a jazykovědné zájmy Karla Čapka". Naše řeč (in Czech). 74 (1): 6–15. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  40. ^ "Karel Čapek" (in Czech). aktualne.cz. 10 April 2014. Archived from the original on 10 December 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2016.
  41. ^ a b c Darko Suvin, "Capek, Karel" in
    ISBN 0912289279
    (pp. 842–844).
  42. ^ The Gardener's Year, illustrated by Josef Čapek. First published in Prague, 1929. English edition London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931.
  43. ^ "Karel Čapek". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd edition, Oxford, 2001.
  44. ^ K. Čapek, Why I am not a Communist? Archived 5 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine Přítomnost, 4 December 1924.
  45. ^ „Vojáku Vladimíre...“: Karel Čapek, Jindřich Groag a odpírači vojenské služby Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Nakladatelství Zdeněk Bauer, Prague, 2009.
  46. ^ Miller, Arthur. "Foreword" to Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader, edited by Peter Kussi.Catbird Press, 1990;
    ISBN 0945774079
  47. ^ Karel Capek – Who did actually invent the word "robot" and what does it mean? Archived 4 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine at capek.misto.cz
  48. ^ Ivan Margolius,'The Robot of Prague', Newsletter, The Friends of Czech Heritage no. 17, Autumn 2017, pp. 3–6. https://czechfriends.net/images/RobotsMargoliusJul2017.pdf Archived 11 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  49. ^ Šára, Filip; Bobíková, Lenka. "Před 130 lety se narodil literární velikán, který dal světu robota. Toto slovo však nevymyslel". Novinky.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 18 December 2023.
  50. ISBN 978-3540002383
    .
  51. ^ "Programming in Karel" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 February 2020.
  52. ^ Letters from Italy at Google Books
  53. ^ Letters from England at Google Books, translated by Geoffrey Newsome in 2001
  54. ^ Letters from Spain at Google Books
  55. ^ Letters from Holland at Google Books
  56. ^ Travels in the North at Google Books
  57. ^ The Gardener's Year at Google Books
  58. ^ Apocryphal Tales at Google Books
  59. ^ Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy at Google Books

Further reading

  • Šulcová, Marie. Čapci, Ladění pro dvě struny, Poločas nadějí, Brána věčnosti. Praha: Melantrich 1993– 98
  • Šulcová, Marie. Prodloužený čas Josefa Čapka. Praha: Paseka 2000
  • Harkins, William Edward. Karel Čapek. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962.
  • Gabriel, Jiří, ed. Slovník Českých Filozofů. V Brne: Masarykova univerzita, 1998, 79–82 (in Czech).
  • Swirski, Peter. "Chapter 4 Karel Čapek and the Politics of Memory" From LowBrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2005.
  • Milner, Andrew. "Chapter 6 From Rossums Universal Robots to Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Literature, Culture and Society. London, New York: Routledge, 2005.
  • Margolius, Ivan. 'The Robot of Prague', Newsletter, The Friends of Czech Heritage no. 17, Autumn 2017, pp. 3–6. https://czechfriends.net/images/RobotsMargoliusJul2017.pdf
Čapek biographies in English

External links

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