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Karel Čapek (1890-1938) |
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Czech novelist, short-story writer, political thinker, playwright, and teacher. Karel Čapek's play R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots (1920) added to Oxford English Dictionary a new word, "robot." It was derived from the Czech "robota", meaning someting like "work" or "serf", "forced labor", referring originally to dull work. Čapek's robots were not mechanical but humanlike beings of flesh and blood – now they would be called androids. Later the term was applied to machines. Along with Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek, the author of The Good Soldier Svejk, Čapek is among the great figures of modern Czech literature. "Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of work. He rejected everything that makes man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside?" (in R.U.R., 1920, translated by Paul Selver) Karel Čapek was born in Malé Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now in Czech Republic). His father, Antonín Čapek, a country doctor, was a voracious reader whose own library was filled with books of history, philosophy, general culture, world literature, and also fairy tales. The children were encouraged to use it. Čapek's mother Božena Capková pampered her son in his otherwise normal, happy childhood. Josef (1887-1945), Čapek's elder brother, became known as a painter, novelist, and dramatist who occasionally collaborated with his younger brother. Their sister, Helena (1886-1969), wrote a few novels. While still at a grammar school in Hradec Králové, Čapek started to write poetry and short stories. To his first love, the beautiful "Anielka," the daughter of the local organist and music teacher, he wrote letters. She later married his school mate. Some ofČapek's poems were published in a student magazine. In 1909 he entered Charles University in Prague, where he studied philosophy, and then continued his studies in Berlin at the Frederick William University (now the Humboldt University of Berlin), and at the Sorbonne in Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1915. His thesis on "Objective Methods in Aesthetics, with Reference to Creative Art" (Objektivní metoda v estetice se zrením k vytvarnému umení) was extremely well received by his professors. Čapek's first book, Zárivé hlubiny, written with Josef, came out in 1916. It was followed by Boži muka (1917, Wayside Crosses), a collection of gloomy stories. Josef illustrated many of the books, including Zahradníkuv rok (1929, The Gardener's Year), a several times reprinted collection of gardening pieces. During World War I Čapek worked temporarily as a librarian at
the Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom in Prague and
as a tutor in Žlutice to the son of Count Vladimir Lažanský, an
outspoken
nationalist who ordered only Czech to be spoken in his household. Due
to his physical disabilities,
delicate constitution and spondyloarthritis of the vertebral column, he
was found unfit for military service. In 1917 Čapek setted in Prague,
where joined the editorial board of the Národ weekly and became editor of
the newspaper Národní listy.
When his brother was dismissed from the paper as a result o his
political views, Čapek left as well. He then began to
contribute to the, Lidové Noviny, Brno's liberal and popular
daily paper, where he stayed until his death. In his columns Čapek's often wrote in a familiar tone about such issues as frost flowers forming on a windowpane, or how humankind would move more efficiently if people had wheels instead of legs. A majority of his essays were playful or humorous, but he also dealt with politics, mysteries, and aesthetic life. Čapek's satirical view in the story, 'War With the Newts,' was praised by Thomas Mann. Articles on Nazism and racism, and crisis of democracy in Europe, have not lost their topicality. Čapek's work show the influence of William James, and the
philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Henri Bergson. He was also interested
in the works of H.G. Wells,
who
depicted future world, and Bernard Shaw, who examined in his plays
social and philosophical problems. In the 1920s Čapek's translation of
French symbolist poets influence deeply Czech poetry. A reader of
mystery novels, he visited Baker Street and Dartmoor on his 1924 trip
to England. While in London, Čapek delivered a speech at the
International PEN Club, and met H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, and G.B.
Shaw. Upon his initiative, the Prague branch of the PEN was established
in 1925. Čapek was elected as its President. In 1920 Čapek met a young actress, Olga
Scheinpflugová, who had the central role in his play Loupežník.
