On the occasion of the recent round anniversary of the death of Karel Čapek, I would like to recall the importance of this personality, especially in terms of his significance for our Czech society. Although Karel Čapek's outlook and attitudes were essentially from the centre-left, in my opinion, with his own extraordinary humanistic approach, he broke all the boundaries of so-called bourgeois humanism, because his philosophical conception, which is above his own works, is highly based on respect for man and life as such. I personally encountered Čapek's works in my childhood, not only in his fairy tales, but I was very fond of reading The Krakatit, The White Sickness, and also his Tales from One Pocket and the Other and his detective stories. Who wouldn't know the fairy tales of Pejskov and the cat, Dášenka, or the life of a puppy, but probably the most influential for me was the play The Mother, and finally the very successful film adaptation of The White Sickness and Krakatit, which are masterpieces. And that is the main reason why I like to come back to Karel Čapek. Finally, the dramas - The White Sickness, The Krakatit and The Mother are somehow relevant again. I hope that doesn't bode well.
A few facts about the hardworking Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek was born in the family of the doctor MUDr. Antonín Čapek in Malé Svatoňovice, from there the family moved to Úpice, where he graduated from primary school. He then entered the grammar school in Hradec Králové, but had to finish his studies in Brno. He graduated from the University of Philosophy in Prague in 1915. During his studies he stayed in Paris and Berlin. Karel Čapek was not conscripted into the Austrian army, mainly because of his chronic spinal disease, so he did not enlist as a soldier in the First World War. However, the consequences of the war affected and influenced him all the more.
He started his first job as a tutor in the aristocratic family of the Lažanský family, at the Chýše castle. Here he also witnessed the crash of the local munitions factory, and this tragedy became the basis for the drama I have already mentioned, Krakatit. He worked there for a very short time, as he was bound by the strict conservative attitudes of this ancient noble family. After a few months, he became editor of several newspapers and magazines, such as Lidove noviny, Národní listy and the then weekly Nebojsa.
The variety of his dramatic work
For practical reasons, his work is usually divided into two basic parts: the first part deals with the inner life of man as an individual and through which Čapek attempts to explore the possibilities and limits of human knowledge, the multiplicity of views of reality, and deals with noetics (The Passion of God, the noetic trilogy...), and the second part is so-called utopian. This includes his utopian novels and dramas, in which Čapek criticizes the social problems of the whole of modern society, while at the same time fears are often expressed about the misuse of technology against man, and there is also a noticeable fear of the coming fascism in his works. For these works, both Čapek brothers are considered to be the forerunners of science fiction literature.
The list of Čapek's works is quite long and I deliberately do not list everything here. Of his works I would like to mention:
Shining Depths (1916) - This is a book edition of his short stories printed in magazines, written together with his brother Josef.
The Passion of God (1917) - philosophical short stories, which reflect (philosophize) on the mysteries of the human soul and fateful coincidences in human life. The first book written by Karel Čapek himself.
Krakonoš's Garden (1918) - This is a book edition of his prose published in magazines, written together with his brother Josef.
Criticism of Words (1920) - In this piece, he uses columns to analyze the phrase and its misuse.
Embarrassing Tales (1921) - skeptically contemplates the meaning of human existence and his psyche.
The Absolute Factory (1922) - a feuilleton novel.
Krakatit (1922) - A novel. The conclusion of this drama is based on the idea that one should not do great deeds, but only those that are meant to serve the whole society and one's own development.
Of the Nearest Things (1925) - book editions of his columns, small reflections.
The Scandalous Affair of Josef Holoušek (1927) - satirical stories about newspapers and journalists, in which the author criticises the conditions in the press between the two world wars.
Tales from One Pocket, Tales from the Other Pocket (1929) - short stories with a detective theme. Their story is presented in a humorous way. The stories reflect relativism, where the truth is not exactly given, it depends on the point of view.
Marsyas or on the Edge of Literature (1931) - here, in several essays, he deals with so-called "brackish literature" - he concludes that its existence is necessary.
Apocrypha (1932) - short stories in which he stylizes historical and especially biblical themes.
Hordubal (1933) - The basis of this novel was a true event when a peasant (Hordubal) returned home to Subcarpathian Russia after several years of work in America and was murdered by his wife and her lover. Here Capek asked questions such as whether we are even entitled to judge guilt fairly. Hordubal's heart is lost in the conviction, symbolizing the unresolved story of Hordubal.
An Ordinary Life (1934) - A retired railway official describes and reflects on his "ordinary life". Gradually he comes to believe that he is actually made up of many personalities that together make up his destiny.