During the following fifteen years, she was the object of his
passionate love and adoration. Čapek wrote her many letters, and
eventually they married in 1935. Enchanted by the beauty of Věra
Hrůzová, the daughter of a professor, he also corresponded with her for
almost eleven years. She inspired the heroine of the novel Krakatit (1924). As a playwright Čapek collaborated with his brother in several productions. One of their mutual acquaintances was the composer Leoš Janáček. Josef designed the sets for Janáček's Prague 1925 production of The Cunning Little Vixen, his seventh opera, and Karel's Věc Makropulos (1924) provided the basis for Janáček's next opera. After Adam stvoritel (pub.1927), another collaboration, he wrote no more plays until 1937. His first stage work, The Fateful Game of Love, was written in 1910 and produced in 1930. Čapek worked also as the art director of the National Art Theater and was closely associated with the Vinohrady Theatre. In 1922, mentally and physically exhausted, he gave up his post at the Vinohrady Theatre, and left for Italy. Čapek's travel sketches were collected in Italské listy (1923, Letters from Italy). Throughout
his writing career, Čapek favored large, philosophical themes. When
Čapek was once asked why he doesn't write poetry, he said: "Because I
loathe talking about myself." (The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera, translated by Linda Asher, 1988, p. 145) Like his
contemporary expressionist playwrights and filmmakers, he employed
elements from science fiction and fantasy and was not particularly
interested in portraying everyday life. In the three-act symbolic
fantasy R.U.R.
Dr. Gall, who works in the off-shore Rossum's Universal Robots company,
has created robots which can feel
pain; in this they differ from their predecessors, the Jewish Golem and
the alchemical homunculus. The factory's manager, Domin, believes that
robots can liberate humans from labour. A robot revolt breaks out, and
the formula is burned. All but one human is killed. At the end, the
robots discover love, making the discovery of new formula unnecessary.
Čapek's play was an immediate success. In 1923 a public discussion
about his robots was held in London featuring luminaries like G.B. Shaw
and G.K. Chesterton. The French writer and Nobel laureate Romain
Rolland came to Prague to see R.U.R. in 1924. The film which popularized the idea of robots was Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926). Isaac Asimov's stories, collected in I, Robot (1950) made known the celebrated three laws of robotics. The word ''robot'' was coined by Čapek's brother Josef. The Absolute at Large (1922), Čapek's first novel, took up the theme of the end of the world. In the story a scientist invenst the Karburator, which product free energy but at the same time unleashes a destructive otherworldly force with the power to destroy the whole civilization. The satiric comedy Ze Zivota hmyzy (1921, The Insect Play), written with Josef, was produced in 1922. Čapek depicted human vices through the dreams of a drunken tramp. A female butterflies flirt with males and kill one, a beetle steals a store of dung, and ants struggle for power. At the end a number of the flying and dancing insects die. The tramp, who wrestles with death, too, eventually faces a new day, saying: "Look--look at the world. Look at how much there is to do." An eyewitness to the Prague production complained, that the constant "buzzing" of the actors made them all exhausted and sweaty. Čapek's last drama, Matka (1938) was about a mother, whose husband and sons are killed fighting for their ideals. She refuses to allow her youngest son to go against an approaching army reported to be killing women and children. Finally she gives him a rifle so that he may join the struggle for humanity. Most of the story was presented in the form of a dialogue between the mother and the ghosts of her dead family members. In The Insect Play, first performed at the National Theatre in Brno in 1922, and Power and Glory (1937), which was staged in Prague and Brno, Čapek examined how too much power can corrupt a political leader. He was a friend and biographer of the first president of Czechoslovak Republic, Tomáš Masaryk, working with him to unify the country, and recording Masaryk's political ideas in Hovory s T.G. Masarykem, published in three volumes between 1928 and 1935. Čapek's philosophical novel trilogy, Hordubal (1934),
Povetron (1934), and Obycejný život (1934) tries to tell
the same story from a different point of view, centering round problems
of truth and reality. Hordubal was on its surface a story of
crime. In Povetron Čapek