War with the Mlocks (1936) - Humans discover strange creatures - newts, intelligent animals that humans begin to train as cheap labour. But the newts rebel, start organizing their own state, elect their own leader and demand a "living space" for themselves. Everything leads inevitably to war.
The First Bunch (1937) - The plot of this novel takes place in a mine where a cave-in leaves several miners stranded and the mine management is looking for volunteers to rescue them. This work is a celebration of human solidarity.
How to do what - a set of causeries. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1920) - in this science-fiction drama, the word robot was first heard, which Čapek was supposedly advised by his brother Josef. Here Čapek warns against the misuse of technology.
From the Life of Insects (1921) - An allegorical view of the insect world that represents different human characteristics and human types. Written together with my brother Joseph.
The Makropulos Thing (1922) - this work by Čapek was congenially set to music by Leoš Janáček in his opera of the same name, which is a regular part of the repertoire of the world's opera houses.
Adam the Creator (1927) - Adam is dissatisfied with the world as it is, so he destroys it and creates a new one. He is disappointed because he soon discovers that the new world is no better than the one he destroyed. Written with his brother Joseph.
White Sickness (1937) - set to music by T. Andrasovan, filmed by H. Haas in 1937) - a dictator (the Marshal) appears who wants war (Adolf Hitler), but at the same time a terrible disease appears that kills people. The dictator also falls ill with this disease, and a peace-loving doctor (Galen) finds a cure. He offers to cure the dictator in exchange for peace. The dictator eventually accepts, but the doctor is killed by a fanatical mob on his way to him. At the end of the work, war breaks out.
Mother (1938) - In this drama, the protagonist, Toni's mother, tries to prevent her only surviving son (her older sons and husband are dead or fallen) from going off to fight with her conversations. It is only the realisation that the enemy is killing even young children and that she is not alone in experiencing the loss of her sons that makes her give Toni a rifle and let him go to war. Her deceased sons and husband appear in the play as normal characters that the mother talks to.
Čapek's interest in everything
Čapek was an exceptionally good amateur photographer, as evidenced by a number of other surviving photographs, including portraits of well-known personalities, in addition to his well-known photographs in Dášeňka. Amateur Karel Čapek was the author of the best-selling photographic publication of the First Republic: the Dášeňka or The Life of a Puppy from 1933 was published in several dozen editions. And this is where his versatility gradually began to show. At one point he was both dramaturge and director of the Vinohrady Theatre. In August 1935, Karel Čapek married the actress Olga Scheinpflugová at the Vinohrady Town Hall.
For their wedding in 1935, the newlyweds received the right to live in a summer residence above the Strž pond near Stará Hut (near Dobříš) for life. This was thanks to the general manager of the Dobříš steelworks, Václav Palivec. Nowadays there is a memorial to Karel Čapek in this house. Čapek mostly stayed here in the last three years of his life. Less known is his fondness for ethnic music, based on his interest in foreign cultures in general. He was one of the leading collectors of gramophone records, and his heirs donated this surviving collection to the Náprstek Museum in 1981 (a total of 462 records and 115 catalogues of world gramophone companies).
He is also the author of the word "robot", which spread around the world with the play R.U.R., but was actually suggested to him by his brother Josef Čapek. Originally, Karel Čapek wanted to call robots "labours". The word robot is derived from the verb robotovat (to work). He was very fond of travelling, for example he visited Britain, Spain, Italy and Holland. He also took up drawing, and these sometimes supplemented his works. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, from 1932 to 1938.
The Munich Betrayal and Čapek's End
In 1938, Čapek literally collapsed after the Munich Agreement was signed, and I personally believe that he never came to terms with this betrayal of the West and "Western democracy" until the end of his days. He himself said: 'It seems to me that I have nothing to do here anymore, I would be a ridiculous figure, my world has died, because I believed in some kind of obligations, in the so-called honour in the treaty and things like that. I don't think I would have been able to cope with this crowding..."
Here it turned out that a certain part of civil society at the time felt betrayed by Čapek himself, when Karel Čapek, after first recovering from the shock of this betrayal, and in my opinion mistakenly, tried to justify the government and President Beneš's actions. Very soon Karel Čapek fell ill with pneumonia and died on 25 December 1938. Few people know that the actual funeral of Karel Čapek was handled by the Premonstratensian Order of the Strahov Monastery in Prague. When you take stock of it all, the overlap of Karel Čapek was indeed enormous. I believe that Karel Čapek cannot be denied his genuine and very deep humanity, his empathy for quite ordinary people, but also his real pride in the Czech nation and his patriotism. He always acted autonomously, even knowing that his choice would not be easy.
Jan Vojtěch
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