studied how a few facts about an
unknown man gives room to different interpretations, and in the last
part of the trilogy an ordinary person discovers a complex combination
of different personalities hidden in his own mind. Válka s mloky (1936, The War with the Newts) was both a satire on modern science and international politics. In the story nonhumans again adopt human traits, which lead to catastrophe – this time a sea-dwelling race of "newts" are discovered in the South Pacific and enslaved first by The Salamander Syndicate, established by a Jewish businessman named G.H. Bondy. The smart and adaptable newts labour for the benefit of humankind and are used as guinea pigs in scientific research. In spite of their intellectual achievement, they are regarded as animals without soul, andhave no civil rights. As their population grows, the newts demand more living space – Čapek's direct reference to the Nazi policy of "Lebensraum." With their new führer, Chief Salamaner, the newts start a war against their masters. Portions of continents are sunk under the sea. After a war between two dominating newt civilizations, in which both are destroyed, the humans return from their retreats in the mountains. Though Čapek's main theme was not the war between worlds, humans and submarine newts, many reviewers categorized the work as Wellsian. "Capek's greatness as a writer often depends not on the success of his conscious intention, but on what has slipped in, almost in spite of the author. In spite of his experimentalism, his use of scientific or philosophic themes, traditional literary values abound in his works. In spite of his determined effort to come to grips with life, and unconscious terror of life returns returns again and again in his work. Though he tried not to admit it, Capek kept stumbling over the tragedy of life. All his work after Wayside Crosses is in a sense a defense against the metaphysical horror which he perceived in that book." (William E. Harkins in Karel Capek, 1962) The
settlement at Munich of September, 1938, by the Western
nations, in which Czechoslovakia was allowed to be overrun by Germany,
was a severe blow to Čapek, an ardent spokesman for democracy who had
strongly condemned war and Nazism. On 30 September, 1938, he signed the
writer's declaration 'To the Conscience of the World'. Louis Aragon and
other French writers nominated him for the Nobel Prize. At that time
Čapek's health had rapidly deteriorated
– partly perhaps weakened by his feverish writing and exhaustion.
Suffering from fascist harassment, he took a refuge in Strž, where
worked on his last novel, Život a
dílo skladatele Foltýna (1939). Čapek
died of
pneumonia on December 25, 1938, in Prague, just three months before the
invasion of
Czechoslovakia. His works were blacklisted by the Nazis, who first came
to his house to arrest him without knowing of his death. Čapek's
brother Joseph was sent to a German concentration camp; he
died at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. During the Communist reign Čapek's work did not gain a full favor of the government and his books were removed from the libraries and bookstores. Especially Čapek's closeness to Masaryk bothered the censors. Moreover, he was considered having been too international. One of his suppressed works was the booklet Why I Am Not a Communist (1924), in which he stated: "I cannot be a communist, because communism's morality is not a morality of help. Because it preaches elimination of the social order and not elimination of the social vice which is poverty . . ." (Karel Čapek: Life and Work by Ivan Klíma, 2002, p. 131) After the State Literary Publishing House in Moscow published a selection of Čapek's works, the unofficial ban was lifted. (Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1960 by Edward Taborsky, 1961, p. 568) The War with the Newts, which criticized, besides totalitarianism, also big corporations and consumerism, was republished with some changes. For further reading: Karel Čapek by Václav Cerny (1936); Karel Čapek by W. E. Harkins (1962); Karel Čapek by Ivan Klima (1962); První rada v díle Karla Čapka by Oldrich Králik (1972); Karel Čapek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance and Trust by Bohuslava R. Bradbrook (1997); Karel Čapek: Life and Work by Ivan Klima (2002); 'Introduction' by Ivan Klima, in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), translated by Claudia Novack (2004); 'The Politics of Plague Theatre: Artaud,Č apek and Camus' in Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory and Film by Jennifer Cooke (2009) Selected works:
